Ghost VS Drupal

Compare Ghost VS Drupal and see what are their differences

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Ghost

Ghost is a fully open source, adaptable platform for building and running a modern online publication. We power blogs, magazines and journalists from Zappos to Sky News.

Drupal - the leading open-source CMS for ambitious digital experiences that reach your audience across multiple channels. Because we all have different needs, Drupal allows you to create a unique space in a world of cookie-cutter solutions.

Landing page //
2022-10-10

Landing page //
2023-07-18

Ghost

Website: ghost.org
Pricing URL: Official Ghost Pricing
$ Details: paid Free Trial $36.0 / Monthly (100k views/month, 2 users)
Startup details
Country: United Kingdom

Edit details

Drupal

Website: drupal.org
Pricing URL: -
$ Details: free
Startup details
Country: United States

Edit details

Ghost features and specs

User-Friendly Interface
Ghost offers a clean and intuitive interface that makes content management straightforward, even for those without technical expertise.
Speed and Performance
Ghost is built on modern technology like Node.js which makes it faster and more efficient compared to some traditional CMS platforms.
SEO Optimized
Ghost comes built-in with SEO features like clean URLs, meta tags, and sitemaps which help in improving search engine rankings.
Customizable Themes
Ghost supports a variety of themes that can be easily customized to fit the branding and functionality needs of a website.
Markdown Support
Content creation in Ghost is made easy with Markdown support, allowing writers to focus on text rather than formatting.

Possible disadvantages of Ghost

Limited Plugin Ecosystem
Compared to WordPress, Ghost has a more limited selection of plugins, which might restrict some functionalities users are looking for.
Higher Hosting Costs
Ghost's official hosting is relatively expensive, making it less suitable for users on a tight budget.
Technical Knowledge Requirement
While Ghost is user-friendly, setting it up on a custom server can require a higher level of technical knowledge compared to some other platforms.
Less Community Support
The user community for Ghost is smaller compared to more established platforms like WordPress, which can make it harder to find support and resources.
Limited Ecommerce Capabilities
Ghost is primarily a publishing platform and lacks the more advanced eCommerce functionalities that other CMS platforms might offer out of the box.

Drupal features and specs

Flexibility
Drupal is highly customizable and can be tailored to meet the unique needs of almost any web project. Its modular architecture allows developers to add functionalities and change behaviors without modifying the core system.
Scalability
Drupal can handle large volumes of content and high traffic levels, making it suitable for both small websites and large, complex applications.
Security
Drupal is known for its strong security features and has a dedicated security team that continuously works on identifying and fixing vulnerabilities.
Community Support
Drupal has a large, active community of developers, designers, and users who contribute modules, themes, and support, facilitating problem-solving and innovation.
Multilingual Capabilities
Drupal offers excellent support for multilingual websites, providing built-in translation modules and interfaces for managing content in multiple languages.

Possible disadvantages of Drupal

Steep Learning Curve
Drupal's flexibility and power come at the cost of complexity, which can be daunting for new users and developers.
Performance Optimization
While Drupal can handle high traffic, it requires careful performance tuning and caching strategies to perform optimally, which can add to development and maintenance overhead.
Development Time
Building a site with Drupal can take more time compared to other content management systems due to its complexity, especially if custom features are required.
Resource Intensive
Running a fully-featured Drupal site can be resource-intensive, often requiring more server resources compared to simpler CMS solutions.
Dependency Management
Managing dependencies and updates for the numerous modules that make up a Drupal site can be complex and requires careful attention to compatibility and security.

Analysis of Ghost

Overall verdict

Ghost is a highly regarded platform for serious bloggers and publishers who want a minimalistic yet powerful content management system. It is especially beneficial for those who prefer a distraction-free writing environment with the capability to scale and customize as their needs grow.

Why this product is good

Ghost is a popular open-source platform designed for professional bloggers and publishers. It is known for its clean design, speed, and ease of use. Ghost offers robust features for content creation, management, and distribution while focusing on providing an optimal writing experience. Additionally, Ghost is built on modern technology stacks and offers flexibility through themes and integrations. It also supports membership and subscription models, making it ideal for those looking to monetize their content.

Recommended for

Professional bloggers
Content creators looking for a minimalist interface
Publishers seeking to monetize their content
Developers looking for an open-source platform
Organizations that require a fast and reliable CMS
Writers who value a focused writing experience

Analysis of Drupal

Overall verdict

Drupal is a good choice for those seeking a flexible, scalable, and security-focused CMS suitable for complex and high-traffic websites. It may not be as beginner-friendly as some other CMSs, but it offers immense capabilities for advanced users and developers.

Why this product is good

Drupal is a powerful content management system (CMS) known for its flexibility and scalability. It offers robust tools for content authoring, reliable performance, and excellent security measures. Drupal is highly customizable and can handle complex sites with heavy traffic and specific requirements. It supports a wide range of add-ons and integrations, allowing developers to create feature-rich sites. Furthermore, the active open-source community continually contributes to enhancing its ecosystem with modules and themes.

Recommended for

Large enterprises and organizations
Complex and custom web applications
High-traffic websites
Websites requiring advanced content management and workflows
Non-profit and government websites

Ghost videos

+ Add

Why I Moved My Blog From WordPress to Ghost

Drupal videos

+ Add

Drupal Vs WordPress - Which Is The Best CMS?

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Ghost and Drupal)

Ghost

Drupal

Blogging

70 70%

Blogging

30% 30

CMS

60 60%

CMS

40% 40

Blogging Platform

58 58%

Blogging Platform

42% 42

Website Builder

54 54%

Website Builder

46% 46

User comments

Share your experience with using Ghost and Drupal. For example, how are they different and which one is better?

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Ghost and Drupal

Ghost Reviews

Comparing 9 WordPress alternatives & competitors in 2024

Ghost specializes in creating a monetized blogging platform. Based on their subscription status, readers can create user profiles, sign up for newsletters, and browse your entire blogging calendar. The platform’s singular focus on blogging makes it great for individuals and small teams, but it lacks features like real-time collaboration that are necessary for larger companies.

Source: webflow.com

19 Best WordPress Alternatives in 2025

Ghost is known for its simplicity and focus on content creation. It's a great option for writers and creators who want a clean and distraction-free environment to publish their work.

Source: www.pixpa.com

7 Best Buy Me a Coffee Alternatives

If you don’t already have a website, Ghost may be an appealing option as a Patreon alternative. However, customizations are limited, and you’ll need to choose a pre-built design from the theme library. There are a few themes available, but most are priced from around $80 to $150. The Ghost API also gives you a way to publish content you create on the platform to another...

Source: wpforms.com

Top 10 Web Content Management Systems

Ghost is here as one of the first entries that can be classified as a pure headless CMS. Ghost is not only one of the best headless CMS options, but it also does so while being focused primarily on the blogger community. So if you have or are thinking about starting a large blogging operation featuring many different presentation layers, then Ghost is definitely for you....

Source: cloudzy.com

25+ Medium Alternative Platforms for Publishing Articles

Ghost open-source blogging and the indirect medium alternative platform. Its interface makes blogging easy for users, but also offers SEO tools and other plugins that are built into the platform. This makes it simple for users to publish high-quality content without technical difficulties.

Source: forgefusion.io

Drupal Reviews

Comparing 9 WordPress alternatives & competitors in 2024

Drupal isn’t for beginners, as it lacks in-product tutorials, and you will need to find a separate hosting service to publish sites online. But if you’re an experienced developer looking for a tool that gives you complete design control, Drupal might be the right choice.

Source: webflow.com

19 Best WordPress Alternatives in 2025

Drupal is a content management system known for its flexibility, scalability, and security. It's popular for complex websites, including news outlets, e-commerce platforms, and government portals. While Drupal is free and open-source, customization and development require technical expertise.

Source: www.pixpa.com

Top 10 Web Content Management Systems

Keeping up with the trend of introducing great open-source CMS systems, Drupal is our next entry on the list. Drupal is one of the oldest and most reputable customizable CMS options out there, with its original release dating back to 2001, making it older than WordPress. As a web CMS, Drupal’s principal focus is on security. It is known to have one of the best security...

Source: cloudzy.com

8 Great Drupal Alternatives to Try for your Website (Nov 2021)

Whether you're creating a new website from scratch or looking for a way to upgrade your existing one, you'll need the right content management system. A content management system (CMS), is a tool that helps you to modify and optimize your website however, you choose, without the need for any complex API or PHP work. While some CMS solutions allow you to have some control...

Source: ecommerce-platforms.com

WordPress alternatives: Which CMS platform is the best?

With Drupal, the startup costs are higher than WordPress, since developing with Drupal requires more technical expertise. It’s more complex than WordPress, and you will likely need to pay for a developer. Besides that, you’ll have to invest in the basics like – domain registration, hosting, added security, and so on.

Source: factory.dev

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Ghost should be more popular than Drupal. It has been mentiond 196 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Ghost mentions (196)

Local Journalism Is How Democracy Shows Up Close to Home
Digital production has lowered the cost, and the Ghost platform in particular is a great value for small publishers, bundling together the blog, newsletter and subscriptions in one package, even now including ActivityPub federation. And Ghost themselves a non-profit org that doesn't mark up the Stripe transaction fees! One local news outlet recently switched to that, saving about %5 on Patreon fees and a second is... - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
Bye Bye Big Tech: How I Migrated to an Almost All-EU Stack (and Saved 500€/Year)
Https://ghost.org — Open-source run by a non-profit headquartered in Singapore. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
Ask HN: Looking for Headless CMS Recommendation
If you're hell-bent on headless, I can personally recommend 11ty (https://www.11ty.dev/) and hugo (https://gohugo.io/). That said, for non-technical admins, you probably want a user interface. For that, Ghost (https://ghost.org/) and Grav (https://getgrav.org/). Or Wordpress! - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
Typepad Is Shutting Down
They should provide an option to move to https://ghost.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
Build an analytics agent to analyze your Ghost blog traffic with the Vercel AI SDK and Tinybird
In this post, I'll show you how to build an agent with sufficient contextual understanding of underlying analytics data - and the tools to query it - so that you can have a chat with your data (any data!). Specifically, I'll build a simple analytics agent for a blog - hosted on the open-source publishing platform Ghost. The agent will tell us which content is performing the best, and why. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago

Drupal mentions (28)

Is there and easy way of porting a site from d7 to d9?
I would be interested in some good migration tools, paid ones are also ok. I found a post about this on drupal.org, but it didn't seem like an easy process. It is a multilanguage site with many content types, and a totally custom theme. Source: over 3 years ago
Is there any nice group, where I can ask questions, when I get stuck and recieve some guidance instead of crytics?
You got already good advice, but wanted to point the guide of drupal.org where you can see some tools listed with instructions and channels https://www.drupal.org/community/contributor-guide/reference-information/talk/tools. Source: almost 4 years ago
MAMP issue after Pro trial ended
There is a service call GitPod that provides a temporary container Drupal environment. If you are familiar with what is going on around the future of how Drupal modules will eventually be offered up, you will likely have seen the "Project Browser" module as a contrib demo of the approach. It is used for people to give feedback to the developers. So they set up the typical 'SimplyTestMe' but also a GitPod... Source: almost 4 years ago
Best Modules for Product and Recipe?
For reviews, it depends entirely on what you mean by "review". I believe core has a simple comment module, although it may have been deprecated for D9? There are likely many review-style modules on drupal.org that might work, or if you just want to link out to third-party reviews then it could just be a repeating-value link field on the Product content type. Source: almost 4 years ago
Leadership?
They should also use standards tools like Github. The drupal.org platform was certainly impressive 10 years ago, today it's a pain to use it. They ducktape it with gitlab, but really it sucks to have to read documentation to simply do a pull request. Source: almost 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Ghost and Drupal, you can also consider the following products

WordPress - WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

Medium - Welcome to Medium, a place to read, write, and interact with the stories that matter most to you.

Joomla - Joomla! is the mobile-ready and user-friendly way to build your website. Choose from thousands of features and designs. Joomla! is free and open source.

Blogger - Publish your passions, your way. Create a unique and beautiful blog. It’s easy and free.

Progress Sitefinity - Sitefinity's web content management software is a marketing command center to drive growth for your business. Easily manage multi-site experiences deployed your way.

Tumblr - A feature rich and free blog hosting platform offering professional and fully customizable templates, bookmarklets, photos, mobile apps, and social network integration.

Progress Sitefinity vs Ghost

Progress Sitefinity vs Drupal

Tumblr vs Ghost

Tumblr vs Drupal