Ghost VS Jekyll

Compare Ghost VS Jekyll 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.

Jekyll

Jekyll is a simple, blog aware, static site generator.

Landing page //
2022-10-10

Landing page //
2023-01-17

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

Jekyll

Website: jekyllrb.com
Pricing URL: -
$ Details
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.

Jekyll features and specs

Speed and Performance
Jekyll generates static websites, which means they load faster compared to dynamic websites. No database queries are required, reducing server overhead and improving performance.
Security
Static sites have a smaller attack surface compared to dynamic sites because they don't rely on databases or server-side code. This means fewer vectors for potential compromises.
Simplicity
Jekyll setups are relatively straightforward, especially if you are comfortable writing in Markdown and HTML. This can make it easier to manage and maintain your website.
Integration with GitHub Pages
Jekyll is designed to work seamlessly with GitHub Pages, allowing you to host your website for free with automatic deployment directly from your GitHub repository.
Customizability
Jekyll allows for extensive customization through its support for plugins, themes, and templates. This can be helpful to create a unique look and functionality for your website.

Possible disadvantages of Jekyll

Learning Curve
While Jekyll is simpler than some other static site generators, it does require some familiarity with the command line, version control (Git), and YAML configuration.
Build Time
For large websites, the build times can become lengthy, which can slow down the development process, especially if you are making frequent updates.
Lack of Real-time Content Updates
Since Jekyll generates static sites, real-time content updates (e.g., comments, dynamic forms) aren't natively supported and require third-party services or additional tooling.
Dependence on Ruby
Jekyll is built with Ruby, so you will need to have Ruby installed and occasionally deal with Ruby-specific issues. This might be a drawback for developers who are not familiar with the Ruby ecosystem.
Limited Built-in Functionality
While Jekyll is very flexible, it doesn’t have built-in support for many features out of the box, which might require you to manually implement or rely on plugins.

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 Jekyll

Overall verdict

Jekyll is a good choice for individuals and organizations looking for a straightforward, reliable, and efficient way to build static websites. Its strengths include simplicity, flexibility, and strong community support, which contribute to a smooth development experience.

Why this product is good

Jekyll is a popular static site generator that is widely appreciated for its simplicity, speed, and ease of use. It is particularly suited for creating blogs and simple websites, leveraging Markdown and Liquid templates to generate static HTML content. Its integration with GitHub Pages also makes it a convenient choice for developers and non-developers alike who want to host their sites directly from their GitHub repositories without additional setup or cost.

Recommended for

Bloggers and content creators looking for a simple way to publish content online.
Developers who prefer writing in Markdown and managing content with a version control system.
Users who want to host their sites for free using GitHub Pages.
Anyone in need of a static site generator that is easy to set up, customize, and maintain with minimal resources.

Ghost videos

+ Add

Why I Moved My Blog From WordPress to Ghost

Jekyll videos

+ Add

Getting Started With Jekyll, The Static Site Generator

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Ghost and Jekyll)

Jekyll

Blogging

61 61%

Blogging

39% 39

CMS

58 58%

CMS

42% 42

Blogging Platform

74 74%

Blogging Platform

26% 26

Static Site Generators

0 0%

Static Site Generators

100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Ghost and Jekyll. 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 Jekyll

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

Jekyll Reviews

Best Gitbook Alternatives You Need to Try in 2023

Jekyll is a static site generator often used to create blogs and websites, similar to Gitbook in its ability to generate documentation from markdown files. Jekyll is built in Ruby and is known for its flexibility and ease of use. It also has a large community and a wide variety of plugins and themes available. Jekyll's main advantage is that it is highly customizable,...

Source: www.archbee.com

11 Popular Free And Open Source WordPress CMS alternatives in 2021

Unlike some listed alternatives, Jekyll is also a static site generator so it lays in the same category. It uses Ruby and we would say it's simpler, free, and open-source CMS software.

Source: medevel.com

10 static site generators to watch in 2021

Perhaps most conveniently described as Jekyll implemented with JavaScript rather than Ruby, Eleventy has now moved beyond that while retaining a clear and simple on-ramp, and only shipping to the browser what you tell it too. As with Jekyll and Hugo, no JavaScript frameworks are auto-baked in.

Source: www.netlify.com

Hugo vs Jekyll: an Epic Battle of Static Site Generator Themes

Jekyll isn’t strict with its content location. It expects pages in the root of your site, and will build whatever’s there. Here’s how you might organize these pages in your Jekyll site root:

Source: www.freecodecamp.org

9 Reasons I Think Craft is the Best CMS on the Market Today

Craft CMS is simple, minimalistic, agile and has every capability a modern CMS framework needs. Over the past ten years we have worked with every CMS you could think of (Wordpress, Drupal, Rails+ActiveAdmin, Ghost, Weebly, DjangoCMS, Jekyll, Joomla, Tumblr, Squarespace, Expression Engine, Statamic, Blogger)… here are the reasons why we’ve landed firmly with Craft as our №1...

Source: hackernoon.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Jekyll might be a bit more popular than Ghost. We know about 203 links to it since March 2021 and only 196 links to Ghost. 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

Jekyll mentions (203)

Setting up a hugo static site hosted with Porkbun
This is a static site generated with hugo with the PaperMod theme. I wanted an easy to use static site generator. I considered Jekyll And believe it to be a good choice for static sites. There seemed to be slightly more themes I liked with Hugo so I went with that. That's a pretty superficial choice but I also don't plan on hacking on the Site generation itself so I was agnostic to the Go versus Ruby choice. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
So, you want to vibecode a linkblog?
First of all, I modified my publishing programs to keep a (local) copy of each link published modulePublicationCache and then I thought about using it for my linkblog. I like very much jekyll for a blog and I requested to some AIs (mainly Qwen and Gemini) to help me to develop a blog based on the links I has posted the previous day, prepare a list with them, and prepare a Jekyll post. I also requested to set up a... - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
Migrating from Jekyll to Hugo... or not
I started this blog on WordPress. After several years, I decided to migrate to Jekyll. I have been happy with Jekyll so far. It's based on Ruby, and though I'm no Ruby developer, I was able to create a few plugins. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
Introducing Ⓜ️ Meddler! A Medium Export Converter
So, I created Ⓜ️ Meddler, a command-line tool and website that will take the .ZIP of your export that Medium gives you and turn it into clean, portable Markdown formats for Jekyll, Hugo, Eleventy, or Astro.js. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
Introducing: Postwave
After writing your posts in Markdown you can then display them however you'd like on your site through the built in Postwave Ruby client. This is where Postwave differs from static blog engines like Jekyll or Hugo which take the Markdown posts and generate a site for you. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Ghost and Jekyll, 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.

Hugo - Hugo is a general-purpose website framework for generating static web pages.

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

Drupal - 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.

GitHub Pages - A free, static web host for open-source projects on GitHub

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

GitHub Pages vs Ghost

GitHub Pages vs Jekyll