Ghost VS Plone

Compare Ghost VS Plone 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.

Plone

Plone CMS: Open Source Content Management — Plone.org

Landing page //
2022-10-10

Landing page //
2023-10-22

Ghost

Website: ghost.org
Pricing URL: Official Ghost Pricing
$ Details: paid Free Trial $36 / Monthly (100k views/month, 2 users)
Startup details
Country: United Kingdom

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Plone

Website: plone.org
Pricing URL: -
$ Details

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.

Plone features and specs

Open Source
Plone is an open-source platform, meaning there are no licensing fees. This can be a substantial cost saver, and it offers flexibility for customization.
Security
Plone is known for its robust security features. It has a strong security track record and a dedicated team focused on maintaining its security posture.
Flexibility and Customization
Plone supports extensive customization of content types, workflows, and permissions, making it highly adaptable to various use cases.
Strong Community Support
Plone has an active community of developers and users who contribute to forums, documentation, and the development of plugins and updates.
Scalability
Plone is capable of handling large amounts of data and traffic, making it suitable for enterprise-level applications.
Built-in Features
Plone comes with a rich set of built-in features including a robust workflow engine, versioning, multilingual support, and content rules.

Possible disadvantages of Plone

Complexity
Plone can be complex to set up and manage, requiring specialized knowledge. This complexity might be a barrier for small teams or projects with limited technical expertise.
Learning Curve
Due to its extensive features and flexibility, Plone can have a steep learning curve, potentially requiring a significant investment in training.
Limited Plugin Ecosystem
Compared to other CMS platforms, Plone has a smaller ecosystem of plugins and extensions, which might limit its functionality out-of-the-box.
Performance Overhead
Plone's extensive features and flexibility can result in performance overhead, making it potentially slower than more lightweight CMS options.
Hosting Requirements
Plone has specific hosting requirements, and not all web hosts support it natively. This could require more specialized hosting solutions.
Design Limitations
While Plone allows for extensive backend customization, its theming and design options are comparatively limited and might require additional effort to achieve a modern and appealing UI.

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 Plone

Overall verdict

Plone is generally well-regarded and is a solid choice for organizations looking for a powerful, secure, and flexible CMS. Its strengths in security and complex content handling make it a dependable option for many large, security-conscious institutions.

Why this product is good

Plone is considered a good choice for content management systems due to its robustness, flexibility, and strong security features. It is an open-source platform, which means it benefits from a wide community of contributors and continuous improvements. Plone is known for its easy-to-use interface, scalability, and ability to handle complex content structures and workflows efficiently.

Recommended for

Organizations that require high security and compliance, such as government agencies or large corporations.
Institutions with complex content management needs, including universities or research organizations.
Anyone who values open-source software and prefers a CMS with active community support and regular updates.

Ghost videos

+ Add

Why I Moved My Blog From WordPress to Ghost

Plone videos

+ Add

Plone - the open source CMS-as-a-service platform: An eGov case study

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Ghost and Plone)

Plone

Blogging

94 94%

Blogging

6% 6

CMS

92 92%

CMS

8% 8

Blogging Platform

92 92%

Blogging Platform

8% 8

Website Builder

100 100%

Website Builder

0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Ghost and Plone. 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 Plone

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

Plone Reviews

11 Popular Free And Open Source WordPress CMS alternatives in 2021

Plone is an open-source, enterprise-grade, all-in-one content management system. lightweight free open-source portable photo editor for Microsoft Windows. It has a simple interface similar to Adobe Photoshop.

Source: medevel.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Ghost seems to be a lot more popular than Plone. While we know about 196 links to Ghost, we've tracked only 2 mentions of Plone. 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 / 8 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 / 8 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 / about 1 year ago
Typepad Is Shutting Down
They should provide an option to move to https://ghost.org/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year 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 / about 1 year ago

Plone mentions (2)

What's the experience of using Python to build the backend of a large application?
Plone and its dependencies codebase is ~200 MB Python code. It's all open source and openly managed, so you can always look up Plone for the best practices for code contribution processes. It is manageable. Legacy code from Python 2.x era is a bit problematic, but anything cleanly written for the latest Python version (3.8+) with type hinting is easy. Source: about 3 years ago
Django 3.2 Released
It’s still alive and still underpins the CMS plone [1]. It has evolved and separated into zope [2] zodb [3] and ztk. [1] https://plone.org [2] https://zone.org [3] https://zodb.org. - Source: Hacker News / over 5 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Ghost and Plone, 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.

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.

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

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

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.

ProcessWire - ProcessWire is a PHP5-based open source CMS/CMF built to save you time and make development fun at any scale. It works the way you do.