Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

TinyLetter VS Ghost

Compare TinyLetter VS Ghost and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

TinyLetter logo TinyLetter

Start writing your own newsletter instantly.

Ghost logo 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.
  • TinyLetter Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-18
  • Ghost Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-10-10

Ghost

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

TinyLetter features and specs

  • Simplicity
    TinyLetter is very user-friendly and simple to use, making it ideal for beginners who are new to email marketing.
  • Free Service
    TinyLetter is free to use, which makes it an attractive option for individuals or small businesses that have a limited budget.
  • Personal Touch
    The platform allows for a more personal approach to email marketing, as it focuses on direct communication and has a more intimate feel.
  • No Ads
    Emails sent through TinyLetter are free of advertisements, providing a cleaner and more professional appearance.
  • Owned by Mailchimp
    Being owned by Mailchimp offers a guarantee of reliability and a quality backend infrastructure to handle email distributions.

Possible disadvantages of TinyLetter

  • Limited Features
    TinyLetter lacks advanced features such as segmenting, automation, detailed analytics, and advanced integrations, which are available in other email marketing tools.
  • Basic Design Options
    TinyLetter provides limited design customization options, which might not be sufficient for users looking to create highly branded emails.
  • Subscriber Limit
    The service is not suitable for larger email lists as it primarily supports smaller subscriber bases—typically around 5,000 subscribers.
  • No A/B Testing
    TinyLetter does not offer A/B testing capabilities, which can be a significant drawback for those who wish to optimize their email content and send times.
  • No Phone Support
    Customer support is limited to email and articles, with no phone support available, which could be challenging for those needing immediate assistance.

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.

Analysis of TinyLetter

Overall verdict

  • If you are looking for a basic, no-frills email newsletter service and have a relatively small subscriber list, TinyLetter is a good option. Its simplicity and focus on content without unnecessary features make it an attractive choice for personal newsletters or small projects.

Why this product is good

  • TinyLetter is considered good because it offers a simple, user-friendly platform for sending newsletters. It is particularly favored for its minimalistic design and straightforward functionality, which makes it easy for users without technical expertise to create and share content with their subscribers. The platform is free to use, which is appealing for users who are just starting out or have modest needs.

Recommended for

  • Individuals or small organizations with a simple newsletter need
  • Users who prioritize ease of use and minimal setup
  • Content creators wanting a direct and personal touch with subscribers
  • People who prefer a free service for smaller-scale email campaigns

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

TinyLetter videos

REVIEW. Tinyletter (by Mailchimp)

More videos:

Ghost videos

Why I Moved My Blog From WordPress to Ghost

More videos:

  • Review - Ghost review - CMS for creators to build a membership

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to TinyLetter and Ghost)
Email Marketing
100 100%
0% 0
Blogging
0 0%
100% 100
Newsletter Marketing
100 100%
0% 0
CMS
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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

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

TinyLetter Reviews

7 Cheaper Mailchimp Alternatives to Consider in 2019
Are just looking for a simple way to stay in touch with fans. For example, TinyLetter is popular with artists and writers. It’s not a good option for businesses, though.
Oh God, It's Raining Newsletters - by Craig Mod
Buttondown is a (somewhat) recently launched NAAS built by a very engaged developer, beautifully designed, that looks like it might be the new TinyLetter. Subscription integrations forthcoming (eating into Substack territory?). This is probably where I’d start if I were starting a public newsletter today.
Source: craigmod.com
The 12 Best Free Email Marketing Apps
If you choose Mailchimp, here are 6 ways to automate your email marketing with Mailchimp. And if you love Mailchimp but just need a super simple, bare-bones option for email newsletters, the brand also offers TinyLetter.
Source: zapier.com
An Alternative for TinyLetter
TinyLetter users were quick to mourn the shutdown of the service. The reactions mostly expressed sadness. TinyLetter’s simplicity and intimacy were strong selling points to the artists, writers and other members of the creative class that relied on it.

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

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Ghost seems to be a lot more popular than TinyLetter. While we know about 196 links to Ghost, we've tracked only 8 mentions of TinyLetter. 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.

TinyLetter mentions (8)

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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
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

Sendy - Sendy is a self hosted newsletter app that sends emails 100x cheaper via Amazon SES

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.

MailChimp - MailChimp is the best way to design, send, and share email newsletters.

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

MailerLite - Affordable Email Marketing Software. Get all features (Segmentation, Automation, A/B testing) for up to 1,000 subscribers & send unlimited emails for free!

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