Comparison
NewsPlatform vs Ghost
NewsPlatform and Ghost answer different questions. Ghost is open-source publishing software you run on your own domain — self-hosted or on their paid managed hosting. NewsPlatform is a free, hosted news platform you join, where your channel sits on a shared front page.
Last updated October 2026.
The short answer
- Choose Ghost if you want to own the site: your domain, your theme, your subscriber list, memberships and email, and you are willing to host it or pay for hosting.
- Choose NewsPlatform if you want to publish today, for free, onto a site that already has a front page, categories and readers, without running infrastructure.
Side by side
| NewsPlatform | Ghost | |
|---|---|---|
| Model | A hosted platform you join; your channel is a page on newsplatform.org | Open-source software (MIT licence) you self-host, or paid managed hosting from Ghost |
| Cost | Free to publish; no hosting to pay for | The software is free; self-hosting costs you a server, and Ghost's managed hosting is a paid subscription (see their pricing page) |
| Setup effort | Create an account and a channel — minutes, no technical work | Install, configure, theme and maintain, or pay someone to |
| Custom domain and design | No — fixed site design, URLs on newsplatform.org | Yes — your own domain and fully customisable themes |
| Paid memberships and email | Not supported | Built in: memberships, newsletters and payments |
| Built-in audience | Shared newest-first homepage, category sections and channel directory | No guaranteed starting readership — a new Ghost site begins with no subscribers — but Ghost ships discovery tools: the Ghost Explore directory, recommendations between publications, and ActivityPub distribution to the social web (per Ghost's 6.0 changelog) |
| Ownership and portability | Your articles live on NewsPlatform; RSS and the API let you pull them | You own the install, the database and the subscriber list outright |
Where Ghost is stronger
As of October 2026, per ghost.org, Ghost is open-source software published under the MIT licence and run by a non-profit foundation, which means you can host it yourself and nobody can change the terms under you. It has built-in memberships and paid subscriptions, newsletter sending, custom themes, a mature editor and a developer API. For anyone who wants their publication to be genuinely theirs — own domain, own design, own subscriber list, own revenue — Ghost does things NewsPlatform does not attempt.
Where NewsPlatform is stronger
- Zero setup and zero cost. No server, no theme, no DNS, no monthly bill. Create a channel and publish.
- You are not starting from an empty room. Articles go straight onto a shared front page and into category sections where readers already are.
- No maintenance. Updates, hosting, images, search-engine plumbing and crawler prerendering are handled for you.
- Collective discovery. A channel directory, newest-first feed and public API that cover every writer on the platform, not just your own site.
Who should pick which
- A publication that is a business: Ghost.
- A writer who wants to be read without becoming a sysadmin: NewsPlatform.
- You need a custom domain and brand: Ghost.
- You want to publish your first article in the next ten minutes, free: NewsPlatform.
See also: NewsPlatform vs Substack, NewsPlatform vs Medium, best platforms for independent journalists.