Ghost v6

You're reading this on a Ghost.org hosted blog that has been upgraded to version 6 that was released earlier this week. I joked about how I was living dangerously by upgrading without backing everything up first, but I really didn't give it a second thought when I clicked the upgrade button.

If you used Ghost v5, you'd be hard pressed to notice much change in the new dashboard look and feel.

The main addition to the nav is a dedicated "Analytics" item, and the previously in beta (and maybe still in beta?) "Network" item that shows all the federated activity from your blog's home on Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky.

No big changes is good for those of us wanting to just write a blog post, send an email, maybe charge for the words with some sort of newsletter thing. I'm sure the people using it to sell access to their content appreciate the improved analytics so they can figure out what's working and what's not as they try to make a living on the web from their thoughts.

Price Go Up

One thing I missed in the announcement is that Ghost pricing went up, but anyone already using Ghost gets to keep their existing pricing—presumably until they upgrade or downgrade their plan in any way. I'm on their Starter Plan which I'm paying $108USD/year for, whereas now that same plan starts at $180USD/year. Roughly a 66% increase if my math is right. That's a pretty big increase especially for people not trying to make any money off their writing and just writing blog posts.

I really enjoy using Ghost and aren't in any hurry to switch away, but if I was picking something today I think their new pricing would be too high to really consider given how little I use it for anything besides throwing a URL out with some words on it.

Molly White maintains a great comparison chart of newsletter platform costs—my only complaint is that Kit.com isn't included, but maybe it's bigger in my corner of the web than what Molly is seeing—and I still think Buttondown is the service I'd go with if I was an indie publisher with a smaller budget. It's email first focused which I think is the best way to grow, while still having a way to get URLs on the web that look great and are shareable on social.

Where Does Micro.blog Fit?

Manton, the founder of Micro.blog, has a good post comparing Ghost vs Micro.blog and while he's obviously biased towards his own service, it does highlight the difference in indie vs bigger companies in this space:

Ghost(Pro) starts at $18/month. Micro.blog Premium (for email newsletters) is $10/month, WordPress.com is $9/month, and Write.as Pro (for newsletters) is $9/month. If you don’t need newsletters, the standard Micro.blog subscription is only $5/month, and Micro.one is the ridiculously low $1/month.

I really like Micro.blog as a service. I think it's a neat hybrid of old school social media timeline plus blogging, all at a great price. Plus I love that it has native macOS and iOS apps to post and read with.

I experimented with using Micro.blog as my blog's home, but I just couldn't do it for basically the same reasons that Manton states:

People seem to like Ghost’s editor. In the direction that many rich text editors are going, it resembles WordPress’s block-based editor. Micro.blog uses a Markdown editor instead, with more full-featured editors like MarsEdit, Ulysses, and iA Writer as options.

I like having a bit of a designed user interface to my blog editor. I like having a nice image embed process, and the ability to throw a YouTube video URL, Transistor.fm episode embed, etc. and know they're just going to work. The Micro.blog editor is great for getting words onto a URL and I could probably be happy with a combination of it + MarsEdit if I stuck with it, but it just doesn't feel right somehow for my brain. Blogging to me = working inside the blog's CMS for some reason. Too many years of WordPress brain perhaps.

And perhaps it's not fair to compare the marketing and design of a multi million dollar app like Ghost to an indie app like Micro.blog, but Ghost's homepage feels really well designed, which educates and inspires to create (and make money off of) content. Whereas Micro.blog's homepage feels a little less clear on what it is and why I'd sign up for it.

Once I'm inside the app, particularly on desktop, it's really easy to understand what Micro.blog is for and how to use it though:

But I'll still sing the praises of Micro.blog for anyone wanting to just get started with a blog of their own. It's such a great space to get started writing and sharing your work that can grow with you, without having to spend a bunch of money each month while you try to figure out what you're doing.

Comment Moderation in Ghost Still Sucks

I get 5-10 comments a year, so I really don't have any reason to complain. But I'm disappointed that there isn't a "Comments" or "Community" menu item as a top level thing inside Ghost's dashboard. As far as I can tell, there's still no way outside of navigating to an individual post to find someone's comment—or wait for the email notification from Ghost to come and make sure you're using the right browser so you can delete or reply.

Woof.

Ghost Might Ghost Me Some Day

(Yikes. That's a bad headline.)

If Ghost had said "here's v6 and also your price is going up", I think I'd be writing a very different blog post right now—as well as looking at other blog options. Which isn't to say Ghost is making a dumb decision by raising their prices. It's very possible the casual blogger isn't their target audience anymore, if it ever was? And I think it's fair and important for apps to charge what they need to in order to be profitable and survive without taking millions of venture capital money all while losing money (cough Substack cough).

So overall I'm happy with Ghost v6 and the improvements they've made, particularly all the hard work to integrate with the federated network of Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, etc. But I am going to be wary about letting myself get locked in to too many features that I don't really need in order to put words on a URL .