Custom Ghost Themes for Publishers Only

It's my blog and I can whine if I want to rules apply.

I think Ghost, the CMS I use to run this blog, requiring a $29USD/month plan to use a custom theme is too much and it should be included in the base $15USD/month plan.

See Ghost pricing for more specifics.

I understand there's some work involved in helping support custom themes. And a theme designer, such as Themex Studio for example, may not give much support and force users to rely on Ghost's support which puts more strain on Ghost's support staff. I don't know the financials of how it works out for Ghost in that regard.

And while Ghost isn't trying to compete directly with WordPress necessarily, they are what most folks who aren't making any real money from their websites will compare them to. And if I read it correctly, I think the Personal plan even has support for premium themes at $12CAD/month (often discounted to half that for your first year.) Even if it's the Premium plan you'd need to use custom themes, that's still $22CAD/month vs Ghost's $29USD or ~$40CAD/month (using current exchange rates as of 2026-11-02).

Armchair Quarterbacking Ghost Pricing

I think that having more people using your CMS increases the surface area of your product's reach. Maybe that $15USD/month entry price is the lowest price they can offer and still be profitable. Fair play then if that's the case. I don't think they should lose money to gain users.

But I do feel like opening up more options for the folks who aren't making money off their website only increases the happiness and vibe of the thing on the internet.

I won't really recommend Ghost to people who don't have a financial incentive for their website. And if I hadn't gotten in on pricing prior to the 2025 price hike, I wouldn't be using Ghost right now either. I'm currently grandfathered in on a $9USD/month plan that would require me to upgrade to the $29USD/month plan if I wanted a custom theme, or a second newsletter. Two features that would cost Ghost.org next to nothing for me specifically. But that's just my use case.

Self Hosted Ghost

Whenever I whine about Ghost prices on here, someone recommends running a self-hosted Ghost CMS. And likely that's what I should do at some point. I don't totally understand how it works, but it looks like a service like Magic Pages would charge me $200CAD/year (~$17CAD/month) for the full Ghost experience? They don't really map to Ghost.org's pricing exactly so I'm not sure.

Thanks for listening to me whine about the cost of everything - see also Apple pricing - which is pretty privileged considering I'm just whining about tech and software pricing, not groceries and gas.