Every year, thousands of developers sign up for Ghost, attracted by its clean editor and developer-friendly architecture. And every year, many of those same developers quietly look for a way out when they realize their "simple personal blog" now costs more than their Netflix, Spotify, and cloud storage subscriptions combined.
This post exists to put real numbers on the table and to show what it actually costs to run a personal developer blog, at every realistic scale, over a 3-year period.
The Ghost Pricing Structure
Ghost offers managed hosting at three tiers. Here are the current prices for the managed Ghost(Pro) service:
- Starter: $18/month when billed annually
- Publisher: $29/month when billed annually
- Team: $50/month (up to 1,000 members, multiple users)
These prices are for monthly billing. Annual billing provides a discount, but requires paying upfront. And as your blog grows, you get pushed into higher tiers you don't get to stay on Starter forever.
GitHub Pages: The Baseline
GitHub Pages is free for public repositories. There are no bandwidth limits for standard use, no storage fees for reasonable blog content, and no monthly subscriptions. The hosting cost for a GitHub Pages blog is $0 per month, every month, forever.
The catch historically was setup complexity. You needed Jekyll, Ruby, Bundler, CI pipelines, and a fair amount of patience. That friction is what gave Ghost its market.
The 3-Year Cost Table
| Platform | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | 3-Year Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ghost Starter ($18/mo annually) | $216 | $216 | $216 | $648 |
| Ghost Publisher ($29/mo annually) | $348 | $348 | $348 | $1,044 |
| WordPress + Shared Hosting | $84–$180 | $180+ | $180+ | $444–$650+ |
| GitHub Pages (hosting only) | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| GitHub Pages + Thooval | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 total |
Ghost Starter currently costs $648 over three years when billed annually, while Publisher costs $1,044 over three years. GitHub Pages hosting remains free for public repositories. Thooval is free and open source, so the combined app and hosting cost remains $0.
What Ghost Actually Gives You
To be fair, Ghost is excellent software. It has a polished editor, built-in newsletters, membership management, and a large plugin ecosystem. If you're running a paid newsletter with revenue goals, Ghost's economics are defensible.
But for a developer writing a personal blog technical tutorials, career notes, project write-ups the vast majority of Ghost's features go unused. You're paying for a newsletter platform when all you needed was a blog.
What GitHub Pages + Thooval Gives You
GitHub Pages is the hosting layer. Thooval is the editor and publishing tool that removes the old complexity of the Jekyll/CI setup:
- A live WYSIWYG Markdown editor (like Typora, but with publishing built in)
- One-click publish directly to your GitHub Pages repo no terminal, no CI pipeline
- Drafts stored as local .md files on your Mac never on a cloud server
- Built-in Giscus comments (GitHub Discussions) and Google Analytics 4 support
- Clean, responsive static HTML output fast, SEO-friendly, unhackable
Skip the recurring publication bill.
Thooval publishes to GitHub Pages in one click. It is free to download and open source on GitHub.
Download Free macOS 12+ · Free and open source · No subscriptionsThe Hidden Costs Ghost Doesn't Advertise
Beyond the monthly subscription, Ghost users often encounter additional costs:
- Custom domain: Not covered by Ghost you pay your registrar separately ($10–$15/year)
- Email delivery: Ghost's newsletter feature requires Mailgun or SendGrid for high-volume sends, adding $15+/month
- Analytics: Ghost Analytics is a paid add-on on higher tiers; basic plans get minimal data
- Data export: Leaving Ghost requires a painful JSON export migration proprietary lock-in
When Ghost Is Worth It
If you're charging readers for a paid newsletter, Ghost's economics make sense. With 100 paid subscribers at $5/month, you're generating $500+/month. Ghost's $29/month Publisher plan is a reasonable part of that business expense.
But if you're writing a personal developer blog, paying $216–$348 per year for publication hosting may be more platform than you need.
The Verdict
For a personal developer blog that doesn't charge readers: GitHub Pages is the objectively better choice and has been for years. The only barrier was always the Jekyll/CI complexity. Thooval removes that barrier for free, with source code available on GitHub.
For a monetized newsletter with paid subscribers: Ghost is a defensible choice. The tooling is polished and the membership features are worth the subscription fee at that point.
For everyone else developers, indie hackers, technical writers who want to own their content the math is clear. See our full Ghost alternative comparison →