Self-hosted alternatives to Ghost(Pro)

EmDash

Open-source Astro CMS from Cloudflare for blogs and marketing sites, with a WordPress-style admin and sandboxed plugins

What a Ghost(Pro) user would miss

A Ghost user would miss newsletters, memberships and paid subscriptions.

What it adds

It is MIT licensed with a WordPress importer, passkey sign-in, built-in comments with moderation and plugins that run in sandboxed Worker isolates.

• Yes Publishing editor with workflows. A TipTap rich text editor with Portable Text, drafts, scheduled publishing and revisions.
• No Email newsletters to an audience. No newsletter sending to subscribers; plugins can send email through the email:send capability.
• No Paid subscriptions with premium tiers. No subscription tiers; the separate x402 package adds per-request HTTP payments, which is a different feature.
• No Memberships with signup forms. Sign-in is for editors and administrators; reader signup and member-only content are not described.
• Partly Rich media such as galleries, video, audio and toggles. A media library for images, documents, video and audio with gallery fields; no toggle or info box blocks listed.
• No Engagement analytics. No engagement analytics described.
• Partly Custom themes. Themes are Astro starter templates copied into the project, not installable theme packages.
• Partly Integrations with other apps and services. Plugins, a REST API and an MCP server; no catalog of app integrations.

Sources:github.com/emdash-cms/emdash#readmedocs.emdashcms.com/ghost.org/

Jant

Tumblr-style microblog for one author, with notes, links, quotes, threads and two-way sync to a Hugo repo on GitHub

Who it suits

Writers who use Ghost as a plain personal blog with an RSS feed and no paid memberships or newsletter, and who want short notes, links and quotes beside longer posts.

What a Ghost(Pro) user would miss

A Ghost user would miss email newsletters, memberships, paid subscriptions, analytics, multiple authors and scheduled posts.

What it adds

Posts sync both ways as Markdown to a GitHub repository that is a complete Hugo site, publishing and broadcasting are separate choices per post, and posts can continue as Threads or group into Collections.

• Partly Publishing editor with workflows. A TipTap composer with optional titles, drafts with preview, Threads and Collections; no scheduled posts and one author only.
• No Email newsletters to an audience. No email sending found; readers follow through RSS and Atom feeds.
• No Paid subscriptions with premium tiers. No subscriptions or payments found.
• No Memberships with signup forms. A single-author site with no reader signup or member-only content found.
• Partly Rich media such as galleries, video, audio and toggles. Image, video, audio and document attachments with a gallery strip, plus text attachments; no toggle or info box blocks found.
• No Engagement analytics. No built-in analytics; a third-party script can be added through code injection.
• Partly Custom themes. Built-in color themes, type styles and custom CSS variables; no installable theme packages.
• Partly Integrations with other apps and services. A JSON API, an MCP endpoint, GitHub Sync with a Hugo repository and a Telegram webhook; no catalog of app integrations.

Sources:github.com/jant-me/jant#readmegithub.com/jant-me/jant/blob/main/docs/faq.mdghost.org/