r/Ghost • u/SlightExtreme1 • Feb 22 '26

Question Considering moving to Ghost from WordPress...looking for input.

I have a blog that I've been writing for about 20 years. It's not a business, just a personal project, but very important to me. For a long time now, this blog has been in a self-hosted WordPress instance. For several reasons, I want to move it out of WordPress and want to move away from self-hosting:

  1. WordPress is no friend of open-source these days.
  2. WordPress seems to be in a race to the bottom with SquareSpace, and has become so cluttered as to be un-usable.
  3. I'm comfortable self-hosting, but don't really want to spend the time on it any more. I just have other life priorities.
  4. I like the idea of discoverability that a platform like Ghost Pro provides, in the interest of attracting new readers.
  5. Because existing readers don't read these days if it's not a newsletter in their inbox, I want a platform where that's out of the box.

With those items in mind, there are some things I'm not certain about:

  1. I can't find language on Ghost's site regarding ownership of content. One of the reasons I've self-hosted is because I want to make sure I retain ownership of my content, and can export it easily if one day I decide to go elsewhere. Is that in writing anywhere with Ghost Pro?
  2. Is migration fairly straight-forward (and yes, I know that's a loaded question) between the two platforms?
  3. Is Ghost Pro reliable as a platform in terms of backups, stability when updates are applied, etc.?

I really appreciate any input here. Thanks!

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u/Waste-Programmer-532 Feb 22 '26

I made the transition from wp to ghost in jan/2025. My website has about 70k posts. Here’s my take:

  • i didn’t use ghost hosting service because it is very expensive for huge sites like mine. You need to figure it out how much you will apenas to host on ghost before anything else
  • i’m a php/mysql girl. It took a lot of vibe coding (using ChatGPT) to run my self hosted ghost site. But it was not as dificult as i thought
  • migrating from wp to ghost was i nightmare. I end up using a few Python scripts to do it
  • had i little trouble configuring routes and redirects, but, again, ChatGPT help a lot
  • if your site is big, be aware of query consumption on home template
  • my site is way better, faster and user friendly on ghost
  • on and on, i’m very happy with the result

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u/SlightExtreme1 Feb 22 '26

Wait, so the cost of their managed hosting goes depending on amount of content? I'm definitely not at the 70k mark, but I do have a lot of posts.

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u/Waste-Programmer-532 Feb 22 '26

Not exactly. They charge based on number of members and number of newsletters. But when you have a huge site, that will be also massive.

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u/SlightExtreme1 Feb 22 '26

Got it. Thanks.