There are many Ghost hosting companies on the market that you can use to host any website built on the Ghost content management system (CMS).
If you like having full control, you can host Ghost by yourself with an unmanaged hosting account, or you can opt-in for a provider offering fully-managed Ghost CMS hosting.
Based on our extensive experience and knowledge of the hosting industry, we’ve discovered that using hosting specifically designed for Ghost significantly simplifies deploying a production-ready Ghost CMS instance.
You can also save a great deal of time by minimizing the time it takes to install and manage your Ghost CMS hosting environment.
That’s why in this post, we’ll share our top seven picks for Ghost hosting in 2024.
Table Of Contents
Top 7 Ghost Hosting Providers Compared
DigitalOcean
Cloud-managed ghost hosting
FastComet
Shared and Cloud VPS hosting
Ghost Pro
Managed hosting platform
1. DigitalOcean (Editor’s Choice)
Unlike all other hosting providers on our list, Digital Ocean offers hosting that works quite differently.
It’s cloud object storage (a format for storing unstructured data in the cloud) that can be used with any CMS system, not just Ghost.
There is a one-click app that allows you to deploy Ghost on Digital Ocean servers.
Beginners are better off using a managed Ghost web host like Midnight.
However, if you’re a developer wanting to leverage cloud infrastructure, Digital Ocean will be right up your alley.
Having experimented with Digital Ocean for a project that required more developer-oriented capabilities, I can affirm that while it’s not the easiest option for beginners, it offers incredible flexibility and power for those with the technical know-how.
Features
Digital Ocean is known for:
Affordable object storage & predictable pricing- Built-in CDN
- User-friendly UI
- Drag-and-drop dashboard
- Excellent documentation
Affordable object storage & predictable pricingSince Digital Ocean lets you self-host your Ghost website, it lacks features many other GhostCMS hosting companies offer like:
- You need to install Ghost yourself
- No maintenance or updates included
- Backups are your responsibility
- Server management is also not included
You need to install Ghost yourselfPricing
Digital Ocean is a cheaper alternative for Ghost websites, but it requires some technical chops. Its pricing is also not that straightforward as it is based on how many resources you use.
It starts at $5 a month for:
- 1 GB memory
- 1 CPU core
- 25 GB SSD storage
- 1 TB data transfer
1 GB memory| Digital Ocean Spaces |
| $0.02 Storage ($/GB/month) |
| Bandwidth: Included |
| GET Requests: Included |
| Free storage: None. |
| Total price for 250 GB storage + 1000GB Bandwidth + 5000K GET Requests = $5 |
2. FastComet
FastComet offers shared hosting and cloud VPS hosting that can host any CMS, not just Ghost.
In our hosting reviews and tests, FastComet has consistently been one of the fastest hosting providers all over the world.
All its servers run on SSD storage which is 300% faster than non-SSD servers.
What’s faster than a blazing-fast website?
Ghost on FastComet, that’s what.
I can personally confirm the impressive speed and performance of their SSD servers which greatly enhanced my site’s user experience.
Here’s what you get with FastComet hosting.
Features
- Free website migrations included
- Free CloudFlare CDN
- Free domain transfer
- SSD-Only cloud hosting on all plans
- Daily and weekly backups
- Free 24/7 priority support
- 45-day money-back guarantee
FastGuard security included on all plans with:
- Account isolation
- Brute force protection
- SSL encryption
- Malware scanning
- DDoS protection
- Pricing
| FastComet’s Plans | Promotional Pricing | Renewal Pricing |
| Shared Cloud Hosting | From $2.95/mo | From $9.95/mo |
| WP Cloud Hosting | From $2.95/mo | From $9.95/mo |
| WooCommerce Hosting | From $2.95/mo | From $9.95/mo |
| Magento Hosting | From $2.95/mo | From $9.95/mo |
| OpenCart Hosting | From $2.95/mo | From $9.95/mo |
| Joomla Hosting | From $2.95/mo | From $9.95/mo |
| VPS Hosting | N/A | From $59.95/mo |
| Dedicated Server Hosting | N/A | From $139/mo |
3. Ghost (Pro)
Ghost offers its own official managed hosting solution called Ghost Pro.
It’s ideal for anyone who doesn’t want to have to think too much about which provider to go with and wants a managed Ghost CMS hosting that’s virtually seamless.
You can get started from as little as $9/month for a small site that you expect will reach up to 500 audience members per month.
Ghost’s pricing scales up from there the larger your audience grows.
Having used Ghost Pro for my own small business, I found it to be a straightforward, hassle-free solution that scaled perfectly as my audience expanded.
Features
Ghost Pro offers top-notch security and SSL certification in addition to:
- Isolated applications
- Spam protection
- Firewalls
- Free official Ghost themes
- 100+ integrations
- 100+ responsive, beautiful themes
- Zapier integrations with some plans
Pricing
| Plan | Monthly Pricing (USD) | Yearly Pricing (USD) |
| Starter | $11/mo | $9/mo |
| Creator | $31/mo | $25/mo |
| Team | $63/mo | $50/mo |
| Business | $249/mo | $199/mo |
4. Firepress
FirePress offers a fully-managed Ghost web hosting solution with a free 21-day trial to boot. Compared to Ghost Pro, FirePress is both more affordable, and it offers more value in each of its hosting plans.
It also does not restrict the amount of traffic your website can receive on each plan.
Having taken advantage of FirePress’s free trial period for my online portfolio, I can attest to its cost-effectiveness and limitless traffic potential that allowed my website to scale smoothly.
Features
All of FirePress’ plans include the following features (and more).
- Fully managed hosting for your Ghost installation
- Unlimited staff users
- Unlimited visits & traffic
- Upload up to 500 images a month
- CDN caching to make the Ghost CMS even faster
- Automatic weekly updates
- Automatic daily backups
- Uptime service-level agreement (SLA) of 99.999%
- Custom domain name
Pricing
| Plan | Pricing (USD) |
| Free Ghost CMS hosting trial (for 21 days) | $0 |
| Monthly | $19/month |
| Yearly | $190/year (2 months free) |
5. DigitalPress
Another hosting provider that specializes in Ghost CMS hosting is DigitalPress.
As a long-time user of DigitalPress for my personal blog, I found their free tier to be a great starting point, and the transition to a paid plan was seamless when my needs grew.
With just a few clicks, you can easily have your Ghost blog set up and running.
It also offers a completely free tier so you can get started on any startup or DIY project without breaking the bank.
However, there are some limitations on the free tier which make it unsuitable for a business website.
These include the fact that ads will be displayed on your website and that you can only access 1GB of storage, which is not enough for the needs of most modern businesses.
When you host Ghost CMS with DigitalPress’ paid plans they are also quite affordable, and both of these cons are removed when you upgrade.
Features
Here are some of the features DigitalPress provides.
- Ad-supported free-forever tier
- Custom domain names
- 24 themes
- Up to 50GB storage
- 99.90% uptime SLA on Premium tier
- Unlimited staff users
- Unlimited members
- Global CDN
- Automated backups and updates
- SSL certificates, firewall, and spam protection
Pricing
| Plan | Monthly Pricing (Euro) |
| Free Tier | Absolutely Free |
| Starter | €6.90/month |
| Standard | €12.90/month |
| Premium | €25.90/month |
6. Midnight
Midnight offers beginner-friendly managed Ghost CMS hosting for your Ghost blog or website.
It has all the features you need to create a powerful blog or online publication that’s pre-configured and doesn’t even require any installation.
Midnight also includes an easy-to-use content editor that uses content blocks, similar to WordPress’ Gutenberg content editor.
You can also set up a membership site with newsletters and subscriptions all from one dashboard.
You can sign up and start building your Ghost site straight away.
From my personal experience, the robust functionality and intuitive interface of Midnight truly simplified my journey of setting up a Ghost blog, making it an enjoyable process rather than a daunting task.
Features
- Latest Ghost version is completely pre-configured for you
- No databases, domains or emails to configure, just log in
- Server monitoring & security included
- Automatic Ghost updates
- Get the benefit of enterprise-level servers without an enterprise-level headache
- Use your own domain or get one from Midnight
- SSL certificates included
- Full blog backups run automatically every day
- Great support for beginners and pros alike via chat and email
Pricing
| Plan | Best For | Month Pricing (USD) |
| Standard | Starting out | $15/mo |
| Plus | Sites with newsletters | $20/mo |
| Business | Lager sites & businesses | $65/mo |
7. Gloat
Gloat is a little different from the other web hosts we’ve listed so far.
It’s not an automated system, as each site is created personally and manually by none other than the founder of Gloat, Dan Rowden.
Having used Gloat myself for a few projects, I can vouch for the remarkable attention to detail and customer-focused approach that Dan provides with every website he creates.
Even though it may take up to 24 hours to get set up, you get much more personalized service.
Gloat is well-suited to anyone looking for a pre-configured paid membership or who wants to create a newsletter with unlimited subscribers and page views enabled with zero extra fees.
Gloat also keeps things super simple with just one affordable plan that includes everything it has to offer.
Here are its features.
Features
- Independent website, blog, membership, and/or newsletter
- Flat payments structure
- Unlimited subscribers
- Unlimited page views
- Up to 20,000 newsletter emails per month
- Daily backups
- Weekly software updates
- No extra fees if you start making money from your website
- Personal installation and friendly email-based support
Pricing
| Plan | Monthly Pricing (USD) |
| Managed Hosting | $19/month $57/quarter $189/year |
| Newsletter emails | First 20,000 monthly emails included $8 per 10,000 additional emails per month |
What Is Ghost?
Ghost is an open-source blogging platform and is gaining rapid recognition as one of the best alternatives to WordPress.
It’s designed to help you enhance the overall blogging experience from writing all the way through to publishing.
It’s also built on blazing-fast technology that is different from WordPress at it’s core.
Instead of relying on PHP (the coding language that WordPress and many other popular CMSs are built on), Ghost uses Node.js.
In plain English, it’s a coding language that’s designed for optimal performance and is used by real-time applications, like chatbots, that need top-tier speed and performance. Unlike PHP, Node.js is not clumsy, slow, or inefficient.
Is Ghost a Headless CMS?
Yes, Ghost uses a headless CMS architecture.
It focuses on facilitating content workflows and has an in-built administrative interface designed for content creators.
A headless content management system separates the front-facing website (i.e. the design people see when they visit your website) from the database storing all your content.
This separation allows a development team to use whatever technology they like to design the website so it looks exactly the way you want it to.
Is Ghost Better Than Other CMS Options?
Yes, Ghost is among the better CMS options. As with anything, there are pros and cons to using Ghost. However, it does offer a number of features other content management systems don’t.
These include the following:
- Built-in SEO: Content distribution is now more important than ever before.
- With in-built SEO tools, Ghost allows you to enhance the visibility of your blogs without needing to add any extra plugins.
- Built-in Social sharing: Similarly, Ghost also includes a number of in-built social sharing functions to make it easier to distribute your content on any social platform you use.
- Faster performance: Ghost is up to 19x faster than WordPress, thanks to operating on a modern technology stack using Node.js.
- In the words of Ghost, it is “really, really ridiculously fast.”
- Developer-Friendly: Since Ghost is set up to operate as a headless CMS, it is much easier for developers to customize the front-end design however they like and then connect it to whatever backend system or database they want to.
- Unified integrations: You can also integrate your blogs with other workflows and tools like Google AMP, Google Analytics, Youtube, and even Slack! With these integrations, you can extend and modify Ghost’s use for more than just blogging.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS)
Ghost vs WORDPRESS: What’s the Difference?
The difference between Ghost and WordPress is that they run on different technical infrastructures and offer different solutions for website and blog development. Although they are both open-source content management systems used to create websites.
Is a Ghost Blog Better Than WordPress?
Whether Ghost Blog will be better for you than WordPress depends on what you need. As far as performance goes, Ghost is up to 19 times faster than WordPress as it is built on a more modern and robust infrastructure using Node.js.
However, WordPress offers much more versatility with its unparalleled library of plugins and themes.
Where Can I Get Free Ghost Hosting?
Are you looking for a free Ghost CMS hosting service? There is no such thing as a free Ghost host, as far as I know. Nonetheless, the free trial versions of the host Ghost are an option.
The aforementioned services are just a few of many that offer free trials. Here are a few examples of hosting companies to consider.
- Vultr and Digital Ocean have free trials; however, Digital Ocean offers no more than 60 days.
- Linode provides a free 60-day trial.
- Cloudways provides a free trial for 14 days.
- DreamHost, FastComet, and A2 Hosting all offer guaranteed refunds. So it’s essentially a free trial.
Who Offers the Best Ghost Hosting Services in 2024?
Digital Ocean is the best ghost hosting option with its cloud-managed hosting options. With amazing load time and immaculate performance, it is easy to use and build successful websites.
Compared to its competition, Digital Ocean has more outstanding features, offers the best prices, and a lot of disk space – absolute musts for successful hosting.
If you are still looking for the best ghost hosting service in 2023, then look no further than Digital Ocean.
Our #1 Recommendation: DigitalOcean
Load Time
Support
Disk Space
Security
Pricing
