Ghost vs Medium

Overview

Medium

Stacks768

Followers699

Votes190

Ghost

Stacks518

Followers506

Votes219

GitHub Stars51.1K

Forks11.1K

Ghost vs Medium: What are the differences?

Introduction: Ghost and Medium are both popular blogging platforms that offer a user-friendly interface and a range of features for writers. However, there are key differences between the two that users should consider when choosing the platform that best fits their needs.

Customizability: Ghost allows users to have complete control over their blog's design and theme. Users can create their own custom themes using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, or choose from a wide range of pre-designed themes. On the other hand, Medium offers limited customization options, with only a few layout and color choices available.
Hosting: With Ghost, users have the flexibility to host their blog on their own servers or choose a managed hosting service. This gives them more control over their data and the ability to switch hosting providers if needed. In contrast, Medium is a hosted platform, which means that users' blogs are hosted on Medium's servers. While this takes the hassle out of hosting, it also means users have less control over their data and are dependent on Medium's infrastructure.
Pricing Model: Ghost follows a self-hosted or subscription-based pricing model. Users can choose to host their blog themselves or opt for Ghost's managed hosting plan, which requires a monthly or annual subscription fee. On the other hand, Medium is free to use for both readers and writers, with no subscription or hosting charges. However, Medium does offer a paid membership program that gives readers access to exclusive content.
Community and Audience: Both Ghost and Medium have a thriving community of writers and readers. However, Medium has a larger user base and a built-in network of readers, making it easier for new writers to gain exposure and reach a wider audience. Ghost, on the other hand, has a smaller but more dedicated community, with a focus on independent publishers and writers who are looking for more control and ownership over their content.
Data Control and Ownership: With Ghost, users have full control and ownership over their blog's data. They can export their content and migrate it to another platform if needed. Medium, on the other hand, retains ownership of the content published on its platform. While users can export their content, the formatting and layout may not be preserved when migrating to another platform.
Features and Plugins: Ghost offers a range of built-in features, including SEO optimization, custom domains, and integrations with popular tools like Google Analytics. Additionally, Ghost has a marketplace of third-party plugins that users can install to extend the functionality of their blogs. Medium, on the other hand, focuses more on simplicity and a minimalistic writing experience, with fewer advanced features and plugins available.

In summary, Ghost offers more customizability, hosting options, and control over data, while Medium has a larger user base, a free pricing model, and a focus on simplicity and community. The choice between the two depends on the specific needs and preferences of the writer.

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Advice on Medium, Ghost

Xander

Founder at Rate My Meeting

Mar 30, 2020

Decided

So many choices for CMSs these days. So then what do you choose if speed, security and customization are key? Headless for one. Consuming your own APIs for content is absolute key. It makes designing pages in the front-end a breeze. Leaving Ghost and Cockpit. If I then looked at the footprint and impact on server load, Cockpit definitely wins that battle.

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Detailed Comparison

Medium	Ghost
Medium is a different kind of place on the internet. A place where the measure of success isn’t views, but viewpoints. Where the quality of the idea matters, not the author’s qualifications. A place where conversation pushes ideas forward.	Ghost is a platform dedicated to one thing: Publishing. It's beautifully designed, completely customisable and completely Open Source. Ghost allows you to write and publish your own blog, giving you the tools to make it easy and even fun to do.
Embedding videos, tweets, vines, etc; Word counter; Drafts; Notes; Version history; Embed Medium anywhere; Publications; Custom domains; Discussion; Topics	An intuitive, minimal editor; Ultra-fast content management; All SEO features built-in natively; Native desktop & mobile apps; Publish once, distribute everywhere; Headless CMS with Node.js REST APIs; Over 19x faster than WordPress; Secure & independently audited; Custom theme or any JAMstack front-end
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 51.1K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 11.1K
Stacks 768	Stacks 518
Followers 699	Followers 506
Votes 190	Votes 219
Pros & Cons
Pros 61 Beautiful UI 34 Typography 15 Network effect 12 Embedding videos, tweets, vines 12 Great mobile app	Pros 45 Beautiful 35 Fast 29 Quick/simple post styling 20 Live Post Preview 20 Open source

What are some alternatives to Medium, Ghost?

WordPress

The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. Over 60 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call “home” — we’d love you to join the family.

Drupal

Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world.

Strapi

Strapi is100% JavaScript, extensible, and fully customizable. It enables developers to build projects faster by providing a customizable API out of the box and giving them the freedom to use the their favorite tools.

Wagtail

Wagtail is a Django content management system built originally for the Royal College of Art and focused on flexibility and user experience.

Tumblr

Tumblr is a feature rich and free blog hosting platform offering professional and fully customizable templates, bookmarklets, photos, mobile apps, and social network. The site now ranks as the 11th-largest in terms of traffic, according to Quantcast, with 170 million monthly visitors globally.

OctoberCMS

It is a Laravel-based CMS engineered for simplicity. It has a simple and intuitive interface. It provides a consistent structure with an emphasis on reusability so you can focus on building something unique while we handle the boring bits.

Twill

Twill is an open source CMS toolkit for Laravel that helps developers rapidly create a custom admin console that is intuitive, powerful and flexible.

ProcessWire

ProcessWire is an open source content management system (CMS) and web application framework aimed at the needs of designers, developers and their clients. ProcessWire gives you more control over your fields, templates and markup than other platforms, and provides a powerful template system that works the way you do

Typo3

It is a free and open-source Web content management system written in PHP. It can run on several web servers, such as Apache or IIS, on top of many operating systems, among them Linux, Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, macOS and OS/2.

Directus

Let's say you're planning on managing content for a website, native app, and widget. Instead of using a CMS that's baked into the website client, it makes more sense to decouple your content entirely and access it through an API or SDK. That's a headless CMS. That's Directus.

Related Comparisons

Ghost vs Medium: What are the differences?

Customizability: Ghost allows users to have complete control over their blog's design and theme. Users can create their own custom themes using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, or choose from a wide range of pre-designed themes. On the other hand, Medium offers limited customization options, with only a few layout and color choices available.
Hosting: With Ghost, users have the flexibility to host their blog on their own servers or choose a managed hosting service. This gives them more control over their data and the ability to switch hosting providers if needed. In contrast, Medium is a hosted platform, which means that users' blogs are hosted on Medium's servers. While this takes the hassle out of hosting, it also means users have less control over their data and are dependent on Medium's infrastructure.
Pricing Model: Ghost follows a self-hosted or subscription-based pricing model. Users can choose to host their blog themselves or opt for Ghost's managed hosting plan, which requires a monthly or annual subscription fee. On the other hand, Medium is free to use for both readers and writers, with no subscription or hosting charges. However, Medium does offer a paid membership program that gives readers access to exclusive content.
Community and Audience: Both Ghost and Medium have a thriving community of writers and readers. However, Medium has a larger user base and a built-in network of readers, making it easier for new writers to gain exposure and reach a wider audience. Ghost, on the other hand, has a smaller but more dedicated community, with a focus on independent publishers and writers who are looking for more control and ownership over their content.
Data Control and Ownership: With Ghost, users have full control and ownership over their blog's data. They can export their content and migrate it to another platform if needed. Medium, on the other hand, retains ownership of the content published on its platform. While users can export their content, the formatting and layout may not be preserved when migrating to another platform.
Features and Plugins: Ghost offers a range of built-in features, including SEO optimization, custom domains, and integrations with popular tools like Google Analytics. Additionally, Ghost has a marketplace of third-party plugins that users can install to extend the functionality of their blogs. Medium, on the other hand, focuses more on simplicity and a minimalistic writing experience, with fewer advanced features and plugins available.

Ghost vs Medium

Overview