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Ghost is an open-source publishing platform: you write in it, it runs the website, sends the newsletter and sells paid memberships through your own Stripe account, and your team can run it on its own servers or have Ghost(Pro) host it. EdgeKit Publications builds each edition from the CMS your newsroom already runs, on the reader record your paywall already uses, and hands it to the email platform you already have. They differ on whether your newsletters move platform, who runs the software, and who brings you new readers.
11 questions · checked 11 October 2026
Side by side
Rows are ranked by how much each one moves a decision. Ghost wins three: running the software yourself, bringing in new readers and ready-made sign-up forms. EdgeKit wins six, and the rest are even.
| The question | Ghost | EdgeKit |
|---|---|---|
| Do we move our site and our CMS, or does it read the ones we have?Favours EdgeKit | You write in Ghost: it is the CMS and the website. Posts are written in its editor, or migrated from WordPress, Substack, beehiiv, Medium, Mailchimp and others, then published on the Ghost site, emailed, or both. Its Content API can also serve them to a front end you build yourself. | Neither moves. EdgeKit reads Arc XP and any other CMS vendor, synced continuously, and builds the edition from what your newsroom has published: feeds by section, tag, content type or author, beside your editors’ own picks and text. |
| Is the newsletter subscriber the same reader as our paywall?Favours EdgeKit | On a Ghost site, yes: a member’s sign-in, newsletters, free or paid status and tier sit on one record, with paid tiers billed through your own Stripe account. Each site has one domain: Ghost(Pro) hosts one publication per subscription, and a self-hosted install serves one domain. | On your own site, yes: the list sits on the same reader record as sign-in, the paywall and the subscription, across every title you publish, and is pushed to your email platform. An unsubscribe made inside it comes back, so the list and the preference never disagree. |
| Who runs the software, and can we run it ourselves?Favours Ghost | You can. Ghost is open source under the MIT licence: your team can run it on its own servers, with direct access to the database and freedom to change the code, or Ghost(Pro) runs the same software for you. | Two deployments, one product. Your own cloud account with EdgeKit operating it, or EdgeKit’s edge with your database in a region you name. |
| Do we have to change our email platform?Favours EdgeKit | Ghost sends the newsletter itself. On Ghost(Pro) sending is included, from Ghost’s own domain or, from the Publisher plan, from yours, phased in over a warm-up of about six weeks, and the Custom plan lists a dedicated IP address. Self-hosted, Ghost’s documentation names Mailgun as the only supported bulk email provider. | No, if it is Braze, SendGrid or Resend: EdgeKit renders the edition and your platform delivers it, from the domain and reputation you already have. Any other platform is added at no charge. |
| Can the platform bring us new subscribers?Favours Ghost | Yes. Recommendations between publications, with one-click subscribe between Ghost sites, and referral rewards through a FirstPromoter integration. Every Ghost(Pro) plan also lists the site in Ghost’s Explore directory and makes its posts followable across the social web; a self-hosted site can use Ghost’s hosted social web service up to 2,000 followers, or run its own. | Through referrals, yes: EdgeKit integrates with Dub for referral rewards, and on each title’s pages the decision engine chooses which of that title’s newsletters to offer each reader. EdgeKit runs no network between media groups. |
| How far can the paywall go beyond free and paid?Favours EdgeKit | Each post is public, for members, for paid members or for chosen tiers, with a public preview divider anywhere in it, and a gift link opens one gated post to anyone until you reset it. HTML and call-to-action cards inside a post can be shown only to visitors, free members or paid members. | Any number of meters, counting signed-in readers and anonymous devices alike, and rules that decide on every page view what each reader sees, from their subscription, their reading and facts about the article. |
| Are the sign-up forms ready on day one?Favours Ghost | Yes. A built-in sign-up portal adds sign-up, sign-in and account screens to any Ghost theme without code, and readers choose their newsletters at sign-up or later from their account. An embeddable form, branded or minimal, works on any website and can label everyone who signs up through it. | Not yet: hosted forms and pages are coming soon. Until then your team builds them with EdgeKit’s SDK: sign-up pages, sign-up flows the decision engine tailors to each reader, and preference pages showing each reader their own lists. |
| Can each reader get a different newsletter?Favours EdgeKit | Yes, by access level: a call-to-action or HTML card can be shown to free members only or paid members only, in the email as well as on the web, and an email content card greets each reader by first name, with a fallback. | Yes, in Braze: a personalised feed fills each reader’s own stories at send, ranked by EdgeKit Personalization from what that reader has read on your site. A template can greet each reader by first name, with a fallback. |
| Does the newsletter go out when nobody is at a desk?Favours EdgeKit | Yes, once a post is written and scheduled: it publishes and sends at the time set, and automations, in beta, send a series of welcome emails to new members. Your own code can also create, schedule and send posts through the Admin API, on any self-hosted site and on Ghost(Pro) from the Publisher plan. | Yes, if you want it to. Set days, times and a timezone and autopilot creates and schedules every edition, and its feeds fill at the moment it sends, so a 7am edition carries what was published at 6:55. |
| Does unsubscribing from one newsletter take the reader off all of them?Neither | No. The unsubscribe link and the one-click header in each newsletter are signed for that reader and take them off that newsletter only; their other newsletters and their access to the site stay as they were. | No. Every unsubscribe link EdgeKit puts in an edition is signed and scoped to the one list it came from, one-click header included, and every change is recorded with where it came from. |
| Can we sell sponsorship inside the newsletter?Neither | Yes, placed by your team: a call-to-action card carries an optional sponsor label, an image and a button, goes in the newsletter, on the web or both, and can be hidden from paid members. | Through the email ad manager you choose, such as LiveIntent, Passendo or Kevel, with its placements built into your template. EdgeKit’s own ad manager is in development. |
What decides it
Ghost is where the post is written, published, emailed and sold, so adopting it means writing your newsletters in Ghost and moving their subscribers onto it, whether Ghost(Pro) hosts it or your team does. EdgeKit Publications sits beside the CMS, the email platform and the site you already run: editions are built from what your newsroom published and delivered by the platform you already pay for.
Ghost is open source under the MIT licence: your team can host it, change its code and query its database directly, or pay Ghost(Pro) to run it. EdgeKit is operated by EdgeKit, in your own cloud account or on EdgeKit’s edge with your database in a region you name.
Ghost’s recommendations, its Explore directory and the social web bring readers from outside your group, and EdgeKit has nothing like them; for referral rewards it integrates with Dub. What EdgeKit gives instead is one record of every reader across your titles, in a database of your own, that the paywall, the newsletter and the subscription all read.
Questions
Be the whole publication, on software your own team can run. Ghost is the CMS, the website, the newsletter and the paid membership in one open-source product: your team can run it on its own servers and change its code, or have Ghost(Pro) run it. EdgeKit Publications sits beside the CMS and the site you already run, and EdgeKit operates it, in your own cloud account or on its own edge.
With EdgeKit, Braze does: list membership is pushed to it, so a welcome series or a win-back journey is built where your CRM team already builds them. Ghost can send a welcome email to new free and paid members, and its automations, in beta, turn that into a series of emails spaced over days or weeks.
Both can be. Ghost publishes a post to the web, emails it, or both, on your Ghost site. EdgeKit, when you switch it on, keeps a public archive per publication on your own domain, one shareable page per edition, indexed by search engines only if you choose and hideable edition by edition.
How we checked
If a claim here is wrong or out of date, write to info@edgekit.cloud and we will correct the page and say what changed. That includes anybody at Ghost, the open-source publishing platform.
Ghost, Ghost(Pro), Stripe, WordPress, Substack, beehiiv, Medium, Mailchimp, Mailgun, FirstPromoter, Arc XP, Braze, SendGrid, Resend, Dub, LiveIntent, Passendo and Kevel are trademarks of their respective owners. EdgeKit is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any of them. Product names are used here only to identify the products being compared.
Next step
A walkthrough against your own setup and your own newsletters, including the rows on this page where Ghost wins.
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