wordpress vs ghost
WordPress vs Ghost — features, pricing, and which to choose for your SEO workflow in 2026.
Quick Verdict
WordPress dominates with 40%+ market share while Ghost targets modern publishers who prioritize speed and simplicity. The choice comes down to whether you need WordPress's massive ecosystem and customization options, or Ghost's streamlined approach to content publishing with built-in performance optimization.
WordPress offers unmatched flexibility through 60,000+ plugins and themes, but requires more technical knowledge to optimize properly. Ghost delivers excellent SEO performance out-of-the-box with faster load times and cleaner code, but limits your customization options significantly.
Feature Comparison
WordPress wins on pure feature breadth through its plugin ecosystem. You get Yoast SEO, Rank Math, or AIOSEO for comprehensive SEO control, plus thousands of specialized plugins for everything from schema markup to page speed optimization. The downside is that WordPress requires constant plugin management, security updates, and performance optimization to run well. Ghost takes the opposite approach with built-in SEO features, automatic XML sitemaps, clean semantic HTML, and optimized page loading by default. Its headless architecture delivers consistently fast page speeds without plugin bloat. However, you're limited to Ghost's built-in features and can't extend functionality like you can with WordPress. WordPress supports unlimited content types, custom fields, and complex site architectures through tools like Advanced Custom Fields. Ghost focuses purely on publishing with posts, pages, and membership features — perfect for blogs and newsletters but restrictive for complex websites.
Pricing Comparison
WordPress itself is free, but you'll pay for hosting ($5-50/month), premium themes ($50-200), and essential plugins ($100-500/year). A properly optimized WordPress site typically costs $200-800 annually when you factor in quality hosting, security, and SEO tools. Ghost starts at $9/month for their hosted platform with built-in CDN, SSL, and backups included. Their $25/month plan adds member management and newsletters. While more expensive upfront, Ghost's pricing includes everything you need without additional plugin costs.
Best For
WordPress is better when you need maximum flexibility, plan to build complex functionality beyond basic publishing, or want access to the largest ecosystem of themes and plugins. It's ideal for agencies managing multiple diverse websites or businesses requiring custom integrations and advanced SEO strategies. Ghost excels for content creators, bloggers, and modern publishers who prioritize writing experience, page speed, and want built-in newsletter functionality. Choose Ghost if you value simplicity over customization and prefer having performance optimization handled automatically.
The Verdict
WordPress remains the better choice for most websites due to its flexibility and mature SEO plugin ecosystem. While Ghost delivers superior out-of-the-box performance, WordPress's ability to scale from simple blogs to complex business sites makes it more versatile. However, if you're primarily focused on content publishing and want the fastest path to good SEO performance without technical overhead, Ghost's streamlined approach is worth the higher price.