Ghost vs Magnolia

Compare Ghost and Magnolia for your content needs. Find out what actual users are saying about each product and which one is best suited for you!

Ghost
Ghost
Ghost is a powerful platform for professional publishers to create, share, and grow a business around their content. It integrates publishing, newsletters, memberships, and payments seamlessly.
Magnolia
Magnolia
With Magnolia, unify your content, customer data, and legacy tech to build engaging websites, portals, and apps at scale. Empower your content teams with AI and enterprise-level security.

What Users Say

See what users who have used Ghost and Magnolia have to say about their overall experience with the product.

Ghost's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Ghost.

Magnolia's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Magnolia.

Ghost's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Ghost.

Magnolia's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Magnolia.

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Wisp is the best solution for blogging. Try it free today!

What Marketers & Content Creators Say

Hear from the users who uses Ghost and Magnolia daily about their experience with the editors.

Ghost's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Ghost's editor.

Magnolia's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Magnolia's editor.

Ghost's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Ghost's editor.

Magnolia's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Magnolia's editor.

Mobile Editing

Find out how the platforms handle the mobile-first experience for the new generation of workforce on the move.

Ghost:
Not Suitable for Mobile

Ghost CMS lacks a true mobile editor experience. Users report significant limitations while editing on mobile devices.

"I find it awkward that mobile Safari editing isn’t supported in Ghost admin... It would be tremendously useful to be able to write and edit blog posts on the go from mobile devices."
Source
"Though WP is great it is not just for blogging... But what could I win by switching to Ghost if WordPress worked out very well?"
Source
"Previewing, publishing and scheduling content is accessed from the top of the editor, with live previews for desktop, mobile, email and social."
Source
"Ghost is not mobile friendly... mobile devices are not fully supported."
Source
Magnolia:
Mobile-First Experience

Magnolia CMS supports mobile-first experience with a focus on creating content on mobile devices.

"Focused on delivering modern UX designs with a mobile-first mindset."
Source
"Start building responsive, mobile-first experience sites using web components with React, Angular or Vue."
Source
"Focus then shifted to mobile first, omni-channel experience, personalisation, loyalty and analytics."
Source
"Their rebuild of the software for a tablet and mobile first design."
Source

Automatic Content Linking

Find out if the platform supports automatic linking of related content to help user discover more content without additional manual effort from the marketer. This automatically create topical clusters of content and is essential for SEO.

Ghost:
No Automatic Content Linking

Ghost CMS does not support automatic related blog linking; users must manually configure related posts in their themes.

"Ghost automatically creates and updates an XML sitemap for your website to help search engines understand the structure of your site and find all of its content."
Source
"To create a related posts section in Ghost, you'll need to make some modifications to your theme."
Source
Magnolia:
Unknown

The feature of automatic related blog linking is unclear from the available documentation and sources.

"No specific mention of automatic related blog linking found."
Source
"The AI Accelerator module mentions automation in content generation, but not specifically for related blogs."
Source
"Tagging functionality is available, but no clear automatic related linking feature noted."
Source

Automatic CTA Linking

Find out if the platform supports automatic display of Call-to-Actions using AI to help users take actions that are relevant to the content they are reading.

Ghost:
No Automatic CTA Linking

Ghost CMS does not support automatic CTA linking features based on current information obtained from various sources.

"This is indeed a built-in feature in Ghost. It's called public ... How to Use the Public Preview & Custom Content CTA in Ghost CMS."
Source
"In Ghost 3.0 some Ghost themes had a hard coded (in most cases blurred) text when users did not have access to that post."
Source
"Wondering how we can add an in-line button to a blog post? We have a that we have a..."
Source
Magnolia:
Manual CTA Linking

Magnolia offers AI features that assist in automatic content creation, but specific CTA linking is not detailed.

"Magnolia’s AI Accelerator brings flexibility and composability to AI in digital experiences, by supporting connections to any generative AI engines to speed up content creation."
Source
"Magnolia equips you with powerful tooling and an easy to use interface so that you can work more effectively and launch experiences faster."
Source
"This feature was experimental and relied on outdated and unmaintained libraries."
Source

Comments

Find out if the platform supports comments from your users to improve user engagement. This is often a great way to collect feedback and user emails.

Ghost:
Comments Supported

Ghost has a built-in commenting feature integrated with memberships, allowing users to comment if they are registered members.

"Member commenting can be enabled for either All members or Paid-members only from within Ghost Admin."
Source
"We built Ghost Comments with features that allow users to comment directly on your website."
Source
"Ghost's built-in comments feature is a part of the memberships feature - there is no way to use it without being a registered member on your site."
Source
"The complete guide to comments includes tutorials for using the built-in comment feature."
Source
Magnolia:
Comments Supported

Magnolia CMS supports commenting with moderation, email notifications, and anonymous comments.

"This module offers commenting features as well as the possibility of liking or disliking comments. You can moderate comments or mark as author’s favourite."
Source

Multi-tenancy

Find out if the platform supports managing multiple clients or projects within a single account. This is useful for agencies, multi-client or multi-project scenarios.

Ghost:
No Multi-tenancy

Ghost CMS does not support multi-tenancy; each site needs a separate Ghost account.

"Ghost is not multi-tenant, and does not have the ability to run multiple sites off a single instance."
Source
"No, it is not possible (currently) to run many blogs under many domains, served by one installation of Ghost."
Source
"If you need to create multiple sites each with their own domain, you would need to create separate Ghost(Pro) accounts."
Source
Magnolia:
Multi-tenancy Supported

Magnolia supports multi-tenancy, allowing agencies to manage multiple client sites with separate configurations.

"Multi-tenancy and the ability to share content assets - while also being able to configure access on a per-tenant basis - is crucial in today's..."
Source
"With Magnolia's multi-site, multi-language and multi-tenancy capabilities, you can centrally manage your network of franchises, country sites or subsidiary websites."
Source
"Using the Multisite module, you can set up and run multiple websites with different domains and languages from one Magnolia installation."
Source

What Developers Say

Hear from developers who've integrated and built on Ghost and Magnolia about their experiences.

Ease of Integrating Ghost:
Medium
Integration is achievable but requires technical knowledge and manual setup for optimal function.
Ease of Integrating Magnolia:
Medium
Integration is moderately complex, requiring various skills and understanding APIs.

Ghost's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Ghost.

Magnolia's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Magnolia.

Ghost's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Ghost.

Magnolia's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Magnolia.

Content Modelling

Find out how developers model and manage their content with the platform with key highlights and limitations.

Ghost:
Limited Customisation

Ghost CMS allows custom content types via collections and tags, but has inherent limitations compared to fully customizable CMS.

"Posts are created within Ghost-Admin using the editor to determine your site’s main content. Within them are all the fields which you might expect such as title, description, slug, metadata, authors, tags and so on."
Source
"Using custom routing, it's possible to create content collections just like this. You can define a content collection with tags, allowing a post to live in only one collection at a time."
Source
"The Content API provides access to Posts, Pages, Tags, Authors, Tiers, and Settings. All endpoints return JSON and are considered stable."
Source
Magnolia:
Customisable Content Types

Magnolia CMS supports content modelling with customizable content types and properties.

"Magnolia allows you to manage all your content and media in one place. Flexible content modeling."
Source
"A content model defines the structure and attributes of content for a specific project, including content types."
Source
"The Magnolia Content Types module is a tool to define the content model in Magnolia, creating a shared understanding across the domains."
Source
"A model definition describes the properties of a content type, including fields and relationships."
Source

Custom React Components

Find out if the platform supports custom React components to go beyond the basic HTML components for content.

Ghost:
No Custom React Components Supported

Ghost CMS does not support inserting custom React components directly in the content editor.

"Is there a way to insert a React component inside Ghost cms? I know I can consume the content API, but what I need is to be able to insert a React component from the admin panel."
Source
"Ghost's RESTful Content API delivers published content to the world and can be accessed in a read-only manner by any client to render in a website."
Source
"Manage content via Ghost's Admin API, with secure role-based authentication."
Source
"Using the Content API means that attribute data, such as tags and authors, will be included in the post object data."
Source
Magnolia:
Custom React Components Supported

Custom React components are supported through the Magnolia React Editor allowing dynamic content management.

"The Magnolia React Editor provides a lightweight, fully-featured library connecting React projects with the WYSIWYG authoring experience."
Source
"Magnolia React Templating allows you to use React JSX Components in Magnolia templates."
Source
"Components render content entered by editors in dialogs, supporting nested components."
Source

Full Text Search

Find out if the platform supports full text search across multiple fields to help users find content quickly.

Ghost:
Limited Search

Ghost CMS supports native search, but it's limited to titles, excerpts, authors, and tags, not full post content.

"The search feature indexes post titles, excerpts, authors and tags - but it does not search across post content."
Source
"Ghost Search works out-of-the-box with any theme, and allows your readers to search across all published posts, tags and authors."
Source
"The post title and excerpt are used to search post content from the most recent 10,000 posts."
Source
"For full-text search capabilities, using a third-party solution like OpenSearch is recommended."
Source
"Starting with Ghost v5.3.0 a native search function was added, but it’s limited in scope."
Source
Magnolia:
Full Text Search Supported

Fully supports full-text search across all content with real-time results customization.

"Magnolia’s search works using the Lucene algorithm where by default all properties mentioned in the index-rule receive a boost value of 1.0."
Source
"The Find Bar allows you to search across all content search inside and outside Magnolia (federated search, enterprise search). The search covers all Magnolia and custom-content apps, assets and pages."
Source
"It offers powerful full-text search across all your content and provides a starting point for many tasks."
Source

Starter Kits

Discover starter kits and templates to help you get started with the platform.

Ghost:
Available

Ghost CMS provides a starter theme for custom development.

(Expand section to see a list of Ghost templates and starter kits.)

Magnolia:
Available

Magnolia CMS has several starter kits available for developers.

(Expand section to see a list of Magnolia templates and starter kits.)

Pricing & Plans

Compare the prices of Ghost and Magnolia.

Ghost's Pricing
Starter
$9 / month
- 500 Members
- 1 staff user
- 18 free official themes
Creator
$25 / month
- 1,000 Members
- 2 staff users
- Unlimited custom themes
- 1,000+ integrations
- Build custom integrations
Team
$50 / month
- 1,000 Members
- 5 staff users
- Priority support
- Higher usage limits
Business
$199 / month
- 10,000 Members
- Unlimited staff users
- Advanced configuration
- 99.9% uptime SLA
Magnolia's Pricing
DX Cloud
$6000 / month
- Fully managed dedicated infrastructure
- Customizable
- Scalable
- Supports up to 99.9% uptime
- Multiple SLA packages
DX Core
$3500 / month
- Self-hosted
- Full control over infrastructure
- Multi-site support
- Seamless scalability
- Custom modules and integrations

Compare with other technologies

Looking for a better alternative to Ghost & Magnolia? Try Wisp.
Wisp is the best solution for blogging. Try it free today!