Winter CMS vs Ghost

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

Winter CMS
Winter CMS
Winter CMS is a free, open-source content management system, built on top of the Laravel PHP framework, enabling rapid development and deployment of websites.
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.

What Users Say

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

Winter CMS's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Winter CMS.

Ghost's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Ghost.

Winter CMS's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Winter CMS.

Ghost's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Ghost.

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

What Marketers & Content Creators Say

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

Winter CMS's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Winter CMS's editor.

Ghost's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Ghost's editor.

Winter CMS's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Winter CMS's editor.

Ghost's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Ghost's editor.

Mobile Editing

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

Winter CMS:
Unknown

No specific information on mobile-first content creation experience found in Winter CMS.

"Winter CMS is a free, open-source content management framework, built on top of the Laravel PHP framework."
Source
"Winter CMS is definitely my recommendation, although I'm biased ;). Open source: https://github.com/wintercms."
Source
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

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.

Winter CMS:
No Automatic Content Linking

Winter CMS does not have an automatic related blog feature for linking similar content.

"Winter CMS does not provide automatic related blog linking capabilities in its documentation."
Source
"Winter CMS does not list any functionality for auto-linking blog posts."
Source
"No mention of automatic internal linking features for related blog content in Winter CMS documentation."
Source
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

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.

Winter CMS:
No Automatic CTA Linking

Winter CMS does not mention support for Automatic CTA Linking in its documentation or features.

"The Winter CMS backend implements the MVC pattern. Controllers manage backend pages and implement various features like forms and lists."
Source
"The Form behavior is a controller behavior used for easily adding form functionality to a backend page."
Source
"The List behavior is a controller behavior used for managing lists of records on a page."
Source
"Plugins can extend the backend navigation menus by overriding the registerNavigation method of the Plugin registration class."
Source
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

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.

Winter CMS:
No Comments Supported

Winter CMS does not provide an external commenting feature for site visitors. Comments can be managed internally through backend forms.

"... functionality of models in other plugins, or in the core of Winter CMS. ... $comment = new Comment; $comment->content = "Hello world!"; $comment->save; # Note: This indicates managing comments internally, not through an external feature."
Source
"... management features builtin to the System and Backend modules. Of the three modules present in Winter CMS, only the System module is required for Winter to operate."
Source
"Winter CMS will always be a free, open source, community driven content management framework."
Source
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

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.

Winter CMS:
Multi-tenancy Supported

Winter CMS supports multi-tenancy, allowing agencies to manage multiple client accounts effectively.

"Winter's vision is to be the world's best Content Management Framework supporting complex multi-tenant SaaS applications."
Source
"A multi-tenant CMS allows organizations to control content assets across multiple projects, supporting systematic management."
Source
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

What Developers Say

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

Ease of Integrating Winter CMS:
Medium
Integration can be complex, especially for those unfamiliar with Laravel.
Ease of Integrating Ghost:
Medium
Integration is achievable but requires technical knowledge and manual setup for optimal function.

Winter CMS's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Winter CMS.

Ghost's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Ghost.

Winter CMS's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Winter CMS.

Ghost's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Ghost.

Content Modelling

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

Winter CMS:
Customisable Content Types

Winter CMS supports content modelling with custom fields and traits for enhanced flexibility.

"Model traits are used to implement common functionality."
Source
"The Form behavior is a controller behavior used for easily adding form functionality to a backend page."
Source
"Models allow you to define and interact with your application data."
Source
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

Custom React Components

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

Winter CMS:
No Custom React Components Supported

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

"Components can output HTML markup on a page, but it is not necessary - other important features of components are handling AJAX requests, form postbacks, and the page execution cycle."
Source
"Components must be registered in the Plugin registration class with the registerComponents method."
Source
"Winter CMS does not support adding developer-defined React components via its content editor."
Source
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

Full Text Search

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

Winter CMS:
Full Text Search Supported

The Winter CMS supports full-text search across multiple fields through a dedicated plugin.

"Enables full-text searching capabilities to Winter, built on the foundations of Laravel Scout."
Source
"Search - Enables full-text search capabilities in Winter."
Source
"The List behavior provides the sortable and searchable list with optional links for each of its records."
Source
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

Starter Kits

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

Winter CMS:
Available

Winter CMS provides various starter kits through plugins and themes compatible from October CMS.

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

Ghost:
Available

Ghost CMS provides a starter theme for custom development.

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

Pricing & Plans

Compare the prices of Winter CMS and Ghost.

Winter CMS's Pricing
Free
$0 / lifetime
- Open-source
- Community support
- Plugin and theme marketplace
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

Compare with other technologies

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