Revue vs Ghost

Hey there! Thinking about moving over to Ghost? Or trying to decide which platform to use for the first time?

If you're wondering what the differences are between Ghost and Revue for newsletter authors, we put together this no-nonsense overview.

Building a membership business with Ghost

On Revue, you're running your email newsletter business on their platform, along with everyone else. You can't control any of the experience or design, or use a custom website.

If you're just getting started with your newsletter, then Revue works perfectly fine. But if you're building a serious membership business and want to establish a brand, then you can probably do better.

So much is possible with Ghost — you can build a completely custom publication with public & member-only content, or run free, paid or curated newsletters. Best of all, there's no extra downloads or fees and we don't take any transaction fees — so all of your revenue is entirely yours to keep.

What else does Ghost do better?

When it comes to the user experience, Ghost has been built as a simple and beautiful platform for writers, like you. It's explicitly focused on doing one thing really well: Publishing. This means you'll be able to focus your time on the most important things, creating unique content and building a direct relationship with your audience to generate sustainable recurring revenue.

Writing a newsletter issue or a new post in Ghost is familiar and clutter free, and it supports dynamic 'Cards' to allow you to drop in images, embeds (like video or audio), galleries, bookmark cards and more.

Publishers switch to Ghost because for a great writing experience, and stick around because they gain ultimate control over their content and brand.

Ghost has server-side content protection built-in — so you can decide what content your audience see when they're logged in depending on their plan.

Everything you need to build a membership business is ready to go: member management, native payments, and email newsletters. All without any additional fees!

"Have been building paid membership newsletters with Ghost for two months now and ridiculously happy with the experience. It's the combination of amazing design with endless customisability if you want to have your own style. The writing interface is just SO nice — it feels like stepping inside a high-end minimalist house, you just want to live up to the beauty of it."

Uri Bram, The Listener

Switched from Substack to Ghost

Build your brand + control your content

While Revue is a closed platform that you have little control over, Ghost is open source and extremely flexible. A Ghost publication can be completely customised to suit the needs of all kinds of publishers and authors.

On Revue, you're locked into a choice of two templates with some basic settings and no ability to create your own landing pages to promote your growing newsletter business.

With Ghost you always own your content, subscriber lists and even the code, because it's completely open source. If Ghost the company disappears, you can continue to run your membership business in perpetuity.

It's possible to build a completely custom newsletter, like Publisher Weekly:

Choose your domain, pick your own design and add your own branding. Each Ghost site is unique, and reflects the personality of its creator. Some examples:

Growing an audience

The most important aspect of any publication is understanding and growing a core readership base. Getting traffic to an independent website can be challenging, of course. But the rewards are that you physically own the content and you're benefitting your own brand and business.

Email newsletters are one of the most popular ways to build a trusted relationship with an audience. Ghost does everything you can do with Revue, allowing you to run a premium newsletter and send new posts directly to segments of your subscribers in a couple of clicks.

Beyond this, Ghost does so much more to help you build an independent business. Everything you need for SEO and social is taken care of with built-in XML sitemaps, Google AMP pages, canonical tags, optimised URLs, support for Twitter cards and clean semantic markup. All done for you automatically – leaving you more time to focus on writing!

"I launched my membership site in under 3 hours without having to find a plugin or deal with a platform that would have been overkill for what I needed. I was amazed that within hours of launching the site I was already getting members signing up!"

Alex Older, Shutter Club

Doing more than the basics

All new Ghost sites are installed with a beautiful default theme that you can get started with right away, but it's worth having a look at the marketplace of free and premium themes, and our extensive directory of integrations. There's so much that's possible.

If you're already using Revue and thinking about switching to Ghost, check out how to get started with the Members features for subscription businesses. You can easily import your existing audience to Ghost from anywhere.

TL;DR: Cut to the chase

Ghost is better for serious publishers and membership businesses who need a custom website. Revue is better for people who are just starting a simple newsletter.

One last thing you should know

Ghost is an independent non-profit organisation. We build publishing tools for modern journalism & publishing because we believe freedom of speech is important. Our software is released under a free open source license, our business model is completely transparent, and our legal structure means that 100% of the money we make is reinvested into making Ghost better.

We’re building a socially responsible, sustainable business which empowers people to share important stories and ideas. We’re in this for the long haul.

"I've been a blog minimalist from the start, and finding a truly open source platform which reflects that minimalism and focus is incredibly refreshing."

Jeff Atwood, Coding Horror

Switched from TypePad to Ghost

You’re now armed with knowledge! Hopefully this guide was useful to give you a general overview of Revue compared to Ghost.

We can help you migrate to Ghost from Revue, for free! Save time and let the Ghost team do all the work on your behalf; no coding, no configuration, no worries. This migration is included with any Ghost(Pro) Basic Annual plan or higher.

Still researching? Head back to the alternatives page.