Shopify vs Ghost

Hello! 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 Shopify, we've put together this useful guide so you can choose the right platform.

The overall summary?

Ghost is focused on publishing — it's deeply customisable for professional use and powers thousands of company blogs.

Shopify is designed for ecommerce and selling physical goods. If you need an ecommerce store, then Shopify might be suitable for you. But if your primary goals are to publish content or build a membership business, try Ghost.

So what does Ghost do better?

Ghost is explicitly focused on doing one thing really well: Publishing. If you want a platform that allows you to create and manage content, build a list of subscribers, or launch a membership business, Ghost has all the tools you need to do exactly that.

Creating content in Ghost is familiar and clutter free, and it supports dynamic 'Cards' to allow you to drop in images, embeds, galleries, bookmark cards and more.

Ghost provides a better writing experience, and gives you full control over your content.

The native members features within Ghost allow you to ask your audience to login and support your work with free or paid member tiers.

Everything you need to get started is built-in: member management, native payments with recurring subscriptions and email newsletters. All without any additional fees!

Ghost has SEO & social built-in

What's the point in publishing content if nobody reads it?

Ghost has the best support for search engine optimisation and social sharing features of any blogging platform in the world. You don't need any extra plugins or extensions, and you don't need to write any extra code. It just works.

There are built-in XML sitemaps, Google AMP pages, canonical tags, optimised URLs, microformats, Facebook Open Graph tags, support for Twitter cards and clean semantic markup. All of this is done for you automatically, with no plugins needed.

Thousands of businesses choose Ghost to run their company blog:

Building a business around publishing

With Ghost, you can turn your audience into a business with memberships and subscriptions, and generate predictable revenue from your work. The Members features in Ghost can be setup within minutes, transforming anonymous viewers into members, and your most valued members into paying subscribers.

Shopify is better suited to selling physical products, whereas Ghost allows you to build a sustainable business around your content.

What's more – Ghost has been profitable and sustainable since its first year of operation, and because the technology is open source you have full control over it. Even if Ghost went out of business as a company: you would still be able to keep your business running and your site online in perpetuity.

Doing more than the basics

At its core, Ghost is a fully baked RESTful JSON API with a flexible architecture, and carefully considered client applications and services to go along with it. This means it can be extended, modified and customised for your needs in an unlimited number of ways.

You can also use Ghost alongside a Shopify store to power your ecommerce blog. There's so much that's possible.

It's worth having a look at Ghost's extensive directory of integrations as well as these beautiful themes to get you started.

"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

TL;DR: The short version

Cut to the chase? Ghost is better for writing and publishing, Shopify is better if you're selling physical products.

Ghost is best if…

• You want to create content and run a blog
• SEO, speed and performance are important to you
• You want to sell memberships to your readers

You might be better off with Shopify when…

• You're selling physical products
• You need a customisable ecommerce platform
• You want to build a custom online storefront

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 Shopify compared to Ghost.

Switching to Ghost gives you the flexibility of a fully customisable publication, and we have a support team on hand if you need help migrating your data. If you still have questions, you can reach us any time on [email protected].

Ready to give Ghost a try? Hit the button below! It’s completely free and unlimited for 14 days, no obligation.

Still researching? Head back to the alternatives page.