WooCommerce 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 WooCommerce, 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, content marketing websites and membership publications.

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

What does Ghost do better?

If you need 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. Compared to using the WooCommerce plugin for WordPress, Ghost provides a much more focused environment that's built to do one thing really well: Publishing!

Our rich editor is designed solely around providing the best possible writing experience. It makes formatting posts a lot more flexible.

You can accomplish more with dynamic cards that allow you to work with image galleries, embeds, Markdown, HTML and more – without distractions.

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 is more affordable

We've built the best hosted service in the business, called Ghost(Pro). It's comparable to running WordPress on a fully-managed hosting service with a dedicated Content Delivery Network.

You get the same incredible infrastructure and fantastic support, whether you currently receive a few thousand views or you're already up to tens of millions. But, you get all of it at a rather more affordable price-point:

With Ghost, the fee structure is simplified into a single monthly cost based on the scale of your publication. Since the software has most (or all) of the features you need to run a modern publication, you won't need to pay for additional premium plugins like you would using WordPress.

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:

Full-featured subscription commerce

Transform anonymous viewers into members, and your most valued members into paying subscribers with Ghost. Our native memberships and subscriptions features unlock potential new revenue streams and give your more ways than ever to develop meaningful relationships with your audience.

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

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.

Doing more than the basics

If you're a business trying to build more than just a basic blog, and integrate your content and publication with other tools and workflows — Ghost has the tools you need.

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.

Want to bring your favourite tools along? That's no problem. In fact, Ghost integrates with just about anything, without the need for bloated plugins slowing down your site. It's worth checking out our extensive directory of integrations as well as 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, WooCommerce 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 WooCommerce 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 WooCommerce 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.