Managed hosting from
£45/month +VAT
Medium resource profile: 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 20 GB SSD storage. Typically suits publishers and businesses sending newsletters to thousands of subscribers. Deployment, upgrades, daily backups, monitoring, SSL and UK hosting included, with no per-user fees. How our pricing works
Own your audience, keep your revenue
Substack takes ten per cent of your subscription revenue at the time of writing. Medium owns the relationship with your readers. Ghost(Pro) rents you the software Ghost gives away. Ghost is the open source publishing platform with newsletters and paid memberships built in: your content, your subscriber list and every pound of your revenue, on infrastructure you control. Node deploys, manages and supports Ghost as a production service hosted in the UK.
What Ghost is
Ghost is an open source publishing platform built for one job: turning writing into an audience and an audience into a business. It combines a fast, modern editor, a publication website, email newsletters and a membership system in a single product, so a post can be published to the web and delivered to subscribers' inboxes in the same action.
Memberships are native, not bolted on. Readers sign up free or paid, payments run through your own Stripe account, and content can be public, members-only or reserved for paying tiers. There is no platform sitting between you and your readers, and no percentage skimmed off every subscription.
Ghost is also a serious website platform in its own right: custom themes, full control over design and domains, built-in SEO handling and a clean, fast front end. It is used by independent writers, media brands and companies running content operations, and because it is open source, it can be self-hosted, which is exactly what Node does for you on UK infrastructure.
Why self-hosted Ghost instead of Substack, Medium or Ghost(Pro)
No revenue share: Substack's ten per cent of subscription revenue, at the time of writing, compounds forever: the better your publication does, the more you hand over. Self-hosted Ghost connects to your own Stripe account and takes nothing. Your growth is yours.
You own the audience: on Medium and Substack, the platform holds the reader relationship and can change the rules, the algorithm or the terms underneath you. With self-hosted Ghost the subscriber list is a table in your own database: exportable, portable and permanently yours.
Your data stays in the UK: subscriber emails, payment records and reading behaviour are personal data. Hosted by Node, they live on UK infrastructure under an Article 28 data processing agreement rather than in a US platform's cloud.
No feature gating: memberships, newsletters, tiers, custom themes and integrations are all part of open source Ghost. Ghost(Pro) charges a growing monthly fee, scaled by audience size, for software the foundation publishes freely. Self-hosting pays a flat fee for the hosting and management instead.
Your brand, not the platform's: your own domain, your own design and no platform chrome around your writing. Readers subscribe to you, not to a feed you happen to publish in.
Newsletters and memberships built in
Publish once, deliver everywhere: every post can go to the website, the newsletter or both. Segments let you send to free members, paid members or specific tiers without a separate email tool.
Paid subscriptions through your own Stripe: monthly and annual tiers, free trials and complimentary plans, with revenue settling directly into your Stripe account. Ghost shows you member growth, churn and monthly recurring revenue on a built-in dashboard.
Gated content: mark any post public, members-only or paid-only. The paywall, signup flow and account management are native, so converting a reader into a subscriber takes one click, not one integration project.
An open platform: a full API, webhooks and hundreds of integrations mean Ghost fits into a wider stack. n8n workflows can act on new subscribers or published posts, and Matomo measures your audience without handing the data to an advertising business.
Keycloak and single sign-on
Every application in a Node tenant joins your own Keycloak realm, so your editors and administrators sign in once with corporate credentials and use Ghost alongside every other app we run for you. Access is controlled centrally, MFA applies consistently, and a leaver removed from the identity system loses access to the publication immediately. It is part of how the Node platform is built.
How Node runs Ghost for you
We operate Ghost as a fully managed service, not a server you have to babysit.
Deployment: we deploy Ghost in a production configuration with your theme, custom domain and TLS, connect your Stripe account for memberships and configure bulk email delivery with the authentication records that keep newsletters out of spam folders.
Upgrades and maintenance: Ghost ships updates frequently. We test and apply upgrades and security patches, and keep your instance current without interrupting publishing or scheduled newsletters.
Monitoring and support: we monitor availability, email delivery health and site performance, take verified backups of your content and member database, and our team is available when the publication needs attention.
Your infrastructure or ours: hosted on Node's UK infrastructure or deployed into your own environment, on-premises or in your cloud accounts, with the same managed service either way.
The economics of renting your audience: platform publishing taxes success twice. Substack's percentage grows with your revenue, Ghost(Pro)'s tiers grow with your subscriber count, and Medium pays you in exposure while keeping the reader relationship. A managed Ghost deployment from Node is a flat, predictable monthly cost at any audience size, with subscription revenue flowing straight to your own Stripe account and your subscriber list living in a database you own. Grow the audience, keep the margin. See pricing for how our flat tiers work.
Adoption and community
54k+ GitHub stars Ghost reports that publications running on its platform earn over $100 million a year, and its site names 404 Media, Kickstarter and Buffer among the organisations publishing with Ghost.
“Kudos to the team, I personally use Ghost for my blog and love it.”
Hacker News
“I use Ghost for a while now and it's fantastic. The fact that it's open-source, self-hostable... and can be used both as a blog and newsletter is what makes me stick to it.”
Hacker News
“We use Ghost for our company blog. It works great!”
Hacker News
Quotes are from public community discussions, linked to their original sources.
Frequently asked questions
Where is our Ghost site and subscriber data hosted?
On Node's UK infrastructure, or in your own environment if you prefer. Your content, member list and subscription data stay under UK jurisdiction, backed by an Article 28 data processing agreement, with a clear answer to where data is processed and by whom.
Can you migrate us from Substack, Medium or Ghost(Pro)?
Yes. Ghost imports posts and subscriber lists from Substack and other platforms, and Ghost(Pro) exports move across cleanly. We handle the content import, member migration, custom domain, redirects and payment reconnection so publishing continues without a gap.
Does self-hosted Ghost take a cut of our subscription revenue?
No. Ghost connects directly to your own Stripe account, so paid memberships flow to you with no platform revenue share. Substack takes ten per cent of subscription revenue at the time of writing; self-hosted Ghost takes nothing beyond standard payment processing fees.
Does Ghost support single sign-on for our staff?
Yes. Every application in a Node tenant joins your own Keycloak realm, so editors and admins sign in to Ghost with the same corporate credentials they use across all their apps, with access controlled centrally and revoked the moment someone leaves.
What does the managed Ghost service include?
Deployment in a production configuration, upgrades and security patching, email delivery configuration for newsletters, backups, monitoring and support. We also handle themes, custom domains and integrations so you can focus on publishing.
Can Ghost send newsletters to large lists?
Yes. Newsletters are a core Ghost feature, delivered through a bulk email service connected to your instance. We configure delivery, authentication records and sending domains so your newsletters reach inboxes rather than spam folders.
Talk to us about Ghost.
Drop us a line and our team will discuss your publication and how a managed Ghost deployment gets you off revenue-share platforms.
Our heritage
These projects were delivered by Tokyo Digital, acquired by Node in May 2023 and now a wholly owned subsidiary of Node DT Group. The same team builds and runs the Node platform today.