Networked publishing with ActivityPub, deeply integrated native analytics, a huge number of improvements, and $100M+ earned by indie publishers. Our biggest-ever release. The most exciting thing on PH today that has nothing to do with AI. Probably.
What’s up hunters! It’s been a while ✌️
I’m excited to share our latest major version release, Ghost 6.0, which the whole team has been working incredibly hard on.
The TLDR: We’re shipping two of our most-requested features ever
Deeply integrated networked publishing on top of an open web protocol called ActivityPub, meaning Ghost publishers can now follow and interact with one another — as well as people across Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, WordPress, Flipboard, and more.
And we’ve built a native analytics suite into the core of Ghost, to give creators and publishers more data than ever before about their audience and their business.
I’m also excited to share a recent milestone: Creators and publishers have now earned more than $100,000,000 from premium subscriptions, powered by Ghost.
For those of you who can remember back that far, our first ever launch on PH was in 2014.
Back then, it was just me and my co-founder Hannah, shipping our first ‘real’ version of a prototype new blogging platform off the back of a Kickstarter campaign. Our MRR was ~$3k, and we had little more than hopes and dreams about what our open source publishing platform might someday turn into. Here’s how the website looked back then:
https://web.archive.org/web/2014...
A decade later, Ghost has evolved from a basic blogging tool into a powerful publishing platform that’s brought the business model that worked so well for SaaS startups to publishers and creators. While the media industry as a whole is in turmoil, there’s a rising tide of independent creators who are doing better than ever — earning recurring revenue directly from their audience, with a tech stack they own and control.
While a lot has changed, the most important things are still the same as ever:
We’re still a proud, bootstrapped non-profit organization. We still release all our software as free and open source, under an MIT license. We’re still a fully remote team, spread all over the world. And we still care deeply about using technology as a force for good.
If you remember Ghost from the early days, thanks for being part of the journey! If you’re just hearing about us today for the first time, hopefully this got you curious.
Either way, I hope you’ll consider checking out what we’ve been working on.
Full changelog here:
https://ghost.org/changelog/6/
If you want to chat or you have any questions, I’ll be hanging out today in the comments 💬
Ghost is a minimalist powerhouse for professionals and publishers clean writing, fast publishing, and real ownership of your content.
With ActivityPub integration, can Ghost 6.0 now federate comment threads across different platforms?
Seems interesting. Do you folks also support users in Asian sub continent? Curious because substack and others have limited payment method for Asian sub-continent... hence curious
Impressive update! The ActivityPub integration meaningfully expands distribution and engagement across platforms, and the built-in analytics adds a much-needed layer of insight for creators. Ghost 6.0 is a solid step forward for independent publishing infrastructure.
Native analytics suite is great for bloggers. Really helpful to understand traffic better.
No more juggling platforms or losing revenue to fees. This all-in-one solution lets creators publish, build community, and monetize, from newsletters to memberships with full control. Decentralized, open source, and 0% payment fees? That’s creator-first infrastructure done right
Dang, open source AND fiercely independent? That’s such a breath of fresh air for publishing—so tired of being locked into platforms. Does Ghost make migrations easy if I’m coming from WordPress?
I saw this update in my dashboard today. I currently use Ghost for my main German website and Substack for my English content. The reason is, because it's still impossible to make a multi-language site with Ghost (will this change in the future?). Also the social aspect was missing - which now should be there but I'm still not sure how exactly this works and how to gain followers inside of Ghost. I will have to look into this over the next days.
I tried installing 5.8.3 into a shared hosting environment at pair.com and failed. It doesn't write a log as to what failed. It just stops. Would I have any better luck with 6.0 and is there any tricks I'm overlooking to get it installed (like installing locally and then uploading the files). I'd like to play with this, but I'm a hobbyist, not someone who needs a full blown paid account. I'd like to use it in the environment I'm already comfortable with.
Congratulations! This is a major achievement. I enjoyed the social web beta and upgraded to Ghost 6.0 today.
Just beautiful. And having that network inside where you can read + interact is an absolute game-changer. Congrats on making the internet better with every launch!
Pumped that @Tinybird gets to play a role in this and provide deeply integrated real-time analytics for both Ghost(Pro) and self-hosting users.
LFG!!
Ghost is awesome - it's nice to see it continue to be developed! I'm excited to try out ActivityPub and the native analytics suite.
Do you plan to add more integrations to Ghost in the future? A few I can think of that would be useful: n8n, Outline Wiki, and Baserow. Having some of these integrations would help streamline my SEO to content workflow, specifically with the content planning phase and publishing automation.
I have been tried Wordpress, Substack, but finally I choose Ghost. I really like it! Especially the UI.
I tried Substack and Beehiiv for my own house hunting related newsletter a while back but ultimately ditched both for Ghost. The writing experience is top notch, the themes are great and it's not packed with a ton of "hype" features that feel more gimmick than useful.
