5 ms·

Do you have any plans to offer a solo professional type plan? ~$350/year and up is quite a lot more than I can justify for what I would use this for. Something

by mkr-hn 7y ago

Do you have any plans to offer a solo professional type plan? ~$350/year and up is quite a lot more than I can justify for what I would use this for. Something like Automattic's Premium plan ($8/month) for a managed blog with a subscription system like this would be an easy sell for me. I understand if that's a hard no. You seem to be aiming at people who are or plan to be big time enough to hire people to help. Getting people in who might head that way so they have an easy upgrade path might be good though. If I were the kind of person Patreon's top plan aims at, any Ghost plan would be an easy sell, but even thinking about that is a long way off for me.

sdan 7y ago
Self host it if you can. I do at https://sdan.xyz/blog https://sdan.xyz/blog and https://sdan.xyz/essays https://sdan.xyz/essays and it works flawlessly regardless of visitors/staff members/etc. Obviously by paying Ghost to host it for you is a bit pricey since they have to make a profit as well, but the amazing thing is that the whole thing is open sourced for people like us to self host (I wrote a post about how I self host a bunch of stuff including ghost: http://sdan.xyz/sd2 http://sdan.xyz/sd2)
- mkr-hn 7y ago
  I'd rather pay them to do it. The last time I self-hosted, it was WordPress, and the temptation to tinker was too great and distracted from the actual goal of having a blog.
  - jhymn 7y ago
    Then why not Svbtle or Write.as? You have lots of affordable or even free choices.
    - mkr-hn 7y ago
      The subscription system, as I mentioned upthread. Making a blog is easy. Making a blog with pay gated access to posts and downloads is not. The closest equivalent is Patreon + WordPress with the Patreon plugin. I already mentioned the issue with self-hosted WordPress. Managed solutions cost more than Ghost and provide less.
      - tyre 7y ago
        Sounds like a good business opportunity if someone's looking for it. call it gHosting
        sdan 7y ago
        Sounds like an interesting idea... selling software under the MIT license which the software holder is maintaining... Looks like I have a weekend project now!
        setr 7y ago
        This complaint has never made sense to me; you're selling software/hardware management, not the software itself. And this is precisely the pain point of the gp... This isn't just reasonable, it's utterly sensible.
        mkr-hn 7y ago
        Yep. I don't mind Ghost or Automattic charging so much for managed hosting. That also pays for development. I don't want to assume other managed hosts charging more for WordPress without doing anything more is just greed, but it has the look. That's why I want Ghost to offer a lower tier. That way I could get started at a price I can afford where I'm at, support the development of Ghost, and have an easy upgrade path if I need it. It's the curve, not the price, that I don't like.
  - WhiteOwlLion 7y ago
    Ghost used to be available on Softaculous but the requirements changed: https://www.softaculous.com/news/scripts/ghost-support-to-be-discontinued-13090.html https://www.softaculous.com/news/scripts/ghost-support-to-be... That's likely one of the biggest reasons you can't get a shared host to run this. WordPress is still installable via Softaculous.
nickpsecurity 7y ago
@ mkr-hn On Lobsters (can't find thread), I mentioned that the price was too high for large amount of potential users, the code was open source, and low-margin providers could host it for the masses on the cheap. If wanting to be ethical, they could even send a percentage of the revenue and/or improvements back to Ghost. I strongly encourage this model given dominance of sites such as Wordpress. Ghost can keep reaping the benefits of the premium market just publishing source. They can simultaneously stay profitable and democratize the tech through third parties.

by mkr-hn 7y ago

sdan 7y ago

Self host it if you can. I do at https://sdan.xyz/blog https://sdan.xyz/blog and https://sdan.xyz/essays https://sdan.xyz/essays and it works flawlessly regardless of visitors/staff members/etc. Obviously by paying Ghost to host it for you is a bit pricey since they have to make a profit as well, but the amazing thing is that the whole thing is open sourced for people like us to self host (I wrote a post about how I self host a bunch of stuff including ghost: http://sdan.xyz/sd2 http://sdan.xyz/sd2)

mkr-hn 7y ago
I'd rather pay them to do it. The last time I self-hosted, it was WordPress, and the temptation to tinker was too great and distracted from the actual goal of having a blog.
- jhymn 7y ago
  Then why not Svbtle or Write.as? You have lots of affordable or even free choices.
  - mkr-hn 7y ago
    The subscription system, as I mentioned upthread. Making a blog is easy. Making a blog with pay gated access to posts and downloads is not. The closest equivalent is Patreon + WordPress with the Patreon plugin. I already mentioned the issue with self-hosted WordPress. Managed solutions cost more than Ghost and provide less.
    - tyre 7y ago
      Sounds like a good business opportunity if someone's looking for it. call it gHosting
      - sdan 7y ago
        Sounds like an interesting idea... selling software under the MIT license which the software holder is maintaining... Looks like I have a weekend project now!
        setr 7y ago
        This complaint has never made sense to me; you're selling software/hardware management, not the software itself. And this is precisely the pain point of the gp... This isn't just reasonable, it's utterly sensible.
        mkr-hn 7y ago
        Yep. I don't mind Ghost or Automattic charging so much for managed hosting. That also pays for development. I don't want to assume other managed hosts charging more for WordPress without doing anything more is just greed, but it has the look. That's why I want Ghost to offer a lower tier. That way I could get started at a price I can afford where I'm at, support the development of Ghost, and have an easy upgrade path if I need it. It's the curve, not the price, that I don't like.
- WhiteOwlLion 7y ago
  Ghost used to be available on Softaculous but the requirements changed: https://www.softaculous.com/news/scripts/ghost-support-to-be-discontinued-13090.html https://www.softaculous.com/news/scripts/ghost-support-to-be... That's likely one of the biggest reasons you can't get a shared host to run this. WordPress is still installable via Softaculous.

nickpsecurity 7y ago

@ mkr-hn On Lobsters (can't find thread), I mentioned that the price was too high for large amount of potential users, the code was open source, and low-margin providers could host it for the masses on the cheap. If wanting to be ethical, they could even send a percentage of the revenue and/or improvements back to Ghost. I strongly encourage this model given dominance of sites such as Wordpress. Ghost can keep reaping the benefits of the premium market just publishing source. They can simultaneously stay profitable and democratize the tech through third parties.