From time to time, we see a post on the forums comparing the different hosting providers. Since we launched back in May 2019, I felt it was a good opportunity to share eight reasons you might consider our hosting solution.

I. Homepage

A big feature we offer over our competitors is the ability to host your custom homepage along with your Ghost site. This is NOT an 'enterprise' feature. Two examples:

A) Your domain structure could look like:

• pascalandy.com/ (custom homepage)
• pascalandy.com/blog/ (ghost)

B) or if you prefer, you could set up your domain this way as well:

• juliaburns.com/ (custom homepage)
• blog.juliaburns.com/ (ghost)

You are responsible to design your homepage (HTML, CSS, JS). FirePress is not a website builder after all, it's a hosting service. In the future, we will offer templates that are easy to customize but we can't provide a timeline at the moment.

See all details regarding our homepage solution.

II. Pricing regarding the members

A) Staff user

• Unlimited

B) Is there any limit of members/subscribers

• Our plan includes the first 1 000 members for 190$ /year or 19$ /month.
• For every additional 1 000 members, we charge 90$ /year or 9$ per month.
• Per example: let's say for 10 500 members on an annual plan, we would charge: 67.50$ month ( which is the equivalent of  (190$ + (9 X 90$) = 810$ /year).

C) Are Mailgun emails included or do users have to pay extra?

• Your plan includes sending transactional emails (newsletter to your members) for the first 1000 emails sent/month. If you need to send more emails, we will charge you 5$/month for every 2500 emails sent/month. source

D) Do you allow custom integrations?

• Yes absolutely. You can generate your API keys from the Admin Panel.

III. Migration

You will be able to export/import your content from the 'labs' sections.

For the images, you will need to request an export from your existing hosting provider as you can't export them from the Admin Panel. It's something we do all the time. See all details regarding our migration process.

IV. Security

We manage the whole backend for you. Our servers run on Linux OS, highly available (HA) configurations, CDN, Docker that orchestrate services (containers), load balancer, CI/CD automation, zero-downtime deployments and other DevOps best-practices.

• 🔐 Automatic SSL (HTTPS).
• ⚔ DDoS attack mitigation.
• 🔄 Automatic weekly updates.
• 💾 Automatic daily backup. Backups are encrypted and transferred outside our servers cluster (cold storage). We back up your database every four hours and we back up your whole Ghost installation (pictures, themes, database) every 24 hours.
• 🔥 Threat & uptime management with an SLA of 99.999%. This represents 26 sec per month or 5m15 per year of potential downtime. See our uptime status dashboard.

V. Try Ghost on the spot

play-with-ghost.com is a playground made by us to explore Ghost by using it and feeling it. What's remarkable here, is that you have the option to log in to the admin panel of our demo sites. In short, you can try Ghost on the spot without having to sign-up for a trial! Use these dummy credentials: relations@firepress.org | firepress1

VI. Forums

I'm very active on the Ghost forums. I like to help people that are within the Ghost ecosystem regardless they are clients are not. In other words, I am here for the long term.

VII. Transparent backlog

We share publicly what we are working on our public Trello board

VIII. Open-source

We contribute to the open-source space as well. Here are some git repositories we maintain:

• https://github.com/firepress-org/ghostfire (CI/CD in Github Actions)
• https://hub.docker.com/repository/docker/devmtl/ghostfire/tags?page=1

You might be curious to know How do we update hundreds of Ghost's websites on Docker Swarm?

Conclusion

Finally, It's good to know we eat our own « Ghost food ». Our payment system is one built on a core Ghost functionality. In other words, we don't have a crazy fancy website that showcases things you can't do. At FirePress, what you see, is what you can do.

We can always sign-up for your free trial here. Let me know if you have other questions on Twitter or via our Contact page.

Pascal Andy — Founder
https://firepress.org

One last thing… be careful when someone states “no other competitor can do X”. It’s probably not true :-p

In March 2021, Ghost v4.0 was finally released. It's an eight years old platform build on top of Node JS. You got so much out of it:

• the best CMS/blog
• a membership 0% fees based on @stripe (recurring revenues). In other words, FirePress doesn't take a commission on top of it. Only Stripe fees apply
• a great newsletter platform to send emails to your members
• a blazing-fast website
• a great theme selection

How does it Work Together?

• Ghost is the core software to manage your website.
• We at FirePress manages your Ghost installation for you. It's a fully managed service. We are your hosting company.
• Mailgun to send transactional emails (newsletter) from Ghost via an API. Those emails are sent to your members. It's managed by FirePress. To see what's included in your plan: Are there any limits on transactional emails?
• The memberships are managed within Ghost. You can configure three subscription plans within Ghost: Free, Monthly, Yearly payments. The limitation is that you can have only one plan for a monthly subscription AND only one plan for a yearly subscription. In other words. you can't have a "basic", "regular", "premium" plans. This is not made to sell products but subscriptions.
• Stripe is the payment gateway between your clients and your subscription plans. You will need a Stripe account. Then, you must link your Stripe account with Ghost. There is nothing technical here, it's a simple configuration :)

This CHANGELOG tracks what you need to know regarding the Ghost updates. It focuses on new features visible for our clients at FirePress. It's an abstract from the releases found on Github.

You might also be curious to know about our Docker image changelog here. In the screenshot below, you see that our  Docker images for Ghost are rebuilt every day. It's these images that run your Ghost site. Refer to How do we update hundreds of Ghost's websites on Docker Swarm? for more details.

4.6.4

Updated: 2021-05-28

• ✨ Added error message from limit service to theme upload
• ✨ Simplified management of membership settings
• ✨ Reverted ability to set post access level to labels
• ✨ Added custom product settings and multiple price support
• ✨ Added support for gating content by member labels and products
• ✨ Added label and product options for email recipients
• ✨ Added ability to send a newsletter to members with a certain label or product
• ✨ Added default newsletter recipients setting
• ✨ Added @site.signup_url data property for themes
• ✨ Added option to disable member subscriptions
• 🔒 Added a way to hide the secret settings once they are set
• logs

4.3.3-r3

Updated: 2021-05-06

• 🔒 Removed unused and insecure preview endpoint
• ✨ Added ability to bulk delete members by label or status
• logs

3.41.x

• ✨ Added activity feed to member details screen
• ✨ Added new members CSV importer
• ✨ Added email stats overview to member details page
• ✨ Added open-rate column and ordering to the members list
• ✨ Added email.open_rate order option to posts api
• ✨ Added new FirstPromoter integration
• ✨ Updated newsletter design to use accent color

3.40.x

• ✨ Added activity feed to member details screen
• ✨ Added new members CSV importer
• ✨ Added email stats overview to member details page
• ✨ Added open-rate column and ordering to the members list

3.39.x

• ✨ Added email open rate to posts list in admin
• ✨ Added cancellation reason to Members UI
• ✨ Supported custom redirects for member signup
• ✨ Added new portal links for plan checkout

3.38.x

• ✨ Added newsletter design settings
• ✨ Allowed sending newsletter to free members only
• ✨ Added .yaml format support in redirects configuration

3.37.x

• ✨ Enabled Portal
• ✨ Added snippets feature to editor

3.36.x

• ✨ Added Ctrl/Cmd+P shortcut in editor to open preview in new tab

3.35.x

• ✨ Update Members to sync email changes with Stripe
• ✨ Added support for data-members-name in themes

3.34.x

• ✨ Added support for Stripe promo codes in config

3.33.x

• ✨ Added Location header to API's POST request responses

3.32.x

• ✨ Added new support and reply-to address for members

3.31.x

• ✨ Added subscription cancellation button to member page
• ✨ Added admin endpoint for editing member subscription

3.30.x

• ✨ Allowed Admin users to impersonate members

3.28.x

• ✨ Added Admin API v3 stable endpoint for webhooks

3.27.x

• ✨ Updated members deletion to optionally cancel Stripe subscriptions

3.26.x

• ✨ Added UI for AMP GA Tracking ID

3.25.x

• ✨ Added UI for setting tag metadata

3.24.x

• 🎨 New Google AMP template

3.22.x

• ✨ Switched on Stripe Connect by default

3.20.x

• ✨ Added INR currency support
• ✨ Added all/free/paid filter to members admin screen

3.19.x

• ✨ Added responsive-image srcset attribute to image and gallery card output
• ✨ Added access level filter to posts and pages lists in admin
• ✨ Allowed domain change for members "from" address
• ✨ Switched per-user custom views to shared custom views

3.18.x

• ✨ Improved performance of members admin screens
• ✨ Added ?search= param to Admin API members endpoint

3.17

• ✨ Added Admin API endpoint for basic member stats

3.16.x

• ✨ Added success indicator for members magic links

3.15.x

• ✨ Improved password reset and session invalidation for "locked" users
• ✨ Added regenerate button to integration api keys
• ✨ Improved display of video embed cards in member emails

3.14.x

• ✨ Added "Email" card for inserting content that only appears when emailing posts to members
• ✨ Added description and logo to admin/site endpoint

3.10.x

• ✨ Added custom currency support for Member's plans

3.9.x

• ✨ Added member's geographic location to admin
• ✨ Added capture of geolocation during member signup
• ✨ Added member impersonation
• ✨ Added handling allowing members to edit their billing info

3.8.

• ✨ Added member.avatar_image for member gravatars in themes

3.6.x

• ✨Added labels for Members

3.5.x

• ✨ Added new fields to members CSV import
• ✨ Added default and custom post views (filters) to the admin sidebar
• 💄Added shadow to What's new footer

3.4.x

• ✨ Added ability to give members complimentary subscriptions
• ✨ Added {{price}} helper for formatting stripe amounts

3.3.x

• ✨ Enabled manual typing of post publish dates
• ✨ Allowed pages to accept HTML as a source

3.2.x

• ✨ Added members growth chart
• ✨ Added member's subscription cancellation helper {{cancel_link}}

3.1.x

• ✨ Added the ability to email posts to all subscribed members when publishing
• ✨ Added support for secondary navigation
• ✨ Improved adding first members on no-members screen
• ✨ Added member "add" screen
• ✨ Added Secondary Navigation

3.0.x

• ✨ Added members + subscriptions labs feature
• ✨ Added v3 Content and Admin APIs
• 🔒 Fully separated front-end and admin when a separate admin URL is configured
• 🔒 Added admin:redirects config option for disabling admin redirects
• ✨ Added no-image class to content w/o feature_image
• ✨ Added member.edited webhook
• ✨ Added member.deleted webhook

2.X.X

• For earlier versions see releases on GitHub

Since 2019, the Ghost theme ecosystem is booming. While there are a few hundreds of Ghost themes to choose from, I would argue there are about 40-50 themes I would recommend to a friend. Here is a list of where you can find them.

As I'm writing this post (March 2020), make sure your theme supports Ghost V3, which now manages membership and subscription functionalities. If it's not, it probably means the Ghost Theme is not supported anymore.

Table of content

1. Independent designers
2. Marketplace by Theme Forest
3. Marketplace by the Ghost foundation
4. GitHub
5. Play-With-Ghost

Independent designers

Here are a few independent designers, we recommend to our clients at FirePress. I won't list specific themes, but I will recommend particular designers.

01. fueko

02. Aspire Themes

03. Biron themes

04. Haunted themes

05. GBJ solution

06. Anvod Studio

07. Estudio Patagon

Veen - Minimal blog for Ghost

IMPORTANT: this template is for Ghost CMS not Wordpress. Veen is a modern Blog focused on high speed and oriented to a very minimal style, the theme fits perfectly any kind of blog specially lifestyle, photography, personal, or coding blogs thanks to the vivid colors and clean design. It is focused …

EstudioPatagonThemeForest

08. Iveel

09. t2themes

10. Theme Forest

Theme Forest ( which is part of Envato Market) is a vast marketplace not limited to Ghost themes.

11. Ghost Marketplace

12. GitHub

On GitHub there are many FOSS (free and open-source) themes.

zutrinken/attila

Ghost Theme. Contribute to zutrinken/attila development by creating an account on GitHub.

zutrinkenGitHub

eddiesigner/liebling

Beautiful and clean Ghost theme that is easy and comfortable to use. To get the latest version please head over the releases page 👉🏼 - eddiesigner/liebling

eddiesignerGitHub

TryGhost/Pico

A paid members publishing theme for Ghost. Contribute to TryGhost/Pico development by creating an account on GitHub.

TryGhostGitHub

TryGhost/London

A free, open source theme for Ghost. Contribute to TryGhost/London development by creating an account on GitHub.

TryGhostGitHub

TryGhost/Massively

A free, open source theme for Ghost. Contribute to TryGhost/Massively development by creating an account on GitHub.

TryGhostGitHub

TryGhost/Roon

The official Roon theme for Ghost. Contribute to TryGhost/Roon development by creating an account on GitHub.

TryGhostGitHub

TryGhost/Lyra

A paid publication theme for Ghost. Contribute to TryGhost/Lyra development by creating an account on GitHub.

TryGhostGitHub

TryGhost/Argon

A simple publishing theme for Ghost. Contribute to TryGhost/Argon development by creating an account on GitHub.

TryGhostGitHub

godofredoninja/Mapache

You can use the theme Mapache for ghost in: Blog - Magazine - Landing page - Personal page - Photographers. and in many other things - godofredoninja/Mapache

godofredoninjaGitHub

Build software better, together

GitHub is where people build software. More than 40 million people use GitHub to discover, fork, and contribute to over 100 million projects.

GitHub

Build software better, together

GitHub is where people build software. More than 40 million people use GitHub to discover, fork, and contribute to over 100 million projects.

GitHub

14. PlayWithGhost.com

PlayWithGhost goal is not the showcase the latest Ghost themes. The goals are to:

1. Showcase a few websites made on top of Ghost and give you an ideas about how you can structuring your content.
2. Let you sign in as an editor.

Did I missed something?

Please let me know if I forgot one or if you prefer, you can also buzz me on Twitter.

Most reviews will bring a valid point. Ghost doesn't have the power to drive e-commerce shops. Indeed, Ghost by itself does not have a built-in tool to turn your website into a full-blown e-commerce website, but many tools let you do that.

If you think about it, would you discard every CMS software that does not manage videos built in? I guess not. It makes sense to rely on a third-party like YouTube to manage your videos and embed those videos into your site.

The same logic applies to e-commerce tools. Pick your favourite tool and insert your e-commerce platform on top of Ghost.

Indeed, Ghost by itself does not have a built-in tool to turn your website into a full-blown e-commerce website, but many tools let you do that.

What's your goal?

It all depends on your goal. Do you want to go big or do you have three products to showcase? Do you need people to subscribe to your services? Do you want a simple payment gateway or do you want a tool that will send invoices for you?

Here is a list of powerful tools that you should consider:

• https://snipcart.com/
• https://www.moonclerk.com/
• https://www.shopify.ca/
• https://paddle.com/
• https://fastspring.com/
• https://sellfy.com/
• https://gumroad.com/
• https://selz.com/pricing
• https://www.paypal.me/
• https://simplegoods.co/
• https://www.etsy.com/
• https://plasso.com/
• https://stripe.com/
• https://www.sendowl.com/
• https://payhip.com/
• https://paywhirl.com/
• https://www.braintreepayments.com/
• https://www.chargify.com/
• https://recurly.com/
• https://www.chargebee.com/

I'm glad to finally say it 🙊. We just launched our hosting solution for Ghost out in the wild. At FirePress we empower entrepreneurs and small organizations to create their websites on top of Ghost.

At the moment, our pricing for hosting one Ghost website is $15 (Canadian dollars). This price will be only available for our first 100 new clients, starting May 1st, 2019 🙌. See our pricing section for details.

I'm hosting websites at scale for more than a year at this point. I can confirm that the stack is very mature at this point. It's built on:  cloud servers at Digital Ocean, Linux OS, Docker Swarm orchestration, cold backups (offsite), well test deployment process, Ghost updates via CI/CD, CDN, proxy, etc.  If you like geek stuff, you can check out this section of our blog.

I maintain a few Github repo. Per example, our Docker Ghost image has been downloaded more than 10 million times as I'm writing these words. We also maintain a list of curated Ghost themes and a local docker setup to develop Ghost themes.

I'll end by saying that if this sounds interesting to you 👌, please start your 10-Day Free trial at https://firepress.org.

If you would like to know more about me, check out my post « My job is to care ». For any question, ask me below or buzz me on Twitter.

Cheers!
Pascal

P.S. Another popular search is "How can I configure my domain or DNS to FirePress servers?".

While I was designing a website template for play-with-ghost, I realized that you could produce a great header while keeping a simple design that you could do yourself.

The recipe

Two steps:

1. Just use an abstract image
2. Slap your logo on top of it.

This example is from our Agency template. It lives on play-with-ghost.

Results

More ideas

Have fun!

The most crucial feature of play-with-ghost, is having the ability to access the admin panel of many websites that were created with Ghost.

I other words, you can mess around with a bunch of websites made with Ghost within some dedicated sandboxes. Those sandboxes restore (content and themes) automatically every 30 minutes. For all details about the sandboxes, see our FAQ section.

You can see play-with-ghost as a playground to experiment and learn about Ghost. Just use the login relations@firepress.org / firepress1 and you are good to go!

It happens all the time. You are surfing on a SaaS website and their product looks promising. Cool, let’s try it! Well, yeah... there are a few steps to follow. This is how it will go:

1. Sign up by sharing your email (and getting spammed afterward)
2. Create a password
3. Confirm your email
4. Log into in the web app (enter your email + password)

Then you finally get to try the software. Oooouf! All of this pain when the only thing you wanted to do was to take a quick look at this software and see if it might work for you.

Try it so we can spam you

Of course, growth hackers want your email.

I would say that 99% of software companies don't give you a choice to try their software on the spot. You have to sign-up, and then you can try it for a week or two. I think it's stupid to force people to sign-up for a product when they have no idea if the product will work for them or not.

They want to send you a bunch of automated unsolicited messages disguised as "advice" and "high-value content." The reality is that you had to sign-up knowing there was a good chance this company would spam you. You just wanted to try their software for a few minutes and you ended up spending more time managing your "unsubscribe here" links. It's a shame that most SaaS businesses work this way.

I know we can do better as a SaaS businesses and so, I decided to do my part. I wanted to build a place that I wish had existed when I was looking for a solution to create a website (or any software I was looking for, for that matter).

My vision

Let me talk about what I did at FirePress. We host websites using Ghost, which is a CMS and an open-source software.

To allow people to try the software, we created the website play-with-ghost.com where anyone can access the admin panel and play with the software on the spot. No need to register and go thru the four steps mentioned above. I believe it’s a win-win for everyone.

In the end, the user is left with two scenarios:

• Scenario A — The user surfs around and moves on. It's not for them. Something is off from their point of view, it's not a good timing, something bugs you, it looks too complicated, some features are missing, etc.
• Scenario B — The user enjoyed his experience and now he is really considering using Ghost as a tool to create his next website. Now they really want to start their trial period.

The user in the second scenario is the client I want to help.

  play with ghost   

Comparing themes is hard

Let’s go more in-depth about the challenge of choosing a platform to create a website.

One of the hardest things, when we shop for a theme, is the fact that the content between themes is not the same.

• What do MY pictures look like on this website?
• What does MY list look like?
• What does MY YouTube video look like?
• What do the buttons look like?
• What is the space between the elements?
• Then repeat the process on smartphones and other screen resolutions

On play-with-ghost.com, all the themes are built around an imaginary website called “Barbershop Avenue.” This helps the user to compare themes as the content is the same between each other.

To conclude, if you are thinking about creating your own website, please check this out so you can see if Ghost could be the right tool for you.

For all geeks at hearts, we moved all technical post within the « Under the hood » tag section.