[prophesi]

Homepage says it's FOSS, features page says it's FOSS, the developer page links to a giant Download button.

And how is it lying about their comparisons? It is indeed simpler to set up a Ghost site than a Wordpress site, and has more features out-of-the-box that you'd otherwise have to download sketchy plugins for with Wordpress/etc.

[chipotle_coyote]

> It is indeed simpler to set up a Ghost site than a Wordpress site...

I...am not sure about that. WordPress, for all its warts, is exceedingly easy for even non-technical users to get up and running; that was a huge contributing factor to its rise. And a large part of that ease of use came from its choice of PHP and MySQL.

I know that in 2018 it's a lot easier to get non-PHP web apps up and running than it was in, say, 2008, but with the exception of hosting providers that have gone out of their way to set up "one-click installs" for Ghost like Digital Ocean, Node, Python, et. al, are still harder. This is something that John Nolan's post pretty explicitly acknowledged:

"We spent several years trying to engineer our way out of this in increasingly complex ways, so that people could set up a publication on Ghost with the same level of ease as they do on Medium. We never even got close. It's just not how modern web technology works."

(And, no, "just use a Docker container" is not a viable answer to give to anyone who doesn't already know what container technology is. Sorry.)

[prophesi]

That quote is in context to using decentralized versus centralized technologies.

> Decentralised platforms fundamentally cannot compete on ease of setup. Nothing beats the UX of signing up for a centralised application.

And self-hosting Ghost is just as simple as Wordpress. Instead of sudo apt-get install'ing apache and PHP, you're sudo apt-get install'ing nginx and nodejs. The ghost installer handles the rest.

[debacle]

Two quick examples: A baseline WP host is not $50 a month. Ghost is not 20 times faster than WP.

[johnonolan]

We do managed hosting, so the comparison is to "Managed WP Hosting" - which is exactly what the page says. Here's an example of a managed WP host: https://wpengine.com/plans/

Here is an independent speed test which finds Ghost (more specifically: Node) to be up to 1900% faster than WP - https://blog.appdynamics.com/engineering/example-node-js-fas...

We don't make baseless claims and we're not in the business of lying to anyone.

[detaro]

Why are they a fair comparison point, and not e.g. wordpress.com?

[johnonolan]

Shared hosting - $1.99, here's your server, good luck

Managed hosting - $29, you get your own server, app, automation, backups, and 24/7 support to make sure everything is working great

Centralised, multi-tenant application - $0-$9, you get no server. You get access to our app for your use. You cannot modify it or run any third party code.

We do managed hosting - and managed WP hosts... also do managed hosting. That's why it's a reasonable comparison point.

WordPress.com is not managed hosting. It's a heavily modified centralised multi-tenant application which loosely resembles WordPress. It does not run the open source codebase at all.

[georgestephanis]

Hi. I've worked for WordPress.com for the past five years. It does run the open source WordPress codebase, and we sync changes from the open source project to WordPress.com regularly.

:vanishes in a puff of php:

[johnonolan]

Yes George. WordPress.com is a centralised, multi-tenant application which also syncs code from the open source project. Very good.

It's still not equivalent to running the same code, or being in any way a comparable to a managed host. Which is the point that you skipped right over, as is your custom :)

[bwoj]

WPEngine is specifically in the business of selling fast WordPress hosting. It actually makes for a more honest comparison. Comparing to Wordpress.com should give you better numbers.

[prophesi]

That's for a managed WP host. I agree that the $50/mo price comes out of nowhere, but you're still not going to find one for $20/mo as you would with Ghost.

Ghost is 20 times faster. And once you add a single WP plugin, it's 100 times faster.

[wolco]

Can't find 20 dollars a month for a managed wp?

For 4 dollars a month you can.

https://www.siteground.com/wpbeginner-managed

50 dollars a month seems extremely costly. For that amount $600 a year it would be cheaper to hire someone to self host for you.

[vezycash]

There's $1-2 monthly hosting for WP

[extra88]

Isn't Dreampress a comparably affordable managed Wordpress host?

https://www.dreamhost.com/wordpress/

[oddevan]

I imagine there's a difference between "managed hosting" (host handles OS/package updates and maintains your LAMP stack) and "managed WordPress hosting" (host handles all of the above AND core WordPress updates, basic security, etc).

[extra88]

Dreampress's non-shared hosting plans include "Wordpress Service Updates" which surely includes core Wordpress updates and updates to plugins they include, like Jetpack. It might also cover updating a list of the most popular plugins.

For security beyond running updated software, it includes a Wordpress-tuned web application firewall and the $24.95/month tier includes "Malware Scanning & Repair."