Comparison

Ghost - The Professional Publishing Platform vs Substack

Ghost - The Professional Publishing Platform and Substack both land on Depends.

Ghost - The Professional Publishing Platform

Depends

Confidence: Low

Serious writers and small publishers who want an owned site with built-in newsletters and paid subscriptions should buy.

Depends

Confidence: High

Buy it if you're an independent writer who wants free publishing with payments and built-in discovery.

Ghost - The Professional Publishing Platform versus Substack
Compare	Ghost - The Professional Publishing Platform	Substack
Verdict	Depends	Depends
Best for	Independent writers monetizing subscriptions	Independent writers and journalists
Who it's not for	Hobby bloggers fine with a simpler tool	Businesses needing brand control or custom design
Privacy	No known public vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed.^³	Two confirmed incidents: an October 2025 breach exposed user emails and phone numbers; another security incident was disclosed February 2026.¹¹
Support quality	No support evidence found	Automated replies; hard to reach humans
Public sentiment	Review evidence was limited to a Wikipedia history of the product; no verbatim user quotes were found.^¹	Reviewers praise the ease of use and monetization, but many complain about automated support, platform fees, and Substack turning into another social network.^⁷
Biggest gotcha	No pricing data surfaced here; verify subscription fees before committing.^²	Support is auto-replies; no clear human escalation channel per user reports.^⁸

Hobby bloggers fine with a simpler tool
Enterprises needing full CMS, docs, or intranet workflows . it calls itself 'just a blogging platform'
Non-technical teams unwilling to self-host Node.js
Buyers who require published security or compliance documentation