Contentful vs. Ghost

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Contentful
Score 6.2 out of 10
N/A
Contentful is a cloud based CMS solution that provides the ability to manage content across multiple platforms.The editing interface allows for managing content interactively and provides developers the ability to deliver the content with the programming language and template framework of their choice.
$300
per month
Ghost
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Ghost is a CMS for new-media creators to publish, share, and grow a business around their content. Available open source and free (e.g. for blogging), it can also come with tools for business' content marketing.
$0
Pricing
ContentfulGhost
Editions & Modules
Lite
$300
per month
Community
Free
Enterprise
Custom
Ghost (community)
$0
Starter
$11
per month 1 staff user, 500 members
Creator
$31
per month 2 staff users, 1000 members
Team
$63
per month 5 staff users, 1000 members
Business
$249
per month unlimited staff users, 10,000 members
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ContentfulGhost
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ContentfulGhost
Considered Both Products
Contentful
Chose Contentful
Easy to use and much more organized as a single platform versus multi. The layout is clean and easy to read and we don’t have to worry about certain users safe guarding data or content then losing it when they leave the company. It’s a one stop shop for imagery.
Chose Contentful
Contentful was affordable and much simpler than the Java based systems and preferred over a PHP solution
Chose Contentful
In the past we've used WordPress to manage documentation content. Wordpress was more flexible than Contentful but also prone to inconsistencies and we ended having a lot of hacks to accomplish various Wordpress tricks. With Contentful there's less ambiguity so content producers …
Chose Contentful
Contentful offers a great deal of features for a relatively low price. This is what ended up persuading us to purchase it. We also gathered that this was one of the more well-rated products out there, which was encouraging. It definitely stacks up well against its competitors.
Chose Contentful
Very similar to WordPress, but has more organizational properties than square space.
Chose Contentful
For custom solutions, Contentful blows every other CMS I've used out of the water. Unlike WordPress, there's no clutter to wade through, and you can simply build the infrastructure you need. It's more secure by far, and works seamlessly with modern frontend technologies, like …
Chose Contentful
Contentful was the most user-friendly platform that everyone in our company could understand. It doesn't have the integrations that Wordpress does, but it was easier for everyone in our organization to use. We've also seen good ranking and traffic from the pages created in …
Chose Contentful
Contentful is easy and fast and cheap. I went from zero experience to loading data out of my contentful space in about an hour or more. The cost is very reasonable and compared to options like CloudCMS are a fraction of the cost. The benefit is that with a lower cost entry …
Ghost
Chose Ghost
It is simpler, headless, faster than WordPress. The core functionality is focused on subscription membership which is a bloated add on for WordPress.

The simplicity has a cost as WordPress, while complicated, offers more expansion opportunities.
Features
ContentfulGhost
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Contentful
7.3
Ratings
10% below category average
Ghost
-
Ratings
Role-based user permissions7.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Contentful
8.0
Ratings
5% above category average
Ghost
-
Ratings
API8.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language7.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Contentful
7.7
Ratings
0% below category average
Ghost
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG editor7.30 Ratings00 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Admin section8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Page templates7.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Library of website themes7.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design7.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Form generator7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Contentful
8.0
Ratings
8% above category average
Ghost
-
Ratings
Content taxonomy8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
SEO support7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Bulk management7.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Community / comment management9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
ContentfulGhost
Small Businesses
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 10.0 out of 10
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
ContentfulGhost
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
ContentfulGhost
Likelihood to Recommend
Coming from WordPress, Contentful feels like content management as it should be. There's no clutter to get rid of, you can simply start building from scratch, and the end product is perfectly tailored to your or your clients needs.
Read full review
It is well suited for distributed writing and publishing with a subscription component
Read full review
Pros
  • Contentful provides organized, flexible data models with support for a variety of data types and content editors (e.g. WYSIWYGs, form fields, raw text areas).
  • Contentful has great built-in versioning features with history and draft states so it's easy to make updates and revert when needed.
  • Contentful has an intuitive user interface and good support for multiple spaces (which can be helpful for companies that need separate projects for dev/staging/production).
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  • Creating a newsletter for web and email simultaneously
  • Allowing for paid subscriptions
  • Allowing content to be segmented by subscription type
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Cons
  • Preview of changes prior to publishing
  • The ability to use a spell check plug-in when working on content (it doesn't work well with Grammarly)
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  • They wysiwig editor is missing critical functions like superscript and subscript
  • The markdown complement has those features but it doesn’t integrate well with the wysiwig editor
  • Footnoting is hard to do
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Alternatives Considered
Contentful was affordable and much simpler than the Java based systems and preferred over a PHP solution
Read full review
It is simpler, headless, faster than WordPress. The core functionality is focused on subscription membership which is a bloated add on for WordPress.
The simplicity has a cost as WordPress, while complicated, offers more expansion opportunities.
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • There was no negative impact as such.
  • Positive impact is increase in sales.
  • More work is delivered due to reusability and other features within a time and less manual effort.
Read full review
  • Our business is totally built around this product
  • It has allowed us to easily and quickly scale our free and (soon) our paywalled content
Read full review
ScreenShots

Contentful Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of

Ghost Screenshots

Screenshot of the Ghost dashboardScreenshot of Ghost postsScreenshot of Ghost member managementScreenshot of Ghost member profile