Hire Ghost Developer — publishing engineered for growth

Ghost: you own the platform, the audience, and the revenue, with modern performance. WordPress: maximum flexibility, maximum maintenance. Substack: zero setup, 10% of revenue forever. Choose Ghost when the publication is a real business.

Yes — native Stripe integration with tiered memberships, trials, and complimentary access. It is a first-class feature, not a plugin, which is exactly why it converts better.

Handled as an engineering discipline: redirect maps, meta preservation, sitemap continuity, and performance gains that usually *improve* rankings post-migration. I have never lost a client meaningful organic traffic in a Ghost migration.

Ghost(Pro) for simplicity and managed updates; self-hosted when you need custom integrations, specific compliance, or cost control at scale. I recommend from your technical capacity, not ideology.

Theme and membership setup in two to four weeks; full builds with migration and newsletter operations run four to eight weeks.

It depends on scope, but as a guide: a polished custom theme on an existing install is a smaller, fixed-scope piece of work, while a full build with migration, membership architecture and newsletter operations is a larger project. I price the engagement, not hours, so you know the number up front, and I offer a monthly retainer for ongoing work. Tell me your audience size and revenue model and I will scope it precisely rather than quote blind.

Yes. Ghost's Admin API and webhooks let me push new members and subscription events into a CRM, data warehouse or Zapier flow in real time, with proper JWT authentication rather than fragile workarounds. I have connected Ghost to email platforms, analytics stacks and internal dashboards. If a tool has an API it can almost always talk to Ghost cleanly, and the trick is doing it so version upgrades do not break the connection.

Ghost uses Mailgun for bulk newsletter sending, which is the supported path, and I configure it properly: a dedicated sending domain, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, and a warm-up so a large list does not trip spam filters. Transactional email such as member sign-in links and receipts can run through a separate SMTP provider. If deliverability is already poor, fixing authentication and domain reputation is usually the first thing I do.

Within reason, yes. Using routes.yaml, dynamic routing, custom templates and the APIs, I can build content types, taxonomies, member-gated sections and bespoke front ends that go well beyond the default blog. For anything truly outside Ghost's model I will build a small companion service rather than hacking the core, so your install stays upgradeable. I will always tell you honestly when a requirement is genuinely better served by a different tool.

Yes, on a retainer. Ghost ships frequent updates, and self-hosted installs need their server, MySQL and backups looked after. I handle version upgrades on a tested staging site first, monitor deliverability and uptime, and make content or feature changes as you grow. Many clients who hire a Ghost developer for a build keep me on monthly so the platform stays current and they never have to think about the infrastructure.

Yes, in both directions. I export the full content and members, replicate the Stripe connection so subscriptions carry over intact, stand up the new environment in parallel, and cut the DNS over only once it is verified, so readers and paying members never notice. This is one of the more common reasons people hire a Ghost developer: they have outgrown managed hosting, or they want to simplify by moving onto it.