I used Ghost for several years and have very fond memories of it. The editor is polished, the rendering clean, the theming honest. But returning to the topic in early 2026, something shifted in my priorities.
What Ghost gave me
Ghost solves a real problem: write without friction. You have a Notion-like editor, built-in newsletters, out-of-the-box SEO. For someone who just wants to publish, it’s excellent.
The catch? Ghost needs a persistent Node.js server. For a personal blog, that’s either paid (Ghost Pro = $9/month minimum) or a VPS to maintain.
Why Astro wins
Astro generates static HTML — no server, no runtime, nothing to maintain. The output is hosted for free on Cloudflare Pages with a global CDN.
# Create a new Astro blog in 30 seconds
npm create astro@latest -- --template blog
cd my-blog
npm run devContent lives as pure Markdown in /src/content/blog/. Versioned in Git. Infinitely portable.
The best infrastructure is the one you don’t have to manage.
What I lose
Honestly? The visual editor and newsletters. With the editor, I realized I write in a separate Markdown editor anyway (Obsidian). For newsletters, Buttondown or Resend integrate easily.
The verdict
Astro gave me back control of my tool without imposing operational burden. That’s exactly what I needed.