Ghost ⧉ is a very popular free open source platform for creating websites, blogs and newsletters. It includes a paid subscription option, and is intended as a more ethical alternative to Nazi-hosting Substack ⧉.
You can now follow Ghost-powered sites from Mastodon etc as Ghost’s software has added Fediverse compatibility.
What’s the problem with Substack?
Perhaps the biggest problem is that it hosts and makes money from openly Nazi accounts featuring swastikas and which promote racist conspiracy theories ⧉.
Substack’s co-founder said in a post on his own blog in 2023 that they prefer to host Nazi accounts rather than remove them. When a backlash happened, Substack removed five such accounts but an investigative report from 2026 found lots more Nazi Substack accounts that continue to this day ⧉.
I currently use Substack but am interested in Ghost. What are the advantages of Ghost over Substack? How do I migrate my Substack account to Ghost?
There’s an excellent article by the tech journalist @molly0xfff@hachyderm.io ⧉ about the multiple benefits of migrating from Substack to Ghost, and also details of how she did it: Migrating from Substack to self-hosted Ghost: the details ⧉.
The article is about self-hosting Ghost but if you want an even easier option you can use paid options including managed hosting from Cloud68 ⧉ or the Ghost developers’ own hosting service Ghost.org ⧉.
I have a Ghost-powered site. How do I activate and use its Fediverse features?
See the guide to how to use the Fediverse on your Ghost-powered site.
How to follow Ghost-powered sites from Mastodon etc.
- Go to explore.ghost.org ⧉ (if you already know which Ghost site you want, skip to step 4 below)
- Click the category tab you want (swipe the tabs right to see more categories)
- Click the Ghost site you want to follow to find out more about it. If the Ghost site has its Fediverse account activated, you will see a section marked “On the social web” in its listing.
- Click the “Copy” button in the “On the social web” section, this will copy the Ghost site’s Fediverse address.
- In Mastodon etc, paste the address into the search box and the Ghost site’s profile will appear. Click on “Follow” to follow it and its posts will start gradually showing up in your timeline.
If there is no “On the social web” in a listing, it means the Ghost-powered site hasn’t switched on its Fediverse compatiblity.
Is there a list of good Fediverse-compatible Ghost sites anywhere?
Yes, you can browse a human-curated list of good Ghost sites with their Fediverse addresses ready for you to copy-paste into Mastodon etc over on Fedi.Directory’s Ghost section ⧉.
Will Ghost-powered sites appear in search results in Mastodon etc?
Yes. As more people follow Ghost sites, they will gradually start showing up in search results on Mastodon etc alongside all the other kinds of Fediverse accounts. If you see a Ghost site in search results, you can just click on it and don’t need to copy-paste anything.