Head to head

Email Bump vs Ghost

Ghost publishes a website and mails its members. We run lifecycle email for products and don't host anything. The overlap is narrow and the differences are stark.

Eight rows below, including the three where Ghost is clearly the better choice.

8 rows Checked 2 August 2026
The short version

Which one you want, in three sentences

Pick Ghost if you're publishing — a site, an archive, a newsletter and paid memberships in one open-source package with a 0% cut. Nothing here replicates that and we're not trying to.

Pick Email Bump if the newsletter is one channel of a product, and you need behavioural segments, lifecycle flows, receipts and password resets.

Pick both which several teams do — Ghost for the publication, something else for the product email. They don't conflict.

Line by line

8 differences that matter

Ghost's column comes from their published pricing and documentation on 2 August 2026.

 
Ghost
Email Bump
What it is
A publishing platform: website, archive, newsletter and memberships.
An email platform: campaigns, flows, segments and a transactional API.
Entry price
Starter $18/mo billed yearly, without paid memberships.
$19/mo at 10,000 contacts.
Free option
No free Ghost(Pro) tier, but the software is free to self-host.
5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a month, permanently.
Open source
Yes — genuinely, and self-hostable.
No. Nothing here is open source or self-hostable.
Website and archive
Hosted, themed and central to the product.
None.
Paid memberships
Built in, at a 0% platform fee.
None — you'd handle payments elsewhere.
Automation
None beyond sending to member segments.
Flows with triggers, waits and branches on every plan.
Transactional email
Not part of the platform.
Included — same plan, same key, SMTP on the same credential.
Against us

Three places Ghost is the better choice

It's open source and we're not. You can read the code, fork it, and run the identical software yourself for nothing. That's a real answer to lock-in and we don't have one.

It hosts a publication. A themed website, an archive, SEO, member accounts and a subscribe flow. We send email. Replacing Ghost with us means adding a CMS.

Memberships at 0%. Paid subscriptions with no platform cut, on Publisher and above. We have no billing at all — you'd wire up Stripe yourself and sync the result.

FAQ

Email Bump vs Ghost, asked and answered

Can I use Ghost and Email Bump together?

Yes, and it's a sensible split — Ghost for the publication and its members, us for product email, onboarding sequences and receipts. Sync members across via the API.

You'd be paying for both, so it's only worth it when the product email is doing real work.

Do you host a website?

No. No CMS, no themes, no archive, no member accounts. Email, inbound email, contacts, segments and flows.

Is Email Bump open source?

No, and there's no self-hosted build. If reading the source matters to you, Ghost, Mautic, listmonk and Plunk are the open-source options on the alternatives page.

Try it against your own list

Import a segment and compare

5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails free. Run one campaign through both and let the delivery and click numbers decide.