We do managed hosting, so the comparison is to "Managed WP Hosting" - which is exactly what the page says. Here's an example of a managed WP host: https://wpengine.com/plans/ Here is an independent speed test which finds Ghost (more specifically: Node) to be up to 1900% faster than WP - https://blog.appdynamics.com/engineering/example-node-js-fas... We don't make baseless claims and we're not in the business of lying…
Why are they a fair comparison point, and not e.g. wordpress.com?
After the cell provider selling location article, this was a much needed encouraging read. Thanks for sharing and good luck Ghost in your next 5 years!
Good morning HN! John from Ghost here - Thanks for all your support over the last 5 years. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that very first blog post hitting the #1 spot of HN and getting so much attention back in 2012. That was the very first time anyone ever heard about Ghost, and everything we've built since then has been thanks to that.
If you’re setup as a non-profit and you reinvest all profit, what do you do if you get to the point that you are making more profit than you can reasonably reinvest? Build up a large cash reserve?
Not part of Ghost, but as a general answer, it's always feasible to invest in anything that serves the mission.
Besides actually just reducing prices for services to not get profit, Ghost could create a foundation and give grants to any deserving work that serves the Ghost mission, such as supporting the FSF or EFF or funding other upstream or aligned stuff such as working to get more of their tools to be 100% free/libre/open…
Is the salary information public? Because one can cash out through a 500k a year salary
Or one could just incorporate as a for-profit in the first place, and pay a $500k salary. There is basically no advantage to paying yourself $500k at a 501c3 vs a for-profit, and certainly not one that outweighs the many dis advantages. Employees need to pay taxes just as they would at any corporation, and the company needs to pay their withholdings. The only payroll tax a 501c3 is exempt from is FUTA (federal unempl…
Still don't understand, when your organization pays less tax, you have more money to pay yourself, thus your salary will be higher. Conversely, there is little to no reason for being setup as a non-profit in Ghost's case. [1] https://www.upcounsel.com/llc-vs-nonprofit
You do have a point, but it’s a marginal gain at best. Unless you’re operating on razor thin profit margins, it’s not going to make a significant difference in how much you have available to pay yourself. And when you do pay yourself, you and the company need to pay taxes, even if the company is exempt from some income tax. But really the important point is you cannot sell your company. How many years of 10% extra sa…
the only advantage i could see in creating a non-profit vs a for-profit, specifically in this case, is that you get the free publicity and goodwill of customers at the start. "i'm creating a wordpress competitor" doesn't sound nearly as good as "i'm creating a wordpress competitor that can never be taken away from you because we are a non-profit". If you create a crappy product, it doesn't matter in the long run, of course.
Thanks for the post, its great to hear that Ghost is doing well - I love using it. > [Github] has become too transactional - more support tool than collaboration I strongly agree with this. I wish Github "Issues" were relabeled "Comments" and need not be "Open" or "Closed". Issues need action, comments do not. I've been burned many times now by solving someone's issue and then finding out they use my code for their b…
Very sad what the article says about GitHub. Which other changes would be nice to do?
I would love to switch to hosted ghost, but the pricing makes very little sense for a personal blog. An article will make the front page of hn or some larger subreddits and I'll get 30k views in just a few hours. I'd have to pay close to $200/mo to get the same number of page views I can get with a $10/VPS that I ssh into maybe once every 6 months to patch. The pricing levels simply do not offer enough page views.
I was thinking like you but they say they compute usage on a 3 month rolling average basis. So an infrequent hit should not be an issue.
It’s not really infrequent though. It’s like once a month.
> How do you pay people if they live in different countries? What about contracts? — The things people ask about most often all have straightforward answers. Really? I just read a comment from the CEO of HashiCorp who has a very different take: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17022563 Unless all remote employees of Ghost are just contractors...
Yes they are exactly that. Same with Automattic, Zapier, Buffer - and most of the other big remote companies. In fact, we all use the same set of contracts. They tend to get passed around founders. All 3 of those other companies are USA based, so for anyone in the US they do standard employment contracts - and anyone outside = self employed contractor on a retainer. We're based in Singapore and don't have any staff i…
Thanks for the insight!
> In fact, we all use the same set of contracts. They tend to get passed around founders.
Ghost is looking dated today with those templates and their script tags. Technically speaking, today, I'd rather use Gatsby as a Wordpress front-end.
I feel Ghost is trying to be the ideal replacement for WordPress i.e. you have a lot of engineers who love JavaScript and node but also having a marketing team that wants a blogging platform.
I also agree it feels like static site generators are starting to take over (personally think its an awesome direction the web is headed towards for some sites) but not everyone is familiar how to use them so Ghost is another nice alternative.