Squarespace vs Ghost
When comparing Squarespace vs Ghost, the Slant community recommends Ghost for most people. In the question“What are the best solutions for a personal blog?” Ghost is ranked 2nd while Squarespace is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose Ghost is:
Anyone can view code of Ghost since it's under a libre/open source license.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Easy to customize & update
Squarespace's WYSIWYG tools are intuitive and support drag & drop functionality allowing you to change existing layout or add an article quickly.
Pro Responsive templates
Squarespace templates offer an optimal viewing experience depending on the width of the browser window so they will work and look great both on desktop and mobile devices.
Pro Lots of flexibility
Squarspace allows complete creative control over how you want your website to look and function. It can be a complete website.
Pro Extensive styling options
Pro Detailed real-time metrics
Squarspace offers detailed metrics, that can also easily be accessed from your phone via an iOS app.
Pro Attention to detail
Squarespace has a bunch of small nice-to-haves that make it a pleasure to use, like automatically getting a screengrab when adding a video so that the site doesn't load the whole video before the user has clicked on it, or a sign-up process that's sane among other things.
Pro Lots of good example projects
Squarespace offers a great selection of highly polished templates across a variety of categories and styles.
Pro Great support
Squarespace promises to answer all question within an hour.
Pro Open source
Anyone can view code of Ghost since it's under a libre/open source license.
Pro Extremely simple
It only does a few things and it does them well. Unlike WordPress, with which you can build a universe, a blog or anything in between, Ghost is simple.
Pro Markdown support
Markdown is a plain text formatting syntax designed so that it can be human-readable and easily converted to HTML. Markdown allows HTML code for complete flexibility.
Pro Custom domain support
Setting up a custom domain is effortless - fill the in the form and change DNS entries. Done.
Pro Self-host & paid Ghost(Pro)-host options
You can download the source code and set it up yourself (just make sure your hosting provider supports node.js). Alternatively, you can use their Ghost(Pro) service to let them host it for you. Paid plans start at $10/mo.
Pro Official Docker image
Very easy setup with an official image from Docker. Just needs a custom config.json and you are pretty much good to go.
Pro Theme marketplace
A built-in way to get and set up themes.
Pro Real-time preview
You can see markdown on one side of the pane and the result on the other, while writing.
Pro Customizable
Themes may be uploaded, as can logos and covers.
Pro Free hosting on Github Pages via Buster
You can host your Ghost blog for free on Github Pages if you are OK with it being turned into a static site. You can use Buster to generate a static site from Ghost that can then be hosted on Github Pages.
Pro Affordable hosting available
There are lots of affordable hosting plans available for Ghost blogs.
Cons
Con Dependent on a third-party host
This is dependent on a third-party host, instead of creating a site that you can deploy on your own server.
Con Commenting must be added
One needs to edit their post.hbs file and add some code from Disqus in order for commenting to be available.
Con Expensive
Too expensive for what you actually get. There are other solutions that have more or less the same features at a lower cost.
Con Poor multilingual support
Its editor does not properly support Asian characters such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean due to a bug in IME. It is difficult to write properly in Asian letters.
Con Finding Ghost host sites can be difficult
If wanting to host elsewhere, some of the other ghost hosting sites are hard to find, and once found they vary in features and functions. There isn't a single standard of service across the board.
Con Self-hosted might be hard to setup
Requires NodeJS and NPM which both come with a lot of dependencies. Also requires editting configuration files manually.
Con Inappropriate terminology in the UI
Despite some community support of having it removed, Ghost still prominently uses the following phrase in the UI: "Display a sexy logo for your publication." This terminology can be considered exclusionary and even inappropriate in a professional environment.