When comparing Ghost vs Drupal, the Slant community recommends Drupal for most people. In the question“What are the best web content management systems?” Drupal is ranked 2nd while Ghost is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Drupal is:
Drupal is stable, with powerful version control and access control methods and can handle large amounts of traffic.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
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.
Pro Great for enterprise use
Drupal is stable, with powerful version control and access control methods and can handle large amounts of traffic.
Pro Free and open source
Drupal is free to use and open source.
Pro Active community
Drupal have one of biggest and more active communities across FOSS, maintaining a large and vibrant ecosystem of extensions and installation profiles.
Pro Great templating engine
Twig is a game changer!
Pro Multi-lingual support
Starting with Drupal 8, there's built-in multi-lingual support.
Pro It's easy to transfer config changes from dev to production
Pro Highly customizable
Drupal can be customized to do almost anything. It was built ground up with the intent of using a wide variety of small modules to get the exact result wanted instead of just the most common solutions.
Pro RESTful
Drupal 8 has REST services built in.
Pro Good accessibility
Pro Drupal has full SEO capabilities
(vs Joomla, which lacks SEO capabilities), there is an essential issue for promotion.
Pro Semantic HTML5
Pro Excellent SEO
Drupal was designed from the beginning to follow best practices in regards to SEO.
Pro Responsive front-end and back-end
Drupal 8 follows responsive design philosophy out of the box, both front-end and back-end.
Pro Drupal 8 and higher leverage composer and all of the wonderful PHP packages. Instead of building functionality from scratch, it utilizes existing libraries
Cons
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.
Con Steep learning curve
Drupal is not easy to get into and out of the box doesn't offer much. To get Drupal doing what you want it to, modules are required. To get modules, an understanding of how Drupal works is required. And that takes time.
Con High resource consumption
A more complex Dupal installation can easily exhaust 256 MB of RAM with only one or two visitors.
Con Documentation is a joke
With currently 3 different version of drupal in active use, and at that constantly changing capibilities within 2 of those, it means that when you look for documentation is if often for a different version that you are running and in addition is not at all easy to consume. Often the info you need is in comment #100 of a thread.
Con Lacks good free modules and themes
Most good third-party modules and themes are costly.