Ghost vs KeystoneJS

Overview

Ghost

Stacks518

Followers506

Votes219

GitHub Stars51.1K

Forks11.1K

KeystoneJS

Stacks69

Followers209

Votes27

Ghost vs KeystoneJS: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Ghost and KeystoneJS

Ghost and KeystoneJS are both popular content management systems (CMS) used for building websites and blogs. However, they have distinct differences that set them apart from each other.

Architecture: Ghost is a lightweight CMS built specifically for blogging. It has a modular architecture and is designed to handle content creation, management, and publication with simplicity and ease. On the other hand, KeystoneJS is a powerful CMS framework that provides a flexible and extensible platform for building complex websites and applications. It follows a comprehensive MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture, making it suitable for larger projects with diverse requirements.
User Interface: Ghost offers a minimalistic and user-friendly interface, focusing primarily on the writing and publishing experience. The editor is designed to be distraction-free, allowing users to concentrate on producing high-quality content. KeystoneJS, however, comes with a more robust administration panel that provides a comprehensive set of tools for managing various aspects of a website, including content, user permissions, and custom models.
Front-End Development: Ghost is primarily focused on providing a seamless writing and reading experience for bloggers. It has limited support for front-end development customization, making it suitable for users who want to focus solely on content creation. KeystoneJS, on the other hand, offers more flexibility in terms of front-end development. It allows developers to build custom front-end applications using their preferred frameworks and tools, making it suitable for projects that require extensive customization and complex user interfaces.
Plugin and Theme Ecosystem: Ghost has a rich ecosystem of plugins and themes that can be easily installed and activated to extend its functionality and customize the appearance of a website. The official Ghost marketplace offers a variety of options to choose from. In contrast, KeystoneJS provides a powerful GraphQL API and a set of built-in tools for managing data and relationships. It supports extensions through custom GraphQL resolvers and hooks, allowing developers to extend and modify its core functionality as per project requirements.
Hosting and Deployment: Ghost offers Ghost(Pro), a fully-managed hosting solution specifically optimized for Ghost installations. It takes care of all the server infrastructure, updates, and security, allowing users to focus solely on content creation. KeystoneJS, being a more versatile framework, can be deployed on a wide range of hosting providers and platforms. Its deployment requires more manual setup and configuration but provides greater flexibility and control over the hosting environment.
Community and Support: Ghost has a vibrant and active community of users and contributors, with regular updates and an engaged user base. It offers comprehensive documentation and customer support through its official channels. KeystoneJS also has an active community, with regular updates and support provided through its GitHub repository and community forums. However, Ghost's community is more focused on blogging and content creation, while KeystoneJS has a broader user base with a wide range of use cases and applications.

In summary, Ghost is a lightweight and user-friendly CMS specifically designed for bloggers, offering a minimalistic writing and publishing experience. KeystoneJS, on the other hand, is a powerful and extensible CMS framework suitable for larger projects that require flexibility in front-end development, complex data management, and customization options.

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Advice on Ghost, KeystoneJS

Xander

Founder at Rate My Meeting

Mar 30, 2020

Decided

So many choices for CMSs these days. So then what do you choose if speed, security and customization are key? Headless for one. Consuming your own APIs for content is absolute key. It makes designing pages in the front-end a breeze. Leaving Ghost and Cockpit. If I then looked at the footprint and impact on server load, Cockpit definitely wins that battle.

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Detailed Comparison

Ghost	KeystoneJS
Ghost is a platform dedicated to one thing: Publishing. It's beautifully designed, completely customisable and completely Open Source. Ghost allows you to write and publish your own blog, giving you the tools to make it easy and even fun to do.	Keystone is the easiest way to build database-driven websites, applications and APIs in Node.js.
An intuitive, minimal editor; Ultra-fast content management; All SEO features built-in natively; Native desktop & mobile apps; Publish once, distribute everywhere; Headless CMS with Node.js REST APIs; Over 19x faster than WordPress; Secure & independently audited; Custom theme or any JAMstack front-end	Express.js and MongoDB;Dynamic Routes;Database Fields;Auto-generated Admin UI;Simpler Code;Form Processing;Session Management;Email Sending
Statistics
GitHub Stars 51.1K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 11.1K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 518	Stacks 69
Followers 506	Followers 209
Votes 219	Votes 27
Pros & Cons
Pros 45 Beautiful 35 Fast 29 Quick/simple post styling 20 Open source 20 Live Post Preview	Pros 7 Out-of-box tools and basic services 3 Large community 2 Great sandbox to play with nodejs 2 Great CMS and API platform 2 Great schema-based auto-generated admin interface
Integrations
No integrations available	Node.js MongoDB ExpressJS

What are some alternatives to Ghost, KeystoneJS?

WordPress

The core software is built by hundreds of community volunteers, and when you’re ready for more there are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. Over 60 million people have chosen WordPress to power the place on the web they call “home” — we’d love you to join the family.

Drupal

Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world.

Strapi

Strapi is100% JavaScript, extensible, and fully customizable. It enables developers to build projects faster by providing a customizable API out of the box and giving them the freedom to use the their favorite tools.

Wagtail

Wagtail is a Django content management system built originally for the Royal College of Art and focused on flexibility and user experience.

OctoberCMS

It is a Laravel-based CMS engineered for simplicity. It has a simple and intuitive interface. It provides a consistent structure with an emphasis on reusability so you can focus on building something unique while we handle the boring bits.

Twill

Twill is an open source CMS toolkit for Laravel that helps developers rapidly create a custom admin console that is intuitive, powerful and flexible.

ProcessWire

ProcessWire is an open source content management system (CMS) and web application framework aimed at the needs of designers, developers and their clients. ProcessWire gives you more control over your fields, templates and markup than other platforms, and provides a powerful template system that works the way you do

Typo3

It is a free and open-source Web content management system written in PHP. It can run on several web servers, such as Apache or IIS, on top of many operating systems, among them Linux, Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, macOS and OS/2.

Directus

Let's say you're planning on managing content for a website, native app, and widget. Instead of using a CMS that's baked into the website client, it makes more sense to decouple your content entirely and access it through an API or SDK. That's a headless CMS. That's Directus.

Joomla!

Joomla is a simple and powerful web server application and it requires a server with PHP and either MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server to run it.

Related Comparisons

Ghost vs KeystoneJS: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Ghost and KeystoneJS

Ghost and KeystoneJS are both popular content management systems (CMS) used for building websites and blogs. However, they have distinct differences that set them apart from each other.

Architecture: Ghost is a lightweight CMS built specifically for blogging. It has a modular architecture and is designed to handle content creation, management, and publication with simplicity and ease. On the other hand, KeystoneJS is a powerful CMS framework that provides a flexible and extensible platform for building complex websites and applications. It follows a comprehensive MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture, making it suitable for larger projects with diverse requirements.
User Interface: Ghost offers a minimalistic and user-friendly interface, focusing primarily on the writing and publishing experience. The editor is designed to be distraction-free, allowing users to concentrate on producing high-quality content. KeystoneJS, however, comes with a more robust administration panel that provides a comprehensive set of tools for managing various aspects of a website, including content, user permissions, and custom models.
Front-End Development: Ghost is primarily focused on providing a seamless writing and reading experience for bloggers. It has limited support for front-end development customization, making it suitable for users who want to focus solely on content creation. KeystoneJS, on the other hand, offers more flexibility in terms of front-end development. It allows developers to build custom front-end applications using their preferred frameworks and tools, making it suitable for projects that require extensive customization and complex user interfaces.
Plugin and Theme Ecosystem: Ghost has a rich ecosystem of plugins and themes that can be easily installed and activated to extend its functionality and customize the appearance of a website. The official Ghost marketplace offers a variety of options to choose from. In contrast, KeystoneJS provides a powerful GraphQL API and a set of built-in tools for managing data and relationships. It supports extensions through custom GraphQL resolvers and hooks, allowing developers to extend and modify its core functionality as per project requirements.
Hosting and Deployment: Ghost offers Ghost(Pro), a fully-managed hosting solution specifically optimized for Ghost installations. It takes care of all the server infrastructure, updates, and security, allowing users to focus solely on content creation. KeystoneJS, being a more versatile framework, can be deployed on a wide range of hosting providers and platforms. Its deployment requires more manual setup and configuration but provides greater flexibility and control over the hosting environment.
Community and Support: Ghost has a vibrant and active community of users and contributors, with regular updates and an engaged user base. It offers comprehensive documentation and customer support through its official channels. KeystoneJS also has an active community, with regular updates and support provided through its GitHub repository and community forums. However, Ghost's community is more focused on blogging and content creation, while KeystoneJS has a broader user base with a wide range of use cases and applications.

Ghost vs KeystoneJS

Overview

Ghost vs KeystoneJS: What are the differences?