Ghost costs $9/mo — and unlike a tool you buy once, that bill never stops. Over three years that's roughly $324 for software doing a job your own hardware could just as easily do.
Where the subscription actually goes
$9/mo ($108/yr), forever is the sticker price. It compounds: cancel and you typically lose access to your own history, and most plans ratchet the price up as you add usage, seats or storage — the bill rarely stays flat for long.
Inkpress: the pay-once alternative
Inkpress does the same core job for $29, once. Split-pane markdown editor, 3 themes, server-side highlighting, RSS & SEO — one SQLite file.
| Inkpress | Ghost | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $29 once | $9/mo ($108/yr), forever |
| Cost after 3 years | Still $29 | $324+ |
| Your data | Your server, one SQLite file | Their cloud |
| Zero-JS public pages | Yes | No |
| Themes | 3 built in — or edit the code | Paid/limited |
| Remove "Powered by" badge | Yes — it's your code | Paid tier |
| Works offline / air-gapped | Yes (desktop mode) | No |
| Source code | MIT, on GitHub | Open core, hosted tiers |
Pays for itself in about 3.2 months against Ghost Starter — then it's strictly cheaper for the life of the blog, $324+ saved over 3 years.
Is the subscription ever still worth it?
If you need Ghost's specific ecosystem, integrations or managed infrastructure and that's genuinely load-bearing for you, the subscription earns its keep — that's a real trade-off, not a trick. Inkpress is for everyone else: people paying every month for a job that runs fine on hardware they already own.
Try Inkpress — $29, once
Split-pane markdown editor, 3 themes, server-side highlighting, RSS & SEO — one SQLite file.