Ghost has raised prices and removed features for the Starter plan

I've been using Ghost for 2 years now, just renewed for my 3rd year. Unfortunately, I let my yearly subscription lapse and my blog was locked out for awhile. I came back to it today to renew and get my blog up and running again.

When I went to the billing page, I noticed the pricing was different. At first, I thought maybe I was mistaken and the pricing had always been this.

Here's the latest pricing:

I understand raising prices to continue supporting your business but it feels very scummy to raise prices and remove features.

About 2 years ago, I subscribed to Ghost to remove the burden of maintaining my own blog and also to support a non-Wordpress blogging ecosystem. Of course, my $9/mo wasn't going to tip the scales but it was something. I was happily writing 2-3 posts a month and tinkering with the theme I had on my Ghost blog.

Now, I can't even use a custom theme or access the analytics since they Ghost 6 upgrade. This to me is a bad faith decision on Ghost team's part. It takes away some useful features from the subscribers who are probably the highest margin customers. At this point, it almost enrages me enough to start yet another blogging service.

Here's the previous billing periods just to prove that the prices have almost doubled.

So far these are the features they've removed:

• Custom themes
• Stripe integration + no paid subscribers
• Analytics

I'll update this post if I find more things missing from the Starter plan.

Note

When I contacted Ghost about my subscription, they let me know that since the subscription was cancelled and renewed, not just lapsed (my mistake), I am not qualified for the grandfathered old pricing.