Introduction

Ghost makes it possible to launch a membership business, develop a direct relationship with your audience and generate revenue from your creative work. Make a sustainable income as an independent publisher with memberships and subscriptions and launch a custom site to host members only content, premium newsletters, podcasts and much more.

Ghost Members is a brand new feature which is currently in beta — which means it's still in active early development. We welcome anyone to test members out and start building a site with it, but you should expect there to be some limitations and rough edges at this stage. We're improving and evolving the product every week.

What can Ghost Members be used for?

The members features in Ghost are suitable for publishers and creatives of all types, who need a reliable platform to share content and generate income from a membership business. For example:

• Premium publications — create unique content that your audience can't find anywhere else and offer premium memberships with recurring subscriptions.
• Paid newsletters — Publish to email and the web at the same time with a native email newsletter feature, or integrate with your favourite tools.
• New media — YouTube creators or Podcast producers can use Ghost to grow a list of paying members who subscribe to support their work.
• Communities — Create comments sections and communities for logged in or paid-only members to foster engagement with your work.

Free newsletters like Publisher Weekly, paid publications like Rediverge and premium podcasts like The Listener all rely on Ghost to power their work. We're excited to see what you'll create!

Ghost vs other platforms

Unlike closed platforms, Ghost is flexible, open source and stewarded by a non-profit organisation. You'll benefit from:

• No transaction fees — We're a verified Stripe partner which makes taking payments extremely secure and simple. Plus, we don't take any transaction fees. All the money you make is paid directly to you.
• Imports — It's possible to import an existing list of subscribers from anywhere. You can connect any mailing list, Patreon supporters or user database directly to any Ghost Members site.
• Integrations — Bring all your favourite tools with you and integrate them in a few minutes or less. Ghost gives you the opportunity to use your preferred tools to speed up publishing workflows.
• Open source software — All our code is released under an open source license. You own your customers, content and code always and forever. Ghost is the platform you can depend on!

Find out how Ghost compares to a wide range of platforms.

How does it work?

The concepts and components that enable you to turn a Ghost site into a members publication are surprisingly simple.

Keep reading to discover how Ghost supports memberships, subscriptions and email newsletters!