Alternative to
Headless Ghost CMS

Spinal is an alternative to a headless Ghost CMS. Compared to the multiple hours to set up Ghost, Spinal only takes 50 seconds to set up.

preview of Spinal posts edit screen with navigation on the left, content with a markdown toolbar in the middle and the comments panel on the right

Ghost is a beautifully-designed blogging platform, kickstarted in 2013. Next to the blogging capabilities, Ghost also allows you to set up a (paid) newsletter.

Ghost has a Commonmark-compliant markdown editor, that should work seamlessly with your Static Site Generator.

Out of the box, Ghost supports a REST API that you can use to push the content into your static site generator.

Needs serious work to set up with your static site generator

To use Ghost as a CMS for your static site, you have to have an active Ghost install. Ghost is free to install yourself, but they also support an hosted version. Next up is making sure your SSG can pull the content from Ghost. There’s a NPM package available you can install, but Ghost also provides a few starter templates for some popular static site generators.

Setting up Ghost as a headless CMS for your static site can easily take a few hours. If you compare that to the famous 50-second set up from Spinal, you understand why companies choose Spinal over Ghost.

Comes with features that SaaS companies don’t need

Ghost has been moving more and more features to build a community site: (paid) newsletters, paywalled content and comments. Great features, if you need them. But unnecessary and confusing for content marketing teams, looking to craft the best posibble content for their marketing site.

Spinal vs Ghost feature comparison

Spinal is built with SaaS companies in mind. They are less interested in community-building, newsletters and some of the other recently-released features from Ghost.

	Spinal	Ghost
Price	$29/month	Starts at $9/month
Set up Based on time to set up	Very easy	Difficult
Collaborators Team members you can simultaneously collaborate with	10	1 (more at a higher plan)
Scheduling Schedule content to be published automatically
Kanban workflow Progress content in a kanban-like workflow
Fine-grained Access Next to roles and permissions, give access to specific content types
Self Host		Possible
Built for SSG Built specifically for static site generators
Git-based Allows you to simply sync your content through GitHub
Rich Text Editor
Calendar view View published and scheduled content in a calendar
Outputs Markdown Outputs markdown without extra work
Edit Lock Locks content for team members to edit
Comments & Notes Collaborate on content with your team
Image Support
Version History See previous versions of content
Active Development Is the product still being developed
Compare	Compare pricing	View pricing

Found a mistake? Get in touch.

Love the UI ❤️

Does Spinal support markdown?

Yes! As Spinal is built for static site generators, markdown is supported. No extra work needed from you. Not only that: it boasts an easy to use wysiwyg editor that converts to markdown for you.
Can I invite my entire team?

Yes! With Spinal’s flat pricing invite your content writers, your developers and your designers. Everyone on your team can work together on your marketing content in Spinal.
Does Spinal have an API?

No. As Spinal is a Git-based CMS, it’s way simpler to set up. No developer time needed. Just connect your GitHub repo, invite your team and you are ready to craft the best content for your marketing site.
Can I self-host Spinal?

No. Spinal is a web-based SaaS and not open-source.

We'll move you from Ghost to Spinal. For free!

Getting started with Spinal is really straightforward if you use a git-based alternative, but that's not the case for Ghost. That's why every (trialing) Spinal customer, gets free concierge service to import all your existing content into Spinal (and as a result into Git). Without any extra charge. Start your 5-day free trial and contact support for all the details.