Case Study
View Case StudyTray.ai
Migrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform
From Ghost to Storyblok
We are the Ghost to Storyblok migration experts
Last verified:
Challenges with Ghost
Key pain points
Ghost is great until you need it to do anything more than “post blog, send newsletter, and beg readers for $5/month.” The moment you step outside that happy path, the whole thing starts feeling painfully bare-bones. There’s no real visual builder, no serious content modeling, and the plugin ecosystem is basically “good luck, build it yourself.”
Hosted plans get expensive fast once memberships grow, and self-hosting turns into a weekend-killing DevOps hobby nobody asked for. If you need anything beyond a clean blog with a paywall, Ghost will politely tap out and tell you to write less ambitious content.
Blogging-centric feature set
Ghost is brilliant for blogs… and very “meh” for anything else. If you need complex content models, workflows, or enterprise-level flexibility, you’ll hit a wall quickly.
Sparse plugin marketplace
There’s no real ecosystem to lean on. Anything outside the basics usually means rolling up your sleeves and writing code yourself.
No visual page builder
If you were hoping to drag, drop, and magically design pages, Ghost politely says “no.” Everything beyond basic layouts needs theme edits.
Custom coding required
Even simple enhancements often require Handlebars or API work. Non-technical teams will run out of road fast.
Limited content modeling
You get posts and pages, that’s pretty much the deal. Anything beyond that is a workaround, not a first-class feature.
Lacks multi-site support
Running multiple sites under one instance isn’t Ghost’s thing. If you’re scaling across regions or brands, you’ll feel boxed in.
Benefits of Storyblok
Key advantages
If you've ever tried explaining "headless" to a content team and watched their eyes glaze over, Storyblok is your peace offering. The visual editor is genuinely good: editors see changes on the real page preview instead of filling out abstract field forms.
That's the upside. The downside is that the API lacks a few basics, like fetching child or sibling pages directly, and the tier jumps get steep once you need more locales or seats. If Storyblok is your choice, we can make it work, we know where the rough edges are and how to set it up cleanly.
Visual editing capabilities
Yes, you read that right, you can do real-time, on-page editing. Make a change, see it instantly, no staging limbo, which means you can stop “guess and publish.”
Component-based approach
You can build a component once and use it everywhere. You can also update a button or banner in one place, and the entire site fixes itself.
Efficient content structuring
Your content stays clean, organised, reusable, and not scattered across 40 pages. Developers work with structured data, editors drag-and-drop pieces like Lego. Everyone gets to stay sane.
Robust multi-language support
One CMS, many languages, zero chaos. Localise content without duplicate pages, messy exports, or spreadsheet archaeology.
Collaborative environment
Writers, designers, and editors can all jump in at the same time without breaking each other’s work. Add comments and approvals. View version histories for teamwork without the headache.
Highly customisable
If your design system can imagine it, you can use Storyblok to model it. There are custom fields, workflows, and logics that can bend to your stack rather than the other way around.
Common questions
Ghost to Storyblok migration FAQs
Answers to the most common questions about Ghost to Storyblok migration
How much does Ghost CMS really cost beyond the "free" open source version?
Ghost is free to self-host, but "free" is misleading. You'll need a VPS ($5-$20/month minimum), someone to handle server maintenance, security updates, SSL certificates, and backups. That's either your time or a developer's hourly rate. Realistically, self-hosted Ghost costs $50-$200/month in labour and infrastructure for a small team. Ghost's managed hosting (Ghost Pro) starts at $9/month for the Starter plan (500 members), jumps to $25/month for Creator (1,000 members), and scales to $199/month for the Business tier. Once your membership list grows past a few thousand, costs climb fast. We've seen publishers hit $300+/month on Ghost Pro before questioning whether the platform still made sense for them.
Does Ghost need a developer to maintain it?
If you're self-hosting, yes. Ghost runs on Node.js and requires regular updates, database maintenance (MySQL), and server monitoring. Major version upgrades (Ghost 4 to 5, for example) can break themes and integrations, and someone technical needs to handle those. On Ghost Pro, maintenance is handled for you, but customisation still requires a developer. Custom themes use Handlebars templating, and anything beyond basic styling means editing theme files and redeploying. If your team is purely non-technical and you want to go beyond Ghost's default themes, you'll need developer support on an ongoing basis.
When should you migrate away from Ghost?
Ghost hits its ceiling when you need more than blog posts and newsletters. If you're trying to build landing pages, manage structured content across multiple page types, run an ecommerce store, or handle multi-language content, Ghost wasn't designed for any of that. We've migrated publishers off Ghost when they outgrew the "blog plus newsletter" model and needed a real content platform. The migration itself is painless. Ghost's JSON API makes content extraction simple, and posts map cleanly to markdown. The typical timeline is 4-6 weeks to move content into a headless CMS and rebuild the frontend.
Can Ghost handle a site with more than just a blog?
Barely. Ghost gives you two content types, posts and pages, and that's it. There's no custom content modelling, no relational fields, no structured data beyond tags and authors. You can hack together something with custom routes and internal tags, but it's brittle and hard to maintain. If you need case studies, service pages, team directories, or any structured content beyond articles, you're fighting the platform. Ghost is excellent at what it does. It just doesn't do very much. For sites that need a blog alongside other content types, a headless CMS gives you the flexibility Ghost intentionally leaves out.
What are the best Storyblok alternatives?
Sanity is the alternative we recommend most often. It offers deeper content modelling, real-time collaboration, and a pricing model that doesn't spike when you add features. Contentful is another option if you want a mature ecosystem, though it's pricier. For teams that loved Storyblok's visual editor, Sanity's Presentation tool now provides a similar live preview experience. We've migrated several Storyblok projects to Sanity, and the feedback from both editors and developers has been positive.
How much does Storyblok cost?
Storyblok has a Starter plan at $0 with 1 seat, 2 locales, and 100K API requests. The Growth plan is $99/month for 5 seats, 1M API requests, and 2 locales. Growth Plus is $349/month for 15 seats, 4M API requests, and 10 locales. Extra seats are $15/month each, extra locales $20/month, extra traffic $75/250GB. Premium and Elite are custom pricing and unlock SSO, custom roles, and the GraphQL API. Teams often outgrow the Growth plan on locales or API volume rather than features, which forces a $250/month jump.
Does Storyblok have a visual editor?
Yes, and it's one of the best in the headless CMS space. You see real-time changes as you edit, directly on your site preview. It's the main reason many teams pick Storyblok. That said, Sanity now offers a comparable experience through its Presentation tool, which gives you live visual editing with more flexibility in content modelling. If the visual editor is your primary reason for choosing Storyblok, it's worth comparing both before committing.
Can I migrate from Storyblok to another CMS?
Yes. We export your stories, components, and assets through Storyblok's API, then restructure everything for the target platform. Storyblok's component-based content model actually maps well to Sanity's block system. Most migrations take 3-5 weeks. The main challenge is handling Storyblok's nested component structure and translating field-level localization to the new platform's approach. We keep your site running on Storyblok throughout, so there's zero downtime during the switch.
Is Storyblok good for large websites?
It works for mid-size sites but starts showing strain at enterprise scale. The API has performance limitations when fetching deeply nested content, and the pricing jumps between tiers are steep. Teams with 50+ pages and multiple locales often find themselves on the Growth Plus plan ($349/month) or pushed toward Premium sooner than expected, especially because custom roles and SSO only appear on enterprise tiers. For large-scale projects, we typically recommend Sanity instead. Its GROQ query language handles complex content relationships more efficiently, and pricing scales more predictably.
Get in touch
Fill out the form below and we'll get back to you
