From KeystoneJS to Ghost

We are the KeystoneJS to Ghost migration experts

Challenges with KeystoneJS

Key pain points

The biggest challenge with KeystoneJS is that it hands you all the responsibility that a managed CMS would normally handle. Deployment is entirely on you, and the documentation around production hosting, Docker configuration, and scaling is thin. We've seen teams struggle to go from a smooth local development experience to a reliable production setup, especially if they don't have dedicated DevOps support. The admin UI Docker image alone can balloon to over a gigabyte, which is a headache for containerised deployments.

The community around Keystone is significantly smaller than competitors like Strapi or Payload. That means fewer tutorials, fewer plugins, and slower answers when you hit an edge case. The ecosystem of ready-made integrations is almost non-existent, so you'll be building most things from scratch. For an agency working on client projects with deadlines, that time cost adds up quickly.

Content editors also tend to have a harder time with Keystone compared to more polished alternatives. The admin UI is functional but feels utilitarian, and non-technical users often need more onboarding than you'd expect. There's no visual editing, no preview infrastructure, and no real content workflow features like drafts, publishing schedules, or approval chains without building them yourself. If your client's content team needs a CMS they can pick up and run with, Keystone usually isn't the answer.

Deployment complexity

Self-hosting is the only option, and the docs don't hold your hand. Getting Keystone into production requires real infrastructure knowledge, and the large Docker image sizes make it worse.

Small community and ecosystem

Compared to Strapi or even Payload, the community is much smaller. Fewer plugins, fewer tutorials, and slower support when things go wrong.

No built-in content workflows

There are no turnkey drafts, scheduled publishing, or approval chains. Keystone provides field primitives that can be assembled into publishing workflows, but you need to wire them up yourself.

Admin UI feels dated

The admin panel is functional but lacks the polish and UX of modern CMS interfaces. Non-technical editors often find it confusing and need more training.

No visual editing or live preview

There's no way for editors to see content in context before publishing. You'd need to build your own preview infrastructure, which is a significant engineering effort.

Scaling requires significant effort

Running Keystone under high traffic means managing session stores, reverse proxies, and server resources yourself. It doesn't scale as smoothly as cloud-native CMS alternatives.

Benefits of Ghost

Key advantages

Ghost is genuinely great if all you want is a fast, clean, no-nonsense blogging machine. It keeps things beautifully simple: a slick Markdown editor, zero clutter, and performance scores so good they’ll make WordPress users cry into their PHP logs. If your plan is “just publish content,” Ghost actually gets out of your way and lets you do that.

The built-in memberships and payments system is also a win. You can slap a paywall on your content, charge people to read your mediocre hot takes, and do it all without duct-taping together 12 plugins. For solo creators, small publications, and anyone who wants a simple writing-first experience, Ghost delivers exactly what it promises and nothing you didn’t ask for.

Lightweight JSON API

Ghost’s API is fast, predictable, and doesn’t make you fight a schema just to fetch a title. It’s perfect for JAMStack setups where you want speed without ceremony. Pull content, ship pages, move on with your life.

Intuitive Markdown editor

If you enjoy writing without 19 toolbars screaming at you, Ghost’s Markdown editor is bliss. Clean, distraction-free, and actually enjoyable to use.

Built-in membership system

Memberships, paywalls, and subscriptions come built in, no plugin Frankenstein required. Hook up Stripe and you’re basically running your own mini-Substack in minutes.

SEO-friendly defaults

Ghost ships with fast performance, clean URLs, structured data, and proper metadata, without needing an SEO plugin the size of a small country. Most sites hit solid scores straight out of the box.

Native subscription support

You don’t need 3 SaaS tools duct-taped together to run a newsletter. Ghost handles email delivery, subscriber lists, and automated posts natively.

Easy theme customization

Themes are simple to tweak thanks to Ghost’s handlebars-based templates. If you know basic HTML/CSS, you can make it look exactly how you want without fighting a visual builder from 2011.