WordPress wins for 95% of blogs. Ghost wins for $9/month newsletter-style writers. We rarely pick anything else and explain why below.
"Best CMS for a blog" is the most over-answered question in agency content. Most ranking lists are affiliate roundups of 12 platforms with shallow pros and cons.
Our short answer: WordPress for 95% of blogs, including news sites, multi-author publications, niche editorial sites, B2B blogs that need to integrate with HubSpot or Marketo, and personal authority blogs that want to scale to a paid product.
We pick Ghost for a writer who wants a clean newsletter-and-blog setup with built-in subscriptions and no plugin fuss: under 100 posts, no need for custom post types, willing to host on Ghost Pro at $9-50/month. We do not ship Ghost projects ourselves but recommend it freely when it is the right fit.
We rarely use Drupal, Magento, or OpenCart for blog-only projects. Drupal is for sites where the blog is one section of a much larger content architecture. Magento and OpenCart blogs exist only as companions to the main shop.
How to migrate WordPress without downtime: the zero-downtime sequence we use on real client moves, from lowering DNS TTL to the serialized-data search-replace trap.
How to install WordPress in 2026 the practical way: pick the right method first (one-click, manual FTP, or local), then follow the steps. Honest agency guidance.
How to start a WordPress blog the way an agency would set it up: WordPress.com vs .org decided clearly, the real multi-year cost, and the six steps that actually matter.
WordPress or Medium in 2026? Why it is not either/or: own a WordPress site, syndicate to Medium with a canonical, and keep your SEO, brand, and audience.
WordPress or Ghost for your blog in 2026? An agency that builds both on newsletters, memberships, the real speed story, cost, and when each platform wins.
Webflow or WordPress in 2026? An agency that migrates both directions on when each platform actually wins, the new Webflow pricing, and what a move really costs.
WordPress vs Drupal compared on real production numbers: hiring pool, content modelling, multilingual, performance benchmarks, cost to build, and when to pick which. From a shop that ships both.
Move your Wix site to WordPress without losing rankings. Six-phase plan, honest pricing brackets ($800-12k), redirect map walkthrough, and the gotchas (image URLs, Velo code, Wix Bookings) that other guides skip.
The “best WordPress SEO plugin” question gets answered the same way in every roundup: a feature-by-feature checklist, a screenshot of each settings panel, and a non-committal conclusion that it depends on your needs. We benchmark these tools on real client sites instead, and we have an opinion. Our default is RankMath. We run Yoast on […]
Most sites do not need a custom WordPress plugin. The 60,000+ plugins in the WordPress repository plus the 5,000 or so in premium marketplaces will cover 90% of what a typical business site needs. The interesting question is when the math actually flips. We have built custom plugins for clients where it paid for itself […]
WordPress was built as a blogging platform and 22 years later still powers more blogs than any other CMS. The editor UX, the plugin ecosystem (RankMath for SEO, Newspack for paywalls, MailPoet for newsletters), the hosting story (Kinsta, WP Engine, Pressable), and the developer talent pool combine into something nothing else matches for a serious blog.
The detailed take is in WordPress for blogs: pricing, themes we use, plugin shortlist, and the 7-day launch path.
If your blog is a single-author newsletter and you will never want to add a product, courses, podcast hosting, or membership tiers, Ghost or Substack is lighter. Ghost gives you a real CMS and a $9 starting plan. Substack gives you zero ownership of your URL but the easiest growth distribution. WordPress wins as soon as you have any plan to expand beyond just blog posts.
Self-hosted WordPress.org for anything you take seriously. WordPress.com's free and starter plans block plugins, custom themes, and your own analytics. The Business plan ($25/month) unlocks them but at that price you are better off on WP Engine ($30) or Kinsta ($35) with full ownership.
Not really. A managed WordPress install at $30/month with a free Astra or Kadence theme and three plugins (RankMath, Akismet, UpdraftPlus) launches in an afternoon. The only case where it is overkill is a writer who never wants to add anything beyond posts. Ghost or Substack are lighter for that.
Ghost wins for newsletter-first writers under 100 posts who want subscriptions built in. WordPress wins as soon as you need a product, course, podcast, custom post type, or three-author workflow. Ghost has 0.5% market share for a reason: the addressable use case is narrow.
Five we install on every blog: RankMath for SEO, Akismet for comment spam, UpdraftPlus for backups, Wordfence or Sucuri for security, and a caching plugin matched to the host (LiteSpeed, WP Rocket, or built-in for Kinsta and WP Engine). Anything beyond that is editorial-specific.
$1,500-4,000 for a custom-themed WordPress blog launched in 7 days, including SEO setup, three plugins configured, and a one-month support window. The headline cost is hosting at $30-50/month for a managed plan that lasts you to 100k visits/month.
Yes. Medium exports as a .zip with HTML files; Substack exports posts and subscriber emails as a .csv. We migrate posts, redirects, and email subscriber lists in 3-7 days depending on volume. Pricing starts at $1,500 for under 100 posts.
30 minutes with a senior engineer. No salespeople. We respond within one business day with a brief outline.
Send a project brief →