Best Ghost hosting
3 providers on this site publish their own Ghost documentation. Every row below links to the guide it came from.
Open-source publishing platform running as a long-lived Node process, requiring MySQL in production and a writable content directory for uploads and themes.
Where you can deploy it.
Ordered by how the provider documents it — a dedicated guide first, a generic path second. There is no score: the ordering is the evidence.
| Provider | Category | Documented fit for Ghost | Entry paid plan | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DigitalOcean | VPS & cloud | Dedicated guide | $4.00 | Yes |
| Railway | App platforms | Dedicated guide | $5 / month (Hobby) | Yes |
| Render | App platforms | Dedicated guide | Not documented | Yes |
What actually works.
Every platform here claims Ghost support, so the claim on its own says little. These are the capabilities each provider documents, and the constraints it documents alongside them.
| DigitalOcean | Railway | Render | |
|---|---|---|---|
| mysql_database | Supported | Supported | Limited |
| smtp_email | Limited | Supported | Supported |
| one_click_install | Supported | Supported | Limited |
| persistent_content_storage | Not documented | Supported | Not documented |
The detail.
Cloud infrastructure provider offering Linux virtual machines, managed databases, object storage and an app platform across global datacenter regions.
- mysql_database: Supported
- smtp_email: Limited
- one_click_install: Supported
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Ghost — DigitalOcean Marketplace ↗
“In addition to creating a Droplet from the Ghost 1-Click App via the control panel, you can also use the DigitalOcean API.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
- Ghost — DigitalOcean Documentation ↗
“Node.js 22 LTS (NodeSource) MySQL 8 nginx (reverse proxy / SSL via Ghost CLI) [...] MySQL server 8.0.29 GPL 2 with modifications”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs
Application platform that builds services from a repository or Dockerfile and bills plan fees that include usage credits.
- mysql_database: Supported
- persistent_content_storage: Supported
- smtp_email: Supported
- one_click_install: Supported
Sources (1) →Sources ↓
- Self-host Ghost with MySQL and Custom Themes — Railway Docs ↗
“This guide covers deploying Ghost on Railway from the official Docker image with a MySQL database and persistent content storage.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
Managed cloud platform that builds and runs web services, background workers, static sites and databases from Git repositories or Docker images.
- mysql_database: Limited
- smtp_email: Supported
- one_click_install: Limited
Sources (1) →Sources ↓
- Deploy Ghost — Render Docs ↗
“This guide shows how to deploy a Ghost instance on Render in just a few minutes. This version uses a SQLite database stored on a Render SSD Disk so your data is saved across deploys and automatically backed up with daily snapshots. [...] As of Ghost 5, MySQL 8 is the only supported database for production deploys of Ghost. SQLite is only supported by Ghost 5 in a development environment.”
Read 2026-09-05 · official docs
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