Ghost

Raised as a usability problem by 39 people on Hacker News over 14 years (2012–2025), in 26 threads.

People raised many different problems with Ghost, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 36 complaints

No way to cancel the account or remove billing info before trial ends2025-08-04
Feels too rigid and over-built, like paying for unused WordPress-style software2024-11-01
Editing interface becomes increasingly disliked, and theme-unsupported messages force time-consuming upkeep2023-02-22
Importing a larger WordPress site into Ghost was impossible for the commenter2023-01-20
Templates give no IDE feedback on scope and unclear variable declarations2022-05-23
Commenter found the Ghost interface confusing to use2022-01-24
Self-hosting option is hard to find, mentioned only in pricing FAQ2021-03-16
Can't find option to turn off multi-site creation; hard to configure updates2021-03-11
Every change requires logging in and navigating the admin interface2020-10-21
Automatic upgrade charge triples price with no clear offer or confirmation2020-08-15
Users exceed plan limits by accident and get charged more without recourse2020-08-15
Adding a third staff user silently triggers a large recurring charge with no clear warning2020-08-15
Unclear whether adding a user silently triggers a higher-priced plan2020-08-15
Self-hosting is a pain, requiring a full VPS install, and failures are opaque2018-10-11
Installation is complex and brittle, breaks at any problem and needs a sudo user2018-08-21
Editor live-view becomes slow when a post has many images2018-05-17
Near-daily releases to the 1.x branch made maintaining it a chore2018-05-17
Setting up a Ghost site is harder than WordPress for non-technical users2018-05-16
Default theme shows bars that add friction; users must edit and reupload a theme to disable them2017-08-01
Non-technical users must set up Node themselves, unlike one-click WordPress installs2015-08-27
Account management interface has lots of room for UX improvement2015-08-27
Adding social and SEO metadata is much less intuitive without plugins2015-05-06
Non-technical users struggle to write posts in Markdown markup2014-04-30
Writer couldn't work out how to install Ghost; instructions required unfamiliar Node.js setup and confusing platform choices2014-02-10
Download link is hidden on the page, hard to find2014-02-10
Undo/redo broken after adding images; browser spellcheck doesn't work2014-02-10
Can only edit blog posts when online, not offline2014-01-13
Hard to configure because it requires running a Node.js server2013-10-29
Body text is so large that only a fraction fits on screen, forcing zooming to read2013-10-15
Code is overly abstracted and confusing for the commenter to work with2013-10-14
No direct link to the admin interface from the blog index, so users must guess the /ghost URL2013-10-14
No link from the blog to the main site; user had to type the URL manually2013-09-20
Took about five minutes to figure out the UI2013-09-16
Homepage is useless, a 90s-style 'Enter here' landing page hiding the information2013-04-29
Dialog is taller than the 10-inch screen and scrolling moves the background instead of the box2013-04-29
Can't double-tap to fit text on iPhone; zoomed text looks hazy2012-11-05