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Ghost vs Dotclear: catalog facts
Ghost	Dotclear
Freemium Free to self-host; the hosted service is paid after a 14-day trial.	Free Free and open source under the GPL-2.0 licence.
Web, Self-hosted	Self-hosted
Website, newsletter and paid subscriptions in one product Clean editor with rich media cards	Long history, in development since 2002 Self-hosted, so you keep control of the blog
Hosted plans are paid after the trial Self-hosting requires running and updating your own server	Community and documentation are largely French-speaking Needs a PHP web server to run
Self-hosted, Hosted service	Self-hosted
Open source	Open source
License not stated	License: GPL-2.0
Not stated if an account is needed	Not stated if an account is needed
Needs internet	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 1, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 2, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.