
Ghost.org deleted my website - davidbarker
https://postapathy.substack.com/p/i-was-building-a-new-website-for
======
elliotpage
I agree with the post author that the tactic of allowing users to exceed plan
limits and then upping their bill (yes, even with the 7 day notice email) is
shady.

I hate this kind of behaviour from my tools - it feels like I am constantly
being watched for when I "slip" and can be charged more without recourse. If
you are going to use this behavior, provide a switch to enable hard limits on
usage so a user cannot blunder unto having their budget blown by accident.

Edit: Also, why does the CEO have direct access to cancel user accounts and
send them direct messages? Surely they have more important things to do?

~~~
londons_explore
> I agree with the post author that the tactic of allowing users to exceed
> plan limits and then upping their bill

It's only the same as pay-per-use, which loads of other companies use. If you
use network bandwidth on AWS or GCP, they're going to bill you per gigabyte,
and there is no 7 day grace period or action required on your part to get a
big bill.

~~~
Hamuko
On AWS, I sign up to be billed at per gigabyte. I don't sign up for a 100 GB
bandwidth bucket and at 101 GB AWS automatically upgrades me to the 1000 GB
bucket.

~~~
nicoburns
AWS has exactly the same problem with not allowing you to limit spend. And
lots of individuals and small businesses are uncomfortable with using it for
that reason.

~~~
searchableguy
Yeah, google cloud provides a page to programatically cap your spending:
[https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-
to/notify#cap_disa...](https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-
to/notify#cap_disable_billing_to_stop_usage)

Why don't they just provide a big red button to enable caps instead?

~~~
londons_explore
> Why don't they just provide a big red button to enable caps instead?

So many companies have departmental budgets and need the ability to guarantee
a bill not more than $X.

It seems crazy GCP doesn't have a budget limit option. In fact, AppEngine used
to have a budget limit option, and they've just removed it!

~~~
graham_paul
> AppEngine used to have a budget limit option, and they've just removed it!

awful behaviour!

~~~
Wronnay
Looks like there is someone stealing identities, Mr Graham ^^

~~~
graham_paul
Are you saying that there is only one person legally allowed to be called
Graham Paul in the whole planet?

------
arcatek
People finding sympathy in the CEO behavior should make an effort to remember
the number of time they likely ranted about their landlords / network provider
/ post service / bank service / ... on Twitter. How would you have reacted if
they had decided to ban you without even letting you take back your assets?

Closing a customer's account without following procedures, on the CEO's whims,
just because they don't feel comfortable with your practices, with a passive
aggressive "sorry it wasn't a good fit for you!", deleting data in the
process, is extremely unprofessional. There's no good light for this.

In fact, the following story is a great example of the danger of this kind of
practices: [https://www.newsweek.com/bank-closes-accounts-criticizes-
twi...](https://www.newsweek.com/bank-closes-accounts-criticizes-
twitter-1480651)

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
I do sympathise with their CEO on a personal level - but that's that: a
personal level[1]. When your twitter account is not only public, but the
public-facing twitter account of the CEO of a company: it should never contain
"personal" messages that haven't been run by a PR team, otherwise SNAFUs like
this will happen.

Save the customer rants and banter for Slack or the morning standup - not
Twitter. Egads.

You'd think everyone would have learned from Elon Musk's example by now,
surely?

[1] ...and even then I'm onlyy sliiiightly sympathetic, and ultimately I'm
still siding with the article's author, provided they're being truthful. It
was wrong for Ghost to unilaterally delete their content and retaliate against
their user. They turned a possible PR victory (by acceding to the author's
requests and upgrading their account for free (given the marginal cost of each
user is negligible, giving a service credit doesn't cost them anything) into a
disaster. Eeejits.

~~~
dylan604
>You'd think everyone would have learned from Elon Musk's example by now,
surely?

How has it hurt Musk? If I was looking for justification, Musk and POTUS have
pretty much laid the groundwork for spew whatever via Twitter does not hurt
the brand. It only makes it more visible.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
I used to respect and admire Musk on a personal basis which led to me being
interested in buying into the products and services he's responsible for (I
own a Tesla Model X, and I applied for an avionics SWE position at SpaceX).
The more he keeps up his cavalier attitude on social-media the more it puts me
- and others in my social network - off from benefiting his companies, and by
extension, him.

The same way that I'm not interested in working at Facebook because of
Zuckerberg's attitude towards his users.

------
nickjj
The CEO of Ghost has always struck me as weirdly defensive.

I remember ~2 years ago he tweeted something about how he was so proud to have
built Ghost up with little help from anyone, no funding and was really pushing
the angle of how the project is open source.

But then I replied with something like "Congrats on all of the success, but
what about the thousands of folks who gave you $250,000+ on Kickstarter to
help kick start the project?", because he didn't mention that anywhere.

He deleted his reply on Twitter since then, but it was pretty hostile and he
even left the tweet off with saying he was blocking me. All from that 1
question I asked. Prior to that I've never contacted, messaged or replied to
him so this had nothing to do with previous history.

------
tchaffee
Frustrated customers, even rude ones, are an opportunity to learn and improve.
The CEO of Ghost unfortunately resorted to schoolboy tactics instread of
acting like a diplomatic executive. Sure you should fire your bad customers.
But don't mistake a frustrated customer for a bad one. They are not the same.

~~~
emsy
This. The customer is upset because he was wronged and he’s going to be
frustrated. If you’re going to fire every rude customer you’re quickly out of
business. People point out that „both sides are in the wrong“. But the extent
to which they are wrong is different.

~~~
lilSebastian
> The customer is upset because he was wronged and he’s going to be rude

At which point was the customer rude here?

~~~
theevilsharpie
> At which point was the customer rude here?

The customer was a little aggressive in their opening email when they
described Ghost's business practices as shady, but I'd still consider it in-
bounds for a professional email.

Then, before Ghost's support had a chance to engage with this customer, the
customer publicly tweeted about the problem in a way that implied that Ghost
was intentionally ripping off customers.

I would encourage anyone reading this to stop for a moment and think back to
the projects they've worked on, either for an employer or as a side project.
How many of those projects explicitly aimed to defraud paying customers? Even
a single one?

Now, how many of those projects had to deal with customers that rudely
complained about something that ended up being a misunderstanding on their
part, or were simply abusing the support staff as a way of getting a refund or
some other type of free service? Practically everyone who has ever had to deal
with any type of customer support has encountered that behavior -- "Karen"
caught on as a widely-understood stereotype for a reason.

Ghost's CEO likely reacted the way he did because he has enough experience to
quickly categorize customers who reach out for support, and concluded
(probably correctly) that this customer would continue to be unreasonable,
would end up being a net drain on both revenue and team morale, and that
refunding the customer and banning their account would be the quickest and
least distracting way forward.

I can't fault Ghost here. Dealing with people that immediately drag your name
through the mud for every perceived slight is exhausting, and for a low-fee
service like Ghost, can very quickly erase whatever margin they may be making.
And frankly, as someone that's tired of the increasingly polarized and hateful
discourse on social media these days, it's refreshing to see a business that's
willing to clamp down on incivility, even if it means lost revenue.

~~~
Twisell
I agree that terminating contract with some prior notice and sending data back
could have been a rude but understandable decision... but insulting the
customer on twitter, then deleting the tweet before immediately nuking
customer's website was clearly out of bound.

~~~
theevilsharpie
It only seems that way because Ghost was up-front about telling the customer
to fuck off.

Larger, more established companies do that as well, but in the form of
automated account blocks, or byzantine phone/support ticket workflows that
effectively prevent you from reaching someone other than entry-level support
who can do little to help you. Even if they're more polite about it, they're
still essentially telling you to get lost if you don't like their service or
its terms.

------
tilolebo
"I also decided to tweet about it - because that’s what people do, right?"

I honestly don't know what to think about this. On one hand I understand you
want to create awareness on a practice you consider as shady,ok.

But from what I know, Ghost usually try to please its customers. It's a small
team with hardworking members, competing against giants.

Attacking them on Twitter before they could even reply to your email: kind of
a dick move.

~~~
kif
What I understand from your comment is that letting people know about the
business practices of a certain company is a dick move. What I am struggling
to understand is how you came to such a conclusion?

The tweet is not offensive in the least – all it shows is some signs of
frustration from a customer, who may or may not be right.

The CEO on the other hand, looks like an ill-tempered, rude child, who should
be nowhere near Twitter, let alone be the CEO of a company.

I invite you to consider another sequence of events, where the CEO doesn't
show his childish side on Twitter, sends almost the same reply to the
customer, noting that they will delete their site in 7 days if they don't want
to pay, saying "here's link to the backup of your data".

Bonus points if he asks the customer for feedback on how they would like this
to be handled in the future.

~~~
tilolebo
you're right, I probably tried to find an excuse because I like the company
and the team behind it.

I've been following him on Twitter for a while and he always seemed quick to
dismiss people. Anyway, regardless of his, there is no reason for him to act
this way with a customer.

------
Jabbles
6 days ago HN discussed the article "Fire your bad customers":

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24097420](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24097420)

It is interesting to see this in practice, and see this from the customer's
point of view. Obviously they do not believe they are "bad".

~~~
tchaffee
Why was he a bad customer? He was frustrated. And he exaggerated what he was
frustrated about. That could have lead to an insightful conversation that
improved the product. Don't make the mistake of thinking every frustrated
customer is a bad one.

~~~
Zanni
Yes and no. A customer who complains to you is doing you a favor by letting
you know how your product fell short of their expectations. That's an
opportunity to either 1) improve the product or 2) clarify the customer's
expectations. But a customer who takes their grievance to social media
_immediately_ is a troublemaker who's not worth the grief. The CEO was right
to "fire" him as a customer (but he should have been civil about it and not
deleted his work without notice).

~~~
csydas
A single complaint means you're a bad customer? It's bad PR for sure, but as
far as customers go, this is extremely minor.

"Firing" this customer more convinces me the CEO just has no idea how to
handle criticism for their product or how to explain their aggressive revenue
model, and yes, the policy is aggressive.

We had to revisit the licensing model for our company a few times over the
last years, and it was a huge headache; people whined, loudly and rightfully,
cause we did have a bit of a crappy change up. No one "lost" anything in the
changeup, but there were headaches for sure. Our PM handled it like a champ as
we had a lot of public outcries; some valid, which we took on the nose, others
not so valid where we called out the wrongful arguments.

We never "fired" anyone as a result of our business decision though; that's
not a way to build trust in others. If our decisions ultimately makes someone
part with us, let it be their decision, not ours. We save firing for only the
truly most abusive and disruptive customers who eat up support/dev time
needlessly (and I do mean needlessly, like demanding the attention of our best
support engineers to show them which button to click, which is far too common
in big IT companies with supposed IT professionals)

Ghost's CEO seems like he couldn't handle the mildest of criticisms from one
fo the most common types of customers -- ones who didn't RTFM. His decision
wasn't right in the least bit, it was an example that he has no idea how to
handle conflict.

~~~
subpixel
The Ghost CEO did precisely the wrong thing.

But anyone who has had to support thousands of customers can spot this
customer as toxic.

The irony here is that the toxic customer gave the CEO the solution: restrict
functionality so users don’t get surprised.

~~~
csydas
I deal with our company's 500k+ customers - this tweet would have been a 5
minute email and maybe a slightly short term discount to resolve, perhaps a
quick 'mea culpa, we weren't clear; how could we have made part of the TOS
more visible for you?' and follow up with a request for input on which
situations the customer feels shouldn't be subject to the fee increase (e.g.,
a temporary viral article as they mentioned)

The article author's complaint barely registers for me as this is something I
handle daily; I cannot even imagine the scale you're judging on if this is a
toxic customer for you.

~~~
nacs
As someone who has and still run a SaaS product, I’m amazed at the number of
HN people saying this is a toxic/bad customer. This is an incredibly low bar
for “toxic”.

Apparently for some here, making a post where he made a legitimate complaint
made him toxic just because it’s on Twitter? Twitter has become a standard way
for some people to communicate with companies or to vent frustrations whether
you like it or not. Deal with it instead of calling them an “ahole”.

~~~
csydas
Well I'm not sure if I consider the complaint legitimate (it legitimately is a
complaint, but I'm not sure how valid it is ;) ) but I agree this is normal
now. This is how people vent.

A few minutes to just absorb the venting for something everyone complains
about (pricing) goes a long way at very little cost

------
elmo2you
I don't think there is any excuse for how Ghost.org terminated an account like
this. Maybe they have a fancy TOS, but the bottom line here is that they
destroyed somebody else's work/investment/value, and apparently only because
they didn't like the customer's behavior. In a (functioning) state of law,
that should means you've just fucked yourself.

Maybe there's more to this story (there often is) and maybe the author is a
class act ____himself, but that shouldn 't change that Ghost.org should be
liable for doing damage, if that indeed is for no valid reason (as it appears
thus far).

One thing I do know for certain .. I wouldn't touch this company with a ten
feet pole after this .. and if I had been an investor, I'd seriously
reconsider that investment.

~~~
sneak
It’s not a “fancy TOS”. Almost all terms of service for almost every service
online reserve the right to terminate service at any time, with or without
cause. It’s just like at will employment, or any other voluntary association.

Either party can revoke consent at any time. If the customer can close their
account at any time without notice, why shouldn’t the operator be able to as
well?

The service did nothing wrong. They’re not a backup service, and if a customer
ends up being more of a headache (either financial, emotional, or simply just
time/attention) than the operator deems their custom worth, they have EVERY
RIGHT to opt out of future transactions.

Furthermore, the customer explicitly agreed to this when they signed up. Even
if they hadn’t, though, it is entirely reasonable for either party to the
business relationship to be able to say, at any time, “this isn’t working for
me, let’s stop.”

That’s how consent works in real life outside of business contracts, too.

~~~
acid__
Yeah, I agree that ghost likely hasn't violated any business/legal contracts.
That said, they've certainly violated an implicit social contract for the
behavior expected from service providers of their type.

So to say "The service did nothing wrong."... is correct but only in a
technical, legally correct sense.

~~~
sneak
There is no social contract besides the legal one. The legal contract says it
is the full and complete agreement between the parties. There is no other
reasonable expectation besides what is said explicitly in the contract.

The term “social contract” refers to the implicit agreement we have with
people with whom we do not have an explicit, written agreement. This one was
specified in writing, in full.

~~~
acid__
There is absolutely both a legal and a social contract in play here. That's
not unusual, either. In almost any situation involving cooperation between
humans, the participants are implicitly agreeing to a larger or different set
of terms than may be specified in any legal contracts. These contracts are
even sometimes contradictory.

If someone violates a legal contract you have the right to get back damages
via the legal system. Similarly, if someone violates a social contract you
have the right to respond via social means, for example, by writing and
disseminating a blog post detailing your negative experiences.

------
Illniyar
This is a SaaS business, kicking someone out of the service because of
something he said once on twitter is beyond ridiculous. This shouldn't ever
have been a thought that crosses his mind.

The CEO has done massive harm to his company's reputation.

The customer was also right, IMO.

The practice of not stopping you from service if you go over your limits and
than charging you is a good one, but only for things the user can't control -
traffic is a good example.

For a limit a user actively needs to exceed - such as number of users - there
should always be a warning at the very least. Not doing so _is_ shady.

~~~
nacs
On top of that, the CEO of Ghost (John O'Nolan) publicly calling a paying
customer an "ahole" is completely unacceptable.

------
drenvuk
"fairly polite" email, eh? That's actually a _very_ reasonable business
practice of asking then charging instead of just making a site go dark.

The Ghost CEO should have taken the higher road and there's no excuse for
expunging your site but you were definitely being a dick first. I won't be
using Ghost and I would try to avoid having you as a customer as well.

~~~
dijit
I don’t think the argument was that he wanted the site to go dark. The author
wanted them to block out offending features until the account was upgraded
with purpose. Maybe an upsell screen overlay when he tried to add another
staff member.

“To add more staff you need to upgrade your account, upgrade with 1 click
here”

I don’t agree that it’s “shady” but you can already tell that it would
negatively affect conversion to directly inform people of what they’re doing,
rather than waiting for them to do it and then automatically upgrading them.

If you charge on some unknown, like requests per second, then it’s better to
allow the user to set an upper bound on finances anyway.

~~~
DanBC
The author talks about going viral. He also says that these higher plan
features should just be disabled. To me that appears to mean that he wants his
site to go dark if he goes over traffic limits.

Here's what Ghost does if you go over your traffic limits:

> Average views per month

> Views refer to the number of requests to your site each month. These are
> tracked much like an analytics 'pageview' \- and are incremented with each
> page or API request.

> We never disable sites for traffic spikes, so no need to worry about the
> front page of Reddit or HN. If you exceed your limit consistently on a 3
> month rolling average, we'll just let you know that you need to upgrade.

I think this is pretty good? It would be better if they allowed the user to
set a hard limit in advance.

~~~
thaumasiotes
>> We never disable sites for traffic spikes, so no need to worry about the
front page of Reddit or HN. If you exceed your limit consistently on a 3 month
rolling average, we'll just let you know that you need to upgrade.

> I think this is pretty good? It would be better if they allowed the user to
> set a hard limit in advance.

I agree that that's pretty good, although it still leaves you vulnerable to a
page that goes viral enough to get triple the number of allowed views. That
will block your 3-month rolling average for 3 months, but if your monthly
traffic looks like this:

    
    
        Month 1:  50k views
        Month 2:  50k views
        Month 3: 400k views - no big deal, sometimes surges happen
        Month 4:  50k views - you know, you're starting to push your limits...
        Month 5:  50k views - OK, at this point, we need you to upgrade
    

At that point, the demand to upgrade looks pretty strange.

------
postapathy
Post Apathy OP here -

I was definitely being an ass when I first tweeted about it (IIRC, this was
after I e-mailed them). I was generally frustrated with some wider issues
around building my website so I decided to blow some steam by tweeting about
it. I actually thought "that was too harsh" considering I had nothing but
praise for how user-friendly Ghost was (and how great Ghost support was -
shoutout to Sarah, whoever you are, you shouldn't be there).

The one thing you don't expect is that a CEO of a company would take the
annoyance of an account with circa.350 followers seriously and respond with
what is apparently vitriolic rage, not only cussing me out, but then
immediately going to shut my website down even though I was talking to a
support rep at Ghost about upgrading and getting migration underway.

The main problems are this:

1\. An automatic upgrade within 7 days that triples in price is sleazy,
there's no two ways to look at it. I don't know if it's an American thing, but
in Europe, a company would be crucified for doing this. You always have offer
and acceptance before agreeing to something. It would be very easy for Ghost
to simply put a popup stating "you cannot add more staff users as you are on
the basic plan - please upgrade here to do so". Again, no excuses here, it's
clear that some customers are being caught out by these automatic charges,
judging by the dozen people that have expressed similar issues with Ghost
since I published my post. So much for being a non-profit.

2\. Something I forgot to add to the story - the main reason I went over the 2
staff users I was permitted to have on my account was because I had invited
Ghost support in as a staff user to help with migration. This made me really
annoyed as I had some friends on to help with setting up the website and I had
to kick them to avoid being charged triple - for bringing Ghost in to help
with some stuff.

3\. The CEO going from cussing on twitter to deleting my website (all within
15mins, as I was working on it) is unacceptable, again, from any POV. The
people here talking about this being an acceptable practice to deal with
"toxic customers" have clearly never actually been in a customer-facing role.
You wouldn't last in such a position if you dealt with every disgruntled
customer in such a manner. Stop LARPing.

Anyway, that's my side. I understand the cynical mood of Hacker News so I
won't say more and let the people here make up their own minds.

Feel free to subscribe to the Post Apathy newsletter. I promise you it's
enriching.

~~~
arnvald
> An automatic upgrade within 7 days that triples in price is sleazy, there's
> no two ways to look at it

There are two ways to look at it. I use a tool that reports errors in my web
app. After one of releases we started receiving a lot of errors and we reached
the maximum on our plan. What would the proper response be? To just block all
the incoming error reports until end of the month? Or maybe to send me an
email saying "hey, you've reached your limit, if this continues we'll upgrade
you to higher plan automatically"? There's no clear answer here, that depends
on your context (I used the app for work and having proper error reports was
more important than the cost for me), but _there are_ two ways to look at it.

> respond with what is apparently vitriolic rage

not defending CEO's response (it was very inappropriate), aren't you doing the
same right now? You're retweeting stuff like "F __* Ghost and F __* their CEO
" with their accounts tagged.

~~~
postapathy
What a load of nonsense to justify a shady practice, to be quite honest. If
this was necessary, other website builders would be doing this. Apparently,
they all fare well without it.

> CEO directly cusses out and then wipes a customer's website > I retweet a
> post saying "f* Ghost" > you are the same!!

yes, all things are now in balance in the universe!

~~~
arnvald
> If this was necessary, other website builders would be doing this

I didn't said it was necessary, I've only said there are 2 ways to look at.

> you are the same!!

Again, something I didn't say. I said you are doing the same about the
"vitrolic rage" response, not about deleting the site.

CEO's actions were inappropriate and unprofessional, and I do not defend him
here, it is unacceptable to delete client's content (and as I wrote in another
comment under this post, it makes me feel uneasy as their client).

What I'm saying is that this whole thing blew out of proportion and neither
action justified the next one - the email didn't justify the outrage; the
outrage didn't justify deleting content; deleting content didn't justify
spreading hateful tweets.

------
maeln
My bank provide me with a "e-card" functionality (I can create virtual VISA
card with a definite amount of money on it). It is so useful to deal with this
new trend of automatically opt-in subscription. If you try to charge me
without my consent, the card will just block. Some company even try to send
their collection people at me, but I usually remind them that those shady
contract where you pay more without any confirmation on your side won't stand
in a European court :)

------
prawn
I read the comments before the article and going by the defenders of the CEO,
I expected the user to be well and truly in the wrong. But wow, nowhere near.
They were a paying customer and far from a free-loader. The dispute was over
staff accounts which are surely a non-factor in server load and other costs to
Ghost. The user wrote an aggressive email that would take five seconds for
support to kill-with-kindness in response, the same content in a tweet, and
lost their work.

I can only assume there is more to the story or the CEO was having a
particularly frustrating/upsetting day because otherwise this is a pretty
dodgy response.

~~~
marcinzm
>I can only assume there is more to the story or the CEO was having a
particularly frustrating/upsetting day because otherwise this is a pretty
dodgy response.

Another post in this discussion notes that this isn't the first time the CEO
has acted this way over petty things.

------
ColinWright
I don't think either party comes out especially well here, but my sympathies
lie with the CEO. The only thing I might have done differently would be to
include a tarball of the site in the "Sorry it was not a good fit" email,
thereby avoiding the accusation of wasted work.

If I'm providing a service and someone has a problem with it, I expect them to
look to resolve it with me first, before tweeting about "shady practices".

 _Added in edit: People seem to think I believe the CEO acted well and that I
'm defending him. I don't, and I'm not. But neither party comes out well from
this, and I can see why the CEO acted as he did, even if I think it was
flawed._

~~~
andybak
Really? I'm rather gobsmacked to find someone defending this.

~~~
ColinWright
I'd be interested to hear more ... why do you find this so surprising? People
running businesses are constantly told "Keep good customers, identify and get
rid of toxic ones." That appears to be exactly what the CEO has done here. As
I say elsewhere, rightly or wrongly he has decided that this customer will be
more trouble than they are worth, so he has refunded his money and terminated
the service.

To me the indefensible thing is not returning the customers data, but other
than this, why do you find it so unreasonable that a vendor should choose to
terminate a service? It seems to be in the Ts and Cs of every (nearly) service
I use.

So on that basis, can you explain why you think the CEOs behaviour is
indefensible?

~~~
capableweb
> "Keep good customers, identify and get rid of toxic ones."

This quote right here doesn't mean that if someone is saying "you have a good
service" or "you have a terrible service" once is "good customer" vs "toxic
customer". One message doesn't allow you to extrapolate the full situation,
what if the user was simply having a bad day?

Now, if you have a user that constantly is being a drain on customer support
or otherwise ruins the business, sure, go ahead. But just because you send one
email about the pricing and bitch a bit on Twitter, you get your service
terminated? That's super petty, and not at all what I would expect of a
company like Ghost.

~~~
ColinWright
BTW: I suspect we are not far apart here, the difference might be in the
nuance. We both believe the termination without warning was petty, we both
believe that there are such things as "bad" customers and "toxic" customers.
We both believe that both parties behaved badly. The question is whether
either or both deserve any sympathy.

But more importantly ... what lessons should we take from this?

* As a customer?

* As a provider?

~~~
capableweb
I see. I think your comment which includes "and then I have, on occasion,
refunded people, returned their data, and terminated their service." makes it
seem like you have acted the same way as Ghosts CEO did here, terminating the
service without asking if that's what the user wants before, and you were fine
with acting in that way, but seems I misunderstood you.

I have personally no interest in figuring out if anyone deserves sympathy
here, I simply want to make sure that other founders and CEOs reading HN don't
believe that terminating someones service willy nilly is perfectly fine,
because complaining once on Twitter makes you a "toxic" user.

------
millzlane
I'm not a "startup" guy. I've worked at many places and I've helped a lot of
SMB's turn around their company with only a decently designed website and some
better customer service.

One thing I have always said is that you can have a million good reviews. But
it will be only one that will be the downfall of your company.

This reminds me of that. This was an opportunity to fix what the user was
complaining about. Instead the CEO's behavior clearly shows what kind of
support to expect when you're unhappy with the service. I've complained
publicly about gmail before, never would I think I would have my account
removed and data deleted by the CEO. "LIKE US OR I WILL BAN YOU!"

------
dessant
Ghost uses one of my GitHub apps [1][2] that I wrote in my free time after
their CTO asked me to do it [3], and I wonder how would their CEO feel if I
would ban them because I condemn wiping customer data in retaliation for being
criticized in public.

Even if they decide to fire a customer, they should have notified them and let
them export their data. Harming your customer's business because they
criticized you is likely illegal, no matter how twisted your terms of service
are, and I hope they will get sued for what they've done.

[1] [https://github.com/dessant/label-
actions](https://github.com/dessant/label-actions)

[2]
[https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/blob/master/.github/label-...](https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/blob/master/.github/label-
actions.yml)

[3] [https://github.com/dessant/support-
requests/issues/6](https://github.com/dessant/support-requests/issues/6)

~~~
dessant
It looks like the CEO of Ghost has a history of booting customers when they
criticize them in public.

[https://twitter.com/adbertram/status/1148165765629128704](https://twitter.com/adbertram/status/1148165765629128704)

~~~
g_p
Interesting, so there are at least two occurrences now then. I must admit this
is why I like self-hosting services.

Ghost seems to be trying to compete with WordPress, but if this is how they
approach customer service and people talking about their service, I don't see
businesses moving over.

A business' web presence is an important asset, I'd be reluctant to let a
third party have control of this, but even moreso for someone that cuts users
off from service for criticising the company.

------
parsimoniousplb
I was once infatuated with the digital nomad "community". One day, I came
across a twitter thread where he (the "ceo" of ghost) and other prominent
members of that community were engaged in a harassment campaign against
customer service representatives of a local airline for delaying one of their
flights. What I found particularly revealing was that they used various
families with kids that were also waiting as a front for their own complaints,
as in "How dare you make these families wait?", when in fact they meant "How
dare you make _us_ wait?". I found that pretty gutless, and my admiration for
this "community" began to wane as a result. Long story short, I'm not at all
surprised questionable business practices and mistreatment of customers sprung
from there.

~~~
Hamuko
> _engaged in a harassment campaign against customer service representatives
> of a local airline for delaying one of their flights_

Did the airline do him right by cancelling and refunding his ticket without
being asked to?

~~~
robjan
Customer service agents aren't your personal punching bag and they usually
have limited power to rectify the situation. The person in CS who was
receiving that complaint could hardly force the plane to depart.

------
GlitchMr
In my opinion, Ghost made a mistake in terminating the service without prior
notice (although I think it would be okay for them to do so with prior
notice). The terms of the service allow doing so for any reason, but that's no
justification. In fact, having such a term is a good reason to avoid Ghost.

Also, I find it interesting that Ghost didn't answer "What happens if an
article goes viral and it breaks the 100k views boundary? Automatic charge?"
question. The pricing page provides a reasonable response here.

> We never disable sites for traffic spikes, so no need to worry about the
> front page of Reddit or HN. If you exceed your limit consistently on a 3
> month rolling average, we'll just let you know that you need to upgrade.

~~~
searchableguy
> The terms of the service allow doing so for any reason, but that's no
> justification. In fact, having such a term is a good reason to avoid Ghost.

This is a standard condition in most ToS: _we can kick you out for any reason
whatsoever._

~~~
GlitchMr
Not really. I checked AWS ToS and it explicitly lists conditions when you can
be kicked without prior notice (the illegal content that disrupts or threatens
the Services or in accordance with applicable law or any judicial, regulatory
or other governmental order or request, repeat infringers in appropriate
circumstances). Generally you will have 2 business days to fix violations of
AWS policies.

~~~
searchableguy
I went ahead and checked ToS parts of all the big clouds and you are correct.
Most have clauses to notify you before suspending the services unless
[disruption]. I checked the consumer subscription services I use and they
don't have such clause in theirs.

------
llacb47
Archive:

[https://archive.fo/MdOfw](https://archive.fo/MdOfw)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200815110730/https://postapath...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200815110730/https://postapathy.substack.com/p/i-was-
building-a-new-website-for)

~~~
Wronnay
The web never forgets :-)

------
ramino
I can’t understand the CEO’s decision. This is valuable feedback on their
practices. Yes the customer is angry but that should be okay! Imagine if
professionals in other areas would behave the same (like doctors for
example)... Behavior like this will lead to customers being scared to
criticize Ghost. This is the opposite of what the team at Ghost should want.

Someone should not be regarded as a bad customer for complaining once. A bad
customer should be defined as someone who over a longer time frame costs
resources. And also only after talking to them and not being able to find
common ground.

------
adamzapasnik
Wow, I'm surprised that so many call OP rude or a bad customer. What exactly
did OP do wrong? I think his mistake was tagging CEO on Twitter, that's what
costed him a website.

How many times do you argue with regular employees in a retail shop or over a
phone? Obviously, it shouldn't happen, but it happens and you don't get kicked
out of a shop. Here OP wasn't happy about auto upgrade, called out CEO on it,
got his site deleted, wtf?

~~~
woutr_be
I personally think he could've handled this is in a much nicer way, calling a
business shady or saying they screw over clients instantly sets the precedent
that you're trying to attack them. If he just asked them what would happen
when his website goes viral, I'm sure he would've gotten a proper response.

The CEO definitely wasn't as professional as he should've been, but I'm not
sure how I would feel when someone calls my business shady or says I'm
screwing over clients over what might have been a misunderstanding.

~~~
adamzapasnik
Well it's is kinda of shady for B2C market, where every cent counts for the
customers.

There is no way easy way to explain why it's done this way, because it's
obviously made on purpose to earn more $$.

~~~
woutr_be
What's the alternative tho? In the case his website goes viral, is Ghost
supposed to just shut down the website when it reaches its limits? Sending a
notice that you'll be upgraded in 7 days if your usage continues seems like a
fair deal. (Perhaps it could be 30 days, but then Ghost is also just giving
away their product for free)

~~~
prawn
He asked what would happen if he went viral, and his site was deleted without
that question being answered. They appear to have a policy for that situation
that would've likely appeased the customer so it should've been trivial to
respond with that.

It would be standard practice to disable the "add staff" button after two
users and alert the user to upgrade options. I can't think of a service that
doesn't operate like this, actually.

~~~
woutr_be
He did, while including that they're trying to screw over clients, and
implying they're a shady business in his email. Again, he could've asked this
without making these accusations.

I agree, they should've disabled the "add staff" button.

~~~
prawn
He expressed his disapproval of one particular practice and I don't blame him.
I think it's a shady feature too - getting people accustomed to a feature
above their plan and then default-upgrading unless they take a particular
step.

They have a solid policy for traffic spikes which is to be commended, but with
something like adding staff, which is an active user decision, I think the
method is reminiscent of dark patterns which this community tends to resent.

------
njsubedi
The CEO needs to see his psychologist. I’m neither being sarcastic nor being
provocative, but as a CEO when you find yourself calling your paying customer
an asshole and deleting their website over a tweet, it’s time you look back at
what you have become.

Probably he is in too much stress due to the pandemic, or he has developed too
much of a “I’m the CEO, bitch!” attitude. In either case, Ghost as a company
should take care of that guy to stay in business.

~~~
ohgodplsno
Nah. User was an ass, company is in no obligation to keep serving them, kicked
them out.

You're not entitled to having access to Ghost.org. you can even selfhost if
the technology choice is what makes you stay.

The only thing Ghost should do is hand him over a backup of his data.

~~~
clashmeifyoucan
Not really. I'm sure they probably have something in their ToS that covers
such kicking but even so, a paying customer is entitled to having access to
the site, no?

Being unhappy with a service doesn't mean you get your subscription cancelled.

------
brainless
I was on the fence with the author's behavior but I re-read the issue -

The author _could add a staff member without_ being on a new plan. This is
really shady. If your product has pricing tiers, then PLEASE do not let people
get features without accepting to pay in the first place.

Here is the pricing page:
[https://ghost.org/pricing/](https://ghost.org/pricing/)

This does not seem like a per-user pricing, which would give Ghost a benefit
of doubt. This is clear tiers that consumer has to explicitly buy.

------
jasonvorhe
I'd be very interested in their take on this. This is totally unlike John and
I'd hope someone on his team would intervene if he were to act in such a
manner.

But I'm still surprised that someone signs up for a specific plan, exceeds the
plan's limitations, gets 7 days off warning, and is then openly complaining
about that practice, as if it were the first time a company ever had that
business model. You don't sign up for AWS and then don't get to create
resources unless you top up your account first.

Of course Ghost could add such a feature, but how many of their customers are
asking for it? From the looks of it, not many.

It's also funny how he was ready to spend hundreds of dollars on his project,
but the people who host it, maintain it and make sure it's highly available
don't deserve more of his money, despite him exceeding the maximum amount of
users of the plan he chose. Instead, he complains about a totally fair warning
of 7 days before he even gets charged more. "What if I didn't read my email in
7 days" is like saying that you don't open your physical mailbox regularly and
you don't deserve to get a warning for a due invoice. If you do business
online, read your mail.

I'm curious how John or Ghost will react. I'm sure there's more to this story.

~~~
Mandatum
The pricing doesn't scale linearly, this is an upgrade because he exceeded
single metric (staff users). If it scaled linearly, it would have gone from
$29 to $43.50 - not $99. This practice is a dark pattern. There isn't a single
mainstream service out there that pulls this type of shit without catching
flak for it - the likes of AT&T, etc.

This is a poorly implemented feature where they claim to "Only pay for what
you actually use, never worry about traffic spikes"[0] .. but you have to read
into each plan to see the other metrics this applies to. Works great for users
who over-subscribe but terribly for those who don't.

Ghost should be doing this manually for users who don't exceed their bandwidth
caps - there's no charge for them, and they're just going to be eating any
good will they had from the community (which up until recently was pretty
good). Just bar access to additional staff accounts. They're being called out
for poor tiering and upgrade practices, the 7 day notice is laughable when
they even talk about 3 month rolling averages in the front.

[0][https://ghost.org/pricing/](https://ghost.org/pricing/)

------
webkike
Neither side looks good here, but it sure is bad business for ghost to do
this, it kinda makes me immediately exclude using their services for anything.

------
arnvald
As a paid Ghost.org user this makes me feel a bit uneasy. I realize that's
just a one case and maybe the only one ever; also I wouldn't use such a harsh
tone as OP in the email and on Twitter (maybe it's not the best way to handle
pricing of staff users, but I wouldn't call it "extremely shady").

Still, the fact that CEO could just jump in and delete my site makes me
concerned. Do I need to regularly back up all my content in case it gets
suddenly deleted?

~~~
ColinWright
You should _always_ have a copy of your own data.

 _Always_

 _Without exception_

Your service provider may get hacked and lose all their data, or may have a
disk failure and lose all their data, or abruptly go into administration and
have your data inaccessible.

Why would you _not_ have a copy of your data? 8TB disks are cheap, buy 3 and
rotate them. "rsync" is quick and efficient.

You should _always_ have a copy of your own data.

~~~
arnvald
Yeah, you're totally right!

I think what I tried to say is that normally I have certain trust that the
company managing my data has their own backup, so my own backup is kind of a
last resort. While if they delete my data on purpose, then my backup is the
only option left.

------
fastball
I think the Ghost response should've been toned down _a lot_ , but I also
disagree with the author that the initial behavior was "shady".

There are _loads_ of services that charge you when you use more than the pre-
defines limits of your current pricing tier and don't just shut you down.
That's not shady at all. I don't think I've ever seen anyone else complain
[edit]that this is sleazy[/edit] for _any_ service, much less Ghost.

~~~
tchaffee
People complain about this all the time. AWS is the most common example that
comes to mind.

~~~
fastball
You're right, I meant complain that it is "shady" or "sleazy". People get
annoyed by a lack of hard limits you can set, but it's not "shady" – you are
literally paying for your usage of the product. It's not like they're making
you pay for something you're not using (which is when I would start to call
something "shady").

~~~
tchaffee
I consider AWS' almost indecipherable usage billing to be shady. I very much
doubt I'm alone. It's next to impossible to predict your AWS usage bill for
anything beyond a very basic setup.

What's annoying is the solution is a simple radio button: bill me for what I
use or stop my service when I go over limits.

Who does it benefit to not have that hard limit? The customer or business? The
answer is why it feels shady.

~~~
fastball
AWS isn't psychic. They don't know what you're going to use, so of course they
can't predict what it will cost.

Their fees are out there in the open, if you know how much you are going to
use AWS it is actually trivially to calculate how much it will cost you.

They even have price calculators.

Also, not having an option doesn't mean a company has intentionally done that
because it benefits them.

------
dependenttypes
The old text has been deleted now.
[https://archive.is/MdOfw](https://archive.is/MdOfw) and
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200815110730/https://postapath...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200815110730/https://postapathy.substack.com/p/i-was-
building-a-new-website-for) provide the old version.

~~~
avery42
Really weird that the author decided to delete the entire article, instead of
just placing the update above the old contents.

------
dazhbog
This CEO needs to learn how to take criticism like the BBC rice lady.

~~~
sbierwagen
Googling, apparently this refers to
[https://www.intheknow.com/2020/07/31/a-bbc-cooks-
upsetting-r...](https://www.intheknow.com/2020/07/31/a-bbc-cooks-upsetting-
rice-recipe-is-stirring-controversy-online/)

------
Wronnay
Well, that makes John O’Nolan the Elon Musk of web publishing (from a shitty
tweets perspective)

------
simplyinfinity
Oh wow, that's some very bad practices. Kicking out a user who criticizes you
a bit about something shady is ought to not end well (in PR point of view)

I had similar experience with New Relic.

They don't restrict you on the amount of agents you add based on what you pay,
so you have to manually purchase licenses for agents. So by a mistake we were
paying for 3-4 agents but were using 6-7. A year later we get a email from
sales guy "pay us 10k or sign a 1 year contract for our services"

We ditched them a day before our contract ended. Would never use them again.

~~~
Hamuko
That doesn't sound at all bad. You were using more resources than you were
paying for and they asked you to upgrade afterwards. I'm assuming that they
didn't force you to automatically upgrade.

~~~
luckylion
> That doesn't sound at all bad.

"Wait for a year until the bill is high enough instead of telling them after a
week that they probably have missed adding those licences and it's going to
cost them $x more if they wish to keep using those extra users". Yeah, sounds
not bad at all.

~~~
Hamuko
I don't think New Relic does retroactive charging. I think we were using more
New Relic resources than we had paid for by accident and nothing really came
out of it. We just fixed the issue and continued with the plan.

------
Normille
The moral of the story is; host your own stuff on your own server and stop
giving Ghost, Medium, WordPress, Facebook, Twitter... etc. etc. the power to
decide what gets published on the internet.

~~~
Wronnay
Yeah - and being in control is also cheaper than these expensive subscriptions
...

------
sradman
Irate customers can be a treasure trove of information but indulging irate
customers incentivizes some to game the company's goodwill.

I think this complaint is of the first variety. Ultimately, the question is
how to flexibly enforce the limits associated with tiered plans: strict
enforcement vs. flexible limits with e-mail notified auto upgrades.

The Ghost CEO should be asking his team if they can improve their current
flexible e-mail notified auto upgrade approach.

------
g_p
This seems like an opportunity Ghost should have taken to listen and learn -
it sounds like the "on ramp" for their up-sell is just too slippery, and
people end up on the "on ramp" without realising. There is then a significant
(3x) uptick in monthly fee.

This strikes me as a missed opportunity to offer the discounted (paid
annually) rate to the customer if they're wanting to upgrade, and a missed
opportunity to improve the product experience so users don't add new users and
unwittingly exceed their plan's allowance.

Given the addition of a staff user involves user interaction, this could
actually be used as an opportunity to get the user to select their plan to
upgrade to, to enable this. Presumably ghost hoped to use inertia to slide
users into more expensive plans, and this understandably upsets users.

The response from Ghost however is disappointing and sadly emphasises my
concerns around the growing reliance on "SaaS" business models. Given Ghost is
open source, hopefully someone will see the opportunity for a more
straightforward and transparent way of pricing and doing business, as the
response here suggests there may be a small market for it.

~~~
HenryBemis
As per the "$100 startup", one should drop the 20% of clients that take up 80%
of your time, and focus the ones that are cost effective (noise-free profit).
They may have (or not) learned their lesson and gave a full refund and closed
the door.

As a precaution/suggestion, when I work on an app (a website is a different
thing but the analogy remains), I take a backup not (just) at the EOD, but
"every now and then". It could be something simple such as zipping the folder
with the xcode project (and files-images-etc), screenshots every now and then,
so my time is not completely wasted.

Ghost does have shitty controls (and probably practices as the article
implies), it cannot be that they "forgot" to limit the value of number X to
>=2 by accident. It's the typical scummy practice so you slip, they catch you
red-handed and then charge you it since you already got used to using 4+
accounts.

On the other hand, the author is also a bit shady. He knows that the limit is
2, creates 4, gets the warning, DOES NOT get charged, and then nags about it.
Tried to cheat and got caught by someone (equally) unethical?

------
simonebrunozzi
> UPDATE: I have received all my data and a full refund, and I am now self-
> hosting my website. I no longer have any beef with John O'Nolan and Ghost. I
> wish them all the best.

Still a pity that the original blog post is no longer there.

------
anpago
A good example, where biting your tongue then steping outside. Before pressing
send for all parties was probably a wise lesson.

------
at_a_remove
Remember when the Cloudflare CEO "woke up in a bad mood" one morning and
dumped a customer? And we said it was a one-off, but it turned out not to be.

I'm guessing that stuff like this happens a lot, and Twitter serves as both a
cause of provocation and notification of mechanism. We just may not have been
witness to this before.

------
oliv__
Such a non-story. The CEO fired one of his customers who was being annoying.
Great, all the power to him. And great that it's being published so all of the
other users who feel like ranting about Ghost on twitter before getting a
reply from support know what to expect.

Refreshing in this politically correct world

------
lasky
need to add to their TOS:

“if we think you are a dick we reserve the right to make emotionally
overreactive decisions like canceling and refunding your account”

also, to OP.. maybe try being nicer ?

------
mhaberl
pg mentions this on twitter: [1]

>If you want your startup to succeed, treat your users the opposite of the way
this one does:

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1294601723437289472](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1294601723437289472)

~~~
throwawaysea
Broken link?

~~~
mhaberl
I guess he deleted the tweet, can't find it anymore

------
taosx
I can't say I agree with the actions of both the Author and the CEO. It wasn't
the nicest thing to go on twitter bad-mouthing when you're using the service
and still planning to do so, 7 days notice was enough (google,amazon cloud
offering bite you instantly). It wasn't right to delete your account but from
a business perspective I would also prefer to end it (not this way) with a bad
customer early so I can focus on other things. I both provide and I'm a
customer of different online services...so I get both perspectives but some
customers are impossible (they want everything for free and are still not
satisfied)

~~~
tarr11
It appears they were paying $36/ month and were getting upgraded to $99/ month

------
Jabbles
I am confused; what is a "staff user"? Does the UI allow you to add them
without saying "2 is your limit"?

The CEO tweeted that the traffic doesn't matter, but the email clearly says
they are limited to 100k views. What's going on?

~~~
woutr_be
The email says that OP is using 4 staff users, where his plan only allows for
2. So the CEO is correct in saying this had nothing to do with traffic. Staff
users are the same as team members.

Why OP was allowed to create more staff users than his plan allowed is kinda
strange.

~~~
DrScump

      Why OP was allowed to create more staff users than his plan allowed is kinda strange.
    

Not at all. You have two staff users. You need to replace one. This allows you
to create the replacement _before_ having to delete the one being replaced.
Quite friendly, actually.

~~~
woutr_be
That seems like an extremely rare situation, and even then, I don't see why
you have to create the replacement before deleting the one being replaced. And
even if it was for this purpose, that doesn't explain why he could create 4
when his plan only allowed for 2.

My best guess it's that it's meant to be this way so they can easily upsell.

~~~
hug
The actual answer is that it’s unique staff users who log in per month, not
unique number of logins that _exist_.

You can create an account for everyone you occasionally work with, so long as
you only log in with two of those accounts in any given month.

~~~
woutr_be
> The actual answer is that it’s unique staff users who log in per month, not
> unique number of logins that exist.

That's a pretty weird way of handling such feature, and would make it
extremely easy to go over the limit. Why not just limit the number of logins
one can create.

------
exnuber
So, if I follow this correctly... You sign up for a service, choose an account
type that has restrictions, you exceed those, they have a soft limit with
known and communicated consequences, they reach out how to avoid the
consequence, you do nothing, and now you are angry?

What else should the company have done? Remove your additional accounts that
exceeded the limits? Or, just allow over-usage without consequence? It's
totally unclear what you think should have happened. I think the CEO actually
responded very adequately. The owner of postapathy went over limits, they
notified, and when no action was taken, their account are suspended, how is
that not fair?

~~~
Hates_
It says that they believe they shouldn't be allowed to add users if their
service level doesn't allow it.

What's not clear from the article is how the extra charges of adding users is
communicated. If you have two users and you attempt to add a third, does the
site say "Your plan allows X users. By adding another, your plan you will be
upgraded to Y which is $99", or does it say nothing, allow you to perform the
action, and hope that you don't notice the email some time in the future. If
so then, I see that as a bit of a dark pattern, others may believe that's
perfectly acceptable.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
As I understand it, it's the number of unique logins rather than accounts in
existence that matters. It would still be good to have a "you've created more
accounts than can login" on the final creation, and a warning on the final
login to the effect of "this will incur additional charges".

------
zxcvbn4038
CEOs have bad days too. At least it was a human acting with cause and not an
algorithm that killed his site with no explanation and no recourse. They gave
him his money back instead of holding it forever.

~~~
asddubs
and the CEO also didn't go their house and shoot them in the face

------
Grimm1
So the actions the CEO took are inexcusable but OP's communications were very
accusatory and then tweeting about it before any resolution could be handled
via email was a dick move but the CEO should never have responded the way he
did. "makes you look like an asshole." is not at all a tactful way of handling
criticism thrown at your company. You're both wrong in my book the CEO was
just more wrong and the actions of deleting your account like that is a big no
no.

------
0xfaded
Geeeze, is complaining on Twitter really the first thing people do these days?
What could they possibly hope to get out of it?

No, most people do not post on Twitter when first reaching out to support.

~~~
jcheng
That line really rubbed me the wrong way too. I think lots of people these
days have their self-expression dial turned way up and their empathy dial
turned way down.

------
matthewfelgate
I hate hate hate hate hate this shady behaviour from web hosting type
companies. F __k them. F __k f __k f __k them. These are the companies that
make life joyless.

------
wruza
As of now, what we have here is a finished process of firing a customer, who
got their money back and got their data back. Nothing was deleted or withheld.

The quick toxic behavior got what it deserved (except for insults, which I
find unnecessary). Learn your lessons, both sides. Be polite and give time to
respond, don't act quickly, and always part ways with people who think
mindless emotion or self-centered thinking is a good part of business.

~~~
luckylion
> and got their data back

 _after_ going viral, apparently. Once again proving that you need social
media to make these kinds of businesses behave ethically.

~~~
wruza
They went "viral" immediately _before_ the conflict, so that doesn't prove
anything. The fact that ghost sent them data shows that nothing was "deleted",
only suspended. This whole situation rests on the fact that one emotional
abuser of plan limits went to their mob immediately and then bombarded ghost
with no time to respond.

Personally, I do not even believe that someone "works so hard" that they can
forget what limits they chose, when they made a clear decision on which plan
to use. It seems to be as shitty customer behavior as ghost ceo's answers at
the very least. I also believe that if they sent an email asking for data
after being suspended, or, after being charged for a new plan, sent an email
asking for a refund or a discount because they "didn't" know, they'd get it.
Everyone loves a good service, but nobody likes abusive personalities who
scream, shout and accuse without a good reason, for things that didn't even
happen yet. That's a definition of an asshole.

What I can't believe is that almost everyone here jumps to one-sided
conclusions after an alarmist blog post that is few hours old. Good lesson on
how to deal with them though (although I already knew what to do in a similar
situation).

------
Alir3z4
At GoNevis.com we don't suspend or delete anyone accounts over charges. We
simply send several reminders and if needed a personal email.

In any case the blog will be still online. Never ever deleted or suspended. If
no action by user over 30 days, we downgrade to free and still don't touch any
of their configuration that they have applied over the paid account.

------
Havoc
Both parties sound less than reasonable frankly.

------
agustif
If you would like alternatives, a friend of mine is building a great
decentralized blogging platform.

[https://github.com/pradel/sigle](https://github.com/pradel/sigle)
[https://app.sigle.io/login](https://app.sigle.io/login)

------
nix23
>I also decided to tweet about it - because that’s what people do, right?

This is where he canceled every good outcome from his problems.

------
blfr
If you like Ghost but not Ghost.org, you can host it yourself. It's only
slightly more difficult than Wordpress.

[https://ghost.org/docs/install/ubuntu/](https://ghost.org/docs/install/ubuntu/)

------
onli
Use Digitalocean or one of the other hosters and host your own blog. You pay a
fraction, you will be able to handle a lot of visitors (most likely more than
you will ever see), and you will not lose access as easily. Especially if you
use your own domain.

------
kissgyorgy
This is why you should OWN YOUR CONTENT instead of putting it in some randos
hand.

~~~
jasonvorhe
So you're advocating for having people host their stuff in their own data
centers with their own uplinks, right?

~~~
kissgyorgy
Sure a blog needs a data center... but actually, yes. More and more companies
using Nextcloud to host their data.

------
rotterdamdev
They were right to ban him and refund. Nobody needs customers who who wolf on
Twitter and call your business shady.

You don't need every user. Feel free to remove the problematic ones, and save
yourself the trouble.

------
nurettin
Moral of the story is, if you want to use Ghost as a hosted blogging service,
be extremely polite, or else John will piss on you on twitter, then come to
your house, trash the place and kick the dog.

------
throwawaysea
This is very disappointing. Are there any alternative platforms that are
simply hands off (censorship free) with content as an explicit policy and
commitment to their customers?

------
klelatti
Just to point out that Ghost is of course open source so that it should be
possible to continue using Ghost but self hosted (always assuming that he
still had the relevant assets).

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
That's useful general info, but I don't think it will help the original author
who is a self-described 'non-coder'.

------
msh
Seems that the website removed the original article.

------
swiley
If you use SaaS you’ve got to back your stuff up locally. If the app you’re
using can’t handle this then don’t use it.

------
gt2
Maybe you can get it back- possibly they just deactivated you and have it on a
backup. You can migrate elsewhere.

------
tukinaf
Use [https://bearblog.dev](https://bearblog.dev) instead

------
krmmalik
Never liked John O Nolan. Way before BLM he tweeted something showcasing his
white privilege and when I called him out on it he incredibly dismissive. He
seems to be running his organisation in a similar manner. The man is very
defensive and has many blind spots.

This is why Ghost.org for me isn't never even a consideration when it comes to
choosing a blogging platform.

------
villgax
Damn I laughed at the entire fiasco & then worried a lot about such tactics
near the end.

------
hosker4u
When two petulant people meet.

------
jonny383
Ghost flopped in its attempts to unseat WordPress / Medium, and they've had
how many years?

I'd be cranky if I were the CEO too.

~~~
captn3m0
My running-theory is that it will remain this way until ghost's OSS version
supports multi-tenancy properly:
[https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/issues/1484](https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/issues/1484)

Wordpress took off, because you could support multiple sites for various
clients with a single-stack - enabling third-parties to run Wordpress-hosting
websites easily.

With Ghost, unless you are Ghost.com, you need to run one-container per blog
you have, which is ridiculous.

~~~
bishalb
Not just that but the cheap shared hostings offering dirt cheap setups to run
wordpress sites on. And ghost honestly is not as feature rich and customizable
as wordpress. WordPress is a full blown cms and so much more than a blogging
platform.

------
plplok
24/7 Priority Support is a feature in the $199 monthly Business tier

Thus I think the OP has been undercharged.

------
phanindra_veera
unacceptable

~~~
willpegan
Disagree, everyone wants to earn high wages but get everything for free. You
can’t have it both ways. Neither party looks good, but freeloaders complaining
about having to pay is worse.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
They weren't a freeloader, they were paying $36/month.

------
matthewfelgate
I hate hate hate hate hate this shady behaviour from web hosting type
companies. Fuck them. Fuck fuck fuck them.

~~~
C19is20
Your double-amended-post reminds me....

------
o909
Ghost is ridiculously irrelevant these days. Just use next.js or docusaurus
and host it for free on cloudflare workers or vercel.

~~~
monkin
Because everyone is a developer these days, even your grandparents.

~~~
o909
Everyone here is a developer. This is technical community and this post is
here because OP is a dev. Ghost is 5 years behind anything that is relevant
now not to mention it is extremely expensive for what it does. It's simply a
free money printer for its owner.

------
nix23
What i really don't get, for 36$ you can get a dedicated server with 32GB Ram
a 8 coreXeon a 256GB SSD and 2x2TB HDD and unlimited Bandwith...why the hell
would anyone pay so much for just a nodeJS-SaaS?

~~~
arnvald
Because not everyone wants to manage their server. I use paid Ghost plan and I
know I could save like $200/y by using my own hosting, but I want to just
focus on writing, so I'd rather save some time than money.

~~~
nix23
Yes i understand you, fair point for sure. But what i don't understand is the
Price-tag of Ghost.

------
tvbuzz
Calling Ghost ‘shady’ is not ‘polite’.

It’s rude.

Good lesson for anyone looking for trouble.

~~~
emj
He doesn't call anyone shady, it's the practice of billing someone 3 times the
amount of the last bill with just 7 days notice is shady. Not reading emails
for 7 days is standard for me at least, I try to be effective with my own
time.

~~~
jasonvorhe
The same argument doesn't work for your physical inbox, right?

