As a long time happy Ghost user, self hosting is far easier than most stacks, and I just configured a new self-hosted instance for a friend this past week (5.x). Aside from a bug with the Let’s Encrypt auto-config (I had to fix the path to the cert in the generated nginx config), it was otherwise an extremely straightforward process.
I used the mailgun integration for mail, which involved adding a few lines to a config file and typing `ghost restart`.
Self hosting will always involve some fiddling, but I’ve fiddled less with Ghost than almost every other thing I’ve self hosted over the decades. Maybe I’m just lucky.
I had the same experience. I've been self-hosting Ghost sites for years now. Cloudflare + Ghost is a really great combination, you can cache your whole site and set up a webhook to invalidate when you update/add something.
I used the mailgun integration for mail, which involved adding a few lines to a config file and typing `ghost restart`.
Self hosting will always involve some fiddling, but I’ve fiddled less with Ghost than almost every other thing I’ve self hosted over the decades. Maybe I’m just lucky.