From Ghost to Directus

We are the Ghost to Directus migration experts

Challenges with Ghost

Key pain points

Ghost is great until you need it to do anything more than “post blog, send newsletter, and beg readers for $5/month.” The moment you step outside that happy path, the whole thing starts feeling painfully bare-bones. There’s no real visual builder, no serious content modeling, and the plugin ecosystem is basically “good luck, build it yourself.”

Hosted plans get expensive fast once memberships grow, and self-hosting turns into a weekend-killing DevOps hobby nobody asked for. If you need anything beyond a clean blog with a paywall, Ghost will politely tap out and tell you to write less ambitious content.

Blogging-centric feature set

Ghost is brilliant for blogs… and very “meh” for anything else. If you need complex content models, workflows, or enterprise-level flexibility, you’ll hit a wall quickly.

Sparse plugin marketplace

There’s no real ecosystem to lean on. Anything outside the basics usually means rolling up your sleeves and writing code yourself.

No visual page builder

If you were hoping to drag, drop, and magically design pages, Ghost politely says “no.” Everything beyond basic layouts needs theme edits.

Custom coding required

Even simple enhancements often require Handlebars or API work. Non-technical teams will run out of road fast.

Limited content modeling

You get posts and pages, that’s pretty much the deal. Anything beyond that is a workaround, not a first-class feature.

Lacks multi-site support

Running multiple sites under one instance isn’t Ghost’s thing. If you’re scaling across regions or brands, you’ll feel boxed in.

Benefits of Directus

Key advantages

Directus instantly wins points with us because, well… it has a rabbit for a logo. But beyond that, it’s genuinely a solid database-first CMS. If you like the idea of a CMS that sits directly on top of your SQL database without any abstractions, Directus feels incredibly natural.

You can self-host it, tweak it endlessly, and treat your schema exactly the way you want. Editors get a no-code admin UI that feels polished, developers get REST and GraphQL out of the box, and teams get workflows, versioning, automations, and proper permission controls. It’s flexible, fast, and a great fit if your content is really just structured data waiting for a smarter interface. If your project revolves around relational data and you want total control from database to API, Directus is one of the cleanest ways to build it.

Intuitive non-technical interface

Editors get a clean, no-code admin panel that feels more like a productivity tool than a CMS. Non-technical teams can handle content updates without pinging developers every five minutes.

Database-agnostic SQL integration

Directus plugs straight into your SQL database and turns it into an API instantly. If your data lives in Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, or SQLite, it just works.

Field-level permission controls

You can lock down every field, table, and action with granular role-based permissions. Perfect for teams that care about security and don’t want interns accidentally deleting production data.

Built-in REST/GraphQL support

Your entire database is instantly exposed as both REST and GraphQL endpoints. Just plug into your frontend and start shipping.

Extensive UI customization

Directus lets you tweak the interface, add custom views, tailor layouts, and build the exact editing experience your team needs. It feels like a CMS you can actually shape instead of fight.

Real-time collaboration tools

Multiple contributors can work together without stepping on each other’s toes. Edits sync instantly, drafts stay clean, and the whole workflow feels built for modern teams, not 2010 intranets.