Ghost V6 Review: Built-In Analytics and ActivityPub Integration

Ghost V6 officially rolled out on August 4th, delivering some long-awaited upgrades along with a couple of big surprises. A few dream features are still on the wishlist — like true Custom Fields, a built-in Media Library, or native multilingual support with front-end language switching — but this release still has plenty to get excited about.

The two headline additions are:

1. Web analytics built into Ghost Admin — not “native” in the strictest sense, as it’s powered by an external platform called Tinybird, but seamlessly integrated for a smooth, out-of-the-box experience. Ghost chose this approach for good reasons (more on that later).
2. ActivityPub integration — connecting Ghost to the decentralized Fediverse.

Personally, I’m especially happy about analytics. For years, Ghost’s clean dashboard showed only newsletter performance, great for email campaigns, but web traffic data was missing entirely. Now, with just a glance, you can see how your site is performing without third-party scripts or plugins.

Ghost is steadily moving beyond “just another CMS” into a complete publishing platform for businesses, creators, and communities. Features that WordPress often locks behind paywalls and plugin licenses — from SEO tools and subscriber management to analytics and a beautiful, intuitive UI — are now built right into Ghost.

As a developer, I still have my wishlist for future versions. But from a business perspective, Ghost V6 is a strong step forward, putting more power into one clean, open-source package.

Integration of TinyBird Webtraffic Analytics

Ghost has finally added web traffic analytics directly into the CMS! To be honest, when I first saw Ghost’s beautiful dashboard, I assumed those charts already displayed real-time website traffic. I was wrong — for years, Ghost only showed exhaustive newsletter stats and member revenue charts.

Now, Ghost has everything included. This is exciting because good-quality analytics usually cost money. Many site owners rely on services like Clicky, while free solutions like Google Analytics often raise privacy concerns and may not fully comply with GDPR.

Ghost’s analytics, powered by Tinybird, take a different approach:

• Cookie-free and privacy-focused: no cookies are used, so you don’t need consent banners.
• Data anonymization: IP addresses, user agents, and other metadata are anonymized and handled securely.
• Encrypted storage: Data is encrypted using rotating salts and stored in Tinybird’s database.
• Real-time reporting: The anonymized and encrypted data is processed and fetched instantly in Ghost Admin, giving you live insights without compromising user privacy.

In short, Ghost now offers fast, reliable, and privacy-conscious analytics right out of the box.

You might be wondering: do I still need Google Analytics, Clicky, or a similar solution? The answer is: yes and no — it depends on your needs.

Ghost’s built-in analytics is solid for general traffic tracking, but it is relatively basic. It does not support advanced features like custom event tracking on the front-end. If you require those capabilities, you’ll still need a more established third-party analytics service.

However, if you don’t have such specialized needs, Ghost’s native analytics might be all you need — fast, privacy-friendly, and integrated directly into your admin dashboard.

What is ActivityPub?

ActivityPub is an open web standard that allows different social media platforms to communicate with each other — even if they’re built by different companies, run on different servers, or serve entirely separate communities.

It’s the backbone of the Fediverse, a network of decentralized platforms like Mastodon (Twitter alternative), PeerTube (YouTube alternative), and many more. In the Fediverse, you can follow, post, like, and comment across platforms without creating a new account for each one.

Think of it like email: you can send a message from Gmail to Outlook or ProtonMail without thinking twice. ActivityPub applies the same principle to social media — open, connected, and free from a single corporate owner.

How Ghost Integrates with the Fediverse

Ghost integrates with the Fediverse by connecting your publication to an external ActivityPub server (built on Fedify) that handles federation. Once enabled, your Ghost site becomes a Fediverse account that others can follow from Mastodon or other compatible platforms.

Ghost sites can follow each other, reply to posts, like content, and share updates — just like any other Fediverse participant. Published posts can be automatically shared to your Fediverse followers, and Ghost also includes a Notes feature for posting short updates directly to the Fediverse without publishing them on your main site.

BlueSky Integration

Ghost’s team didn’t forget about Bluesky users either — another notable decentralized social network. Bluesky runs on a completely different protocol (AT Protocol) rather than ActivityPub, so direct federation isn’t possible. However, Ghost has included a clever bridging feature that can be toggled inside Ghost Admin, allowing your publication to connect with Bluesky as well.

Limitations: No Connection to Existing Accounts

Currently, Ghost’s social web integration works like this: when you enable ActivityPub (or the Bluesky bridge) and set up your handle — for example, @index@noiseamplifier.com — Ghost creates a new Fediverse/Bluesky account for your publication.

This is great for keeping your blog’s identity consistent across platforms, but it also means that if you already have an established account on Mastodon, Bluesky, or another supported network, Ghost won’t connect to that existing account. Instead, you’ll end up with a second, publication-specific profile.

For some users, that’s exactly what they want — a dedicated account for their publication, separate from their personal one. But for others, especially those who are already active on these networks, it might feel limiting. Directly linking Ghost to an existing account would be more flexible.

What does it all mean for Self-hosters

As you can imagine, operating Ghost has become a bit more complex — there are now more moving parts that need to be managed. This complexity is likely one reason Ghost(Pro) slightly raised their base prices.

Ghost is also promoting a new recommended deployment method: using Docker Compose. This modern setup simplifies management and ensures consistency, which could mean that the traditional Ghost CLI installation becomes less common over time.

Ghost now consists of multiple core components: the main Ghost application, a Traffic Analysis proxy for Tinybird integration, and ActivityPub servers. The team decided to split these into separate codebases to make development cleaner and more maintainable.

Fortunately, Ghost solved one major pain point of running your own ActivityPub server: you don’t have to host it yourself. Ghost provides a hosted ActivityPub service at https://ap.ghost.org. However, self-hosters should be aware of the service limits:

• Maximum 2,000 followers
• Maximum 2,000 following
• Maximum 100 interactions per day (interactions include posts/notes, replies, likes, and reposts)

If your usage exceeds these limits, you’ll need to switch to self-hosting ActivityPub, which Ghost documents in detail.

Regarding Tinybird, you need to create an account on their website. Fortunately, there’s a free plan, though it comes with limits:

• 10 GB data storage
• 1,000 requests per day

At first, we thought front-end user traffic might count toward these limits. Fortunately, the request quota only applies to loading charts in Ghost Admin. From my testing, a single page refresh in the admin panel fires roughly 15–30 requests, which is quite reasonable.

Conclusion

Ghost V6 marks a significant step forward for the platform. With built-in, privacy-focused analytics powered by Tinybird, site owners can now track traffic without relying on third-party tools that may compromise user privacy. The ActivityPub and Bluesky integration opens the door to the decentralized social web, allowing publications to interact with the Fediverse and syndicate posts to new audiences.

At the same time, Ghost has modernized its deployment strategy, promoting Docker Compose setups and separating key components to make development and maintenance cleaner. While some features — like full custom fields, a media library, and native multilingual support — are still on the wishlist, the platform already offers an impressive suite of tools for publishers and businesses.

Ultimately, Ghost V6 continues to strengthen its position as a comprehensive, privacy-conscious, and business-friendly CMS, balancing usability with modern standards for web publishing and social connectivity. For many users, it may now be everything you need in a single platform.