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HIPAA Compliant Ghost CMS Hosting

We run Ghost for health organisations publishing to patients and members on a single-tenant AWS environment, with the Business Associate Agreement signed within 24 hours on managed tiers. Managed tiers from $199/mo.

How your service fits together

Keep your Ghost members list inside a known boundary

Could your membership list reveal a health condition, and which services receive it?

1

Readers, members and signups

Your users, application choices and external services determine what needs to connect.

Inside your dedicated hosting environment

2

Self-hosted Ghost and integrations

Confirm application maintenance, access and deployment responsibilities during scoping.

3

Members database and post content

Hosting includes encryption, audit logging and tested backups. Plan capacity follows your workload.

Illustrative operating model. Your final architecture and responsibilities are agreed during scoping. Connected applications and services need their own review; a hosting agreement does not establish their suitability.
Discuss your Ghost CMS architecture

Why Ghost CMS needs a HIPAA host, not a generic one

Ghost is a publishing platform with a members database attached. For a health organisation, the membership list is often the sensitive part, not the posts.

A members list is patient data

Ghost stores members, their email addresses and their subscription history. For a clinic newsletter or a condition-specific programme, the mere fact that someone subscribed can reveal a health condition, which makes the list itself sensitive.

Ghost(Pro) is shared infrastructure

The hosted Ghost service is multi-tenant and does not offer a Business Associate Agreement. Self-hosting on an environment dedicated to you is what lets a covered entity document where the member data actually sits.

Email and integrations are an exit route

Newsletters, webhooks and Zapier-style integrations move member data off the platform. We run the infrastructure and the logging around it so the paths out are visible; which integrations you enable stays your call.

Where our responsibility ends

Stated plainly, because knowing this before an incident is worth more than discovering it during one.

We run

  • The AWS account, VPC and network isolation
  • The operating system, patching and hardening
  • Node.js, the process manager, the database and TLS
  • CloudFront, the WAF, encryption, audit logging and backups
  • Monitoring and infrastructure incident response

You run

  • Your Ghost site, theme and members configuration
  • Ghost core and integration updates, unless scoped with us
  • Posts, members, tiers and staff access
  • The newsletter and analytics services you connect and the data you send them

If a problem turns out to be the server, the Node runtime or the infrastructure, open a ticket and we take it. If it is inside Ghost, we tell you what we found and hand it back with recommendations.

HIPAA hosting vs standard hosting

A $10 shared plan is not slightly less compliant; it is categorically different. Most mainstream hosts will not sign a BAA for shared hosting at any price.

Signed BAA before any PHI arrives
Standard Hosting
Not included
HIPAA Compliant
Included
Single-tenant isolation
Standard Hosting
Not included
HIPAA Compliant
Included
Encryption on by default, at rest and in transit
Standard Hosting
Not included
HIPAA Compliant
Included
Audit logs centralized and kept six years
Standard Hosting
Not included
HIPAA Compliant
Included
Encrypted backups with tested restores
Standard Hosting
Not included
HIPAA Compliant
Included
Written responsibility split
Standard Hosting
Not included
HIPAA Compliant
Included

Ghost CMS hosting tiers

Every tier is a single-tenant AWS account with a signed BAA and the same compliance baseline. What changes is capacity.

Help me choose a hosting tier

Choose capacity for your workload, rather than the size of your organization. The published tiers share the compliance baseline described above.

CPU and memory
Consider concurrent requests, background jobs, database work and your application's memory needs. Traffic alone does not tell the whole story.
Storage and backups
Allow room for your application, database, uploads and expected growth. Compare the listed live-storage and backup allocations separately.
Data transfer
Estimate outgoing data from page visits, downloads and integrations, then compare it with the included transfer.
When to size up or scope a custom setup
Review capacity when monitoring shows sustained resource pressure or you expect a workload increase. Availability and recovery goals may require architecture changes, not simply a larger server.

Unsure where to start? Share the requirements you know. An engineer can help you choose an existing tier or scope a custom configuration.

Discuss Ghost CMS capacity with an engineer
  • Starter

    $199/mo

    or $2,269/yr

    Compute
    1 vCPU
    Memory
    4 GB
    Storage
    50 GB
    Backups
    100 GB
    Transfer
    250 GB
    Order Starter
  • Solo

    $349/mo

    or $3,979/yr

    Compute
    2 vCPU
    Memory
    8 GB
    Storage
    100 GB
    Backups
    200 GB
    Transfer
    500 GB
    Order Solo
  • Practice

    $499/mo

    or $5,689/yr

    Compute
    4 vCPU
    Memory
    16 GB
    Storage
    200 GB
    Backups
    400 GB
    Transfer
    1,000 GB
    Order Practice
  • Clinic

    $849/mo

    or $9,679/yr

    Compute
    8 vCPU
    Memory
    32 GB
    Storage
    400 GB
    Backups
    800 GB
    Transfer
    2,000 GB
    Order Clinic
  • Group

    $1,499/mo

    or $17,089/yr

    Compute
    16 vCPU
    Memory
    64 GB
    Storage
    600 GB
    Backups
    1200 GB
    Transfer
    3,000 GB
    Order Group
  • Network

    $2,799/mo

    or $31,909/yr

    Compute
    32 vCPU
    Memory
    128 GB
    Storage
    800 GB
    Backups
    1600 GB
    Transfer
    5,000 GB
    Order Network

What every Ghost CMS tier includes

The same compliance baseline at Solo and at Network. Capacity is the only thing that changes.

  • Single-tenant AWS environment
  • CloudFront CDN in front of every tier
  • Web application firewall
  • EBS storage with 7-day snapshot retention
  • Encryption at rest and in transit
  • Six-year audit logging
  • Tested, encrypted backups
  • Migration included
  • BAA signed within 24 hours of signup
  • 24/7 team, monitoring and infrastructure incident response

Know who owns the next step

Clear scope matters before launch and when you need help.

Hosting operations

Our published managed-hosting baseline includes 24/7 monitoring and infrastructure incident response, patching, logging and tested backups. Application changes and third-party integrations depend on the agreed scope.

Customer support route

Before you commit

Review the BAA, responsibility split, backup and recovery requirements, migration steps and support contacts with us. Tell us which procurement documents your organization needs so we can confirm what is available.

Review scope and documentation

Planning a new service

Quotes and general inquiries use our contact process during business hours. Existing customers should use their account's support instructions for infrastructure incidents.

Contact the team

Ghost CMS hosting questions

Is Ghost HIPAA compliant?
Ghost is neither compliant nor non-compliant on its own. Compliance is a property of the hosting and the operating practice around it. We provide a single-tenant environment, a signed Business Associate Agreement, encryption, audit logging and backups; what you publish and who you collect as members stays your responsibility.
Why can we not just use Ghost(Pro)?
Ghost(Pro) is a shared, multi-tenant service operated by a third party, and it does not sign a Business Associate Agreement. If your members list could reveal a health condition, you need to be able to name who operates the infrastructure holding it and show a BAA with them.
Can we still send newsletters?
Yes. The consideration is that a newsletter provider receives your member list, so it becomes another party handling that data and needs its own agreement with you. We run the hosting side; the choice of email provider and the agreement with them is yours to make.

Find the right Ghost CMS setup

Tell us what you run, what you need to move and who manages the application. We will help you scope capacity and responsibilities before you choose a tier.