Before this page existed, I had the same domain pointed at Ghost. I paid a subscription every month for about a year. It looked professional, it had a proper editor, and I felt like someone who had a website.
It was the wrong tool, and it took me a while to see why — because nothing about it was bad.
What I was actually paying for
Ghost is built for people running a publication. Memberships, paid subscribers, newsletters going out to a list, tiers, recurring revenue. That is a real business and the software is genuinely good at supporting it.
I had none of that. I wrote something every few months. No list, no members, nothing to send. I was renting a printing press to write in a notebook.
The money was not the painful part on its own. The painful part was realising I could not name a single feature I was paying for. Every month it charged me for capability I had never once opened.
The part that actually stung
I stopped paying, and the site went with it. That is not a complaint — it is exactly what a subscription is. But it is worth sitting with, because I do not think I had understood it until it happened.
Months later I went to set this page up and found my domain still pointing at a Ghost address that served nothing. My own DNS was still dutifully forwarding people to a site that no longer existed.
The thing you rent disappears the month you stop paying. The thing you own is a file on your computer.
What I moved to
This page is a single HTML file in a folder. I drag the folder onto Netlify and it is live, with HTTPS, on my own domain. It costs nothing. The only thing I pay for now is the domain itself, which I would have paid for either way.
If Netlify vanished tomorrow, I would drag the same folder somewhere else and be back in ten minutes. That is a very different feeling from watching a year of work live inside somebody's billing system.
The honest trade-off
I am not going to pretend this is better in every way, because it is not.
Ghost gave me an editor. I could write a post from my phone, press publish, and it was live. Now, publishing means editing HTML and redeploying a folder. For someone posting weekly, that friction would kill the habit — and the subscription would be worth every ringgit.
The question is not which is better. It is which one matches what you actually do. I write occasionally, in long form, and I do not send newsletters. For that, a file and a folder is not a compromise. It is the right shape.
What I would tell someone starting out
Buy the domain first. It is the only part that is genuinely yours, it costs about the same as lunch for a year, and it moves with you wherever you host.
Then be honest about what you are building. If you are starting a publication with paying readers, pay for the tool that does that properly. If you are one person who wants somewhere to put your thinking, start with a file. You can always upgrade to the printing press once you have something to print.