We built Major Matters on Ghost. It served us well. The editor was clean, the SEO was strong, and the self-hosted ethos appealed to the part of us that likes owning our tools.
But Ghost doesn't help you grow.
After 34 articles, we hit a ceiling that better writing alone won't break through. Major Matters needs growth infrastructure, and Ghost doesn't have it.
Why We're Leaving Ghost
Ghost's market share among newsletter platforms dropped from eight percent to four percent in the past year. That trend matters, because a shrinking ecosystem means fewer integrations, slower feature development, and a community that's gradually looking elsewhere.
More practically, Ghost lacks the tools we need for the next phase: no subscriber acquisition marketplace, no built-in ad network, no native referral programme, and no email automation beyond "send to all." Every growth lever we wanted required duct-taping third-party services together.
Beehiiv offers all of those natively. Boosts let us acquire verified subscribers through a two-sided marketplace. The ad network provides a revenue stream from day one (once we cross the subscriber threshold). A/B testing on subject lines, automated welcome sequences, and a recommendation network round it out.
The maths was straightforward: Ghost Pro at roughly the same monthly cost, with zero growth tools, versus Beehiiv Scale with all of them.
What Changes for You
Honestly, not much. Your subscription carries over automatically. You don't need to re-subscribe, re-confirm, or do anything at all. The articles keep arriving in your inbox from the same address, with the same voice, covering the same intersection of payments, AI, and commerce.
The website URL stays the same: majormatters.co. Article links will look slightly different (a /p/ in the path), but we've set up redirects so old links still work.
The Honest Part
We're doing this migration live, and there might be a few hiccups along the way.
Some things we're watching for: old article links that don't redirect cleanly, formatting quirks from the content import, a temporary dip in search rankings while Google re-indexes the new URL structure, and the inevitable "that button moved" moment when we publish our first article through the new system.
We'd rather be transparent about this than pretend the switch happened seamlessly overnight. If you spot a broken link, a formatting glitch, or something that looks off, reply to any email and let us know. We read every reply.
What Comes Next
The migration itself is just the starting line. Over the coming weeks, we'll be activating the growth tools that motivated this move: Boosts to expand our subscriber base, a referral programme so you can share Major Matters with colleagues who'd find it useful, and automated welcome sequences so new readers get the best of our back catalogue straight away.
We're also exploring Beehiiv's ad network as a way to keep Major Matters sustainable without a paywall. More on that when we have data to share.
The content strategy doesn't change. Payments, AI, commerce, decoded. Just on better rails.
Have you migrated a newsletter between platforms? What went well, and what broke? Hit reply, we'd love to hear your war stories.
Charlie Major is a Product Development Manager at Mastercard. The views and opinions expressed in Major Matters are his own and do not represent those of Mastercard.