Availability and pricing

Cloud	Version	Software price	Last build
AWS Marketplace EC2 AMI · all commercial regions	6.72.0	$0.05/hr Recommended instance: t3.medium · 5-day free trial	2026-10-23	Listing ↗
Azure Marketplace VM image · plan payg-gen2 · Gen2	6.67.0	$0.028/vCPU/hr Recommended VM: Standard_D2s_v3	2026-10-02	Listing ↗

Software price only; cloud infrastructure is billed separately by the provider. Prices in USD.

Image facts

Base OS	Ubuntu 24.04 LTS
Hardening	CIS Level 1, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (tailored)
License	MIT
Upstream	Ghost Foundation
Machine-readable	product.json · catalog.json

What is Ghost

Ghost is an open-source professional publishing platform from the Ghost Foundation, built as a Node.js application. It provides a clean writing and editing experience, customizable themes and templating, native membership and subscription management, email newsletters, SEO controls, and a full Content API and Admin API plus webhooks for integrations. Content, settings, and members are persisted in a MySQL 8.0 database; images and themes live on the local filesystem. Ghost is a self-hosted alternative to hosted publishing and newsletter services, with no per-seat fees and no vendor lock-in. This image runs Ghost on Node.js 22 with a bundled MySQL 8.0 database. MIT license. Ghost is a trademark of the Ghost Foundation; this independently hardened image is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Ghost Foundation.

What the Lynxroute image adds

Security hardening:

Unique MySQL database password generated per instance at first boot
TLS terminated at nginx on 443; Ghost bound to 127.0.0.1:2368 only - never exposed directly
Bundled MySQL 8.0 bound to 127.0.0.1 only
Owner account created on first visit to the admin panel - you choose the email and password; no pre-seeded administrator credential is shipped
Update-check telemetry disabled
UFW firewall - ports 22 (SSH), 80 (HTTP redirect plus certificate validation), and 443 (HTTPS) only
fail2ban, AppArmor
CVE scan - every image is scanned for vulnerabilities before release

OS hardening (CIS Level 1):

CIS Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Level 1 benchmark applied via ansible-lockdown
auditd, SSH hardening, Kernel hardening, IMDSv2 enforced

Compliance artifacts:

SBOM - CycloneDX 1.6 at /etc/lynxroute/sbom.json
CIS Conformance Report at /etc/lynxroute/cis-report.html
CIS Tailored Profile at /usr/share/doc/lynxroute/CIS_TAILORED_PROFILE.md

Deploy

Launch in one command

Credentials are generated at first boot and written to /root/ghost-credentials.txt.

AWS CLIAzure CLI

# subscribe once on the AWS Marketplace listing, then:
aws ec2 run-instances \
  --image-id resolve:ssm:/aws/service/marketplace/prod-dcpo3yh5qzhd6/latest \
  --instance-type t3.medium --key-name my-key --security-group-ids sg-xxxxxxxx

# accept the plan terms once, then:
az vm image terms accept --publisher lynxroute --offer ghost --plan payg-gen2
az vm create -g my-rg -n ghost --size Standard_D2s_v3 \
  --image lynxroute:ghost:payg-gen2:latest --admin-username azureuser --generate-ssh-keys

Release notes

Latest release

The most recent release with notes; the full release history is in product.json.

Ghost 6.72.0

AWS · 2026-10-23

Ghost updated 6.67.0 -> 6.72.0. MIT unchanged; database migrations run automatically on upgrade
Rebuilt Admin interface (posts list, editor and settings), member location maps, Stripe Checkout customisation and editor font options
Fixes a scheduled-post publishing race and a paid-signup issue
Rebuilt on the latest CIS Level 1 hardened Ubuntu 24.04 LTS base, picking up every operating-system security update published since the previous build