** Scary Ghost Story Warning **

Sitting comfortably?

This story starts with a boy preparing for his next quest and seeking a diamond sword and emerald armor to be victorious.

As the boy was fearless, he had heard that a ghost may provide him with the tools he needs to complete his quest.

He sets out on his journey to discover this ghost but comes across a wise old man who asks what the boy seeks. After hearing the boys tale, the wise man suggests he should be very wary of the ghost as it may not be what it seems.

The boy does not believe the wise man, but thanks him anyway and continues on his journey.

After a few hours traveling the boy finds the ghost and seeks out its powers. At first it looks like the ghost will deliver exactly what he will need to complete his quest, excited the boy forgets the wise mans words and makes a deal with the ghost for a few gold coins.

A few hours later and things are not what they seem. He has a sword and armor but its not a diamond sword or emerald armor. The ghost explains that in order to have such items, he will have pay many gold coins, everyday, and that he must also have a wooden sword and leather armor to start with. The boy does not have such items and cant get them until he completes his quest, deflated the boy leaves with his paper sword and cardboard armor that the ghost has provided to try and win the quest anyway.

The boy looses. The End.

*****

This story could relate to any provider, but in this instance I am referring to ghost.org - and in their words: "Create your own platform on the web. Ghost is a powerful app for new-media creators to publish, share, and grow a business around their content. It comes with modern tools to build a website, publish content, send newsletters & offer paid subscriptions to members. Don't settle for another basic profile that looks just like everyone else. Make it yours."

The boy is me, and I am looking for a platform for my personal blog as a home for my many blog posts on email deliverability. I was recommended Ghost.org and it is a nice platform, does everything I need except there is a sting in its tail.

If you add a custom domain (which anyone would) then they will not apply SPF & DKIM to your outbound emails unless you are on their top price plan, send over 50k emails per month and pay them $50 per month extra.

Just to be clear, adding SPF & DKIM to your emails is best practice and without it (as in my case as I have setup a DMARC policy of reject) emails will be rejected.

Their advice to me was to remove my DMARC settings or meet the threshold and pay the extra.

Firstly, for a platform which sends out millions of emails a month to suggest I dont adhere to best practice is reckless as it opens my domain up to spoofing and will affect where my email lands in the mailbox - the junk folder trap! Having a DMARC policy of reject is best practice.

Secondly, to apply a premium and insist on a extremely high threshold just makes them out to be elitist.

So what? you think - big companies do this all the time. Except, Ghost is a not for profit organization whose mission is to provide tools for their community, not profit for investors.

I asked for this strategy to be reviewed and this was the response form their head of support "Whilst I appreciate the sentiment and am grateful for the feedback and candour, we won't be taking forward a conversation about email delivery strategy with you today."

I also emailed their leadership team and reached out on linkedIn, and received nothing but silence.

So, I am calling out ghost.org (also ghost.io) as clearly they do not care about delivering best practice and certainly dont care about customers until they are big enough to fund their project, even then, best practice commands an ongoing $600 fee per year for something which is setup once and applied automatically.

As for me, whilst ghost is a great platform, their deliverability strategy really sucks, so until that changes, I will be adding them to my "wall of shame" and I will be recommending alternatives going forward.