You know you need Outpost for your Ghost publication, but you're wondering if you could get more out of it. To help publishers, we hold Office Hours where we share what's new inside Outpost and take questions about growing your publication.
In our September 2026 Office Hours, Outpost co-founder Ryan Singel joined us to share what the team has been shipping and to answer pressing questions. He also demo-ed the new events feature which you can see in action on our website. Ryan works closely with publishers to implement best practices for paid subscriptions, and he's extremely knowledgeable about how to grow a member-backed media business. Read his tips and his answers to publisher questions below.
Watch the recording
Highlights from what Outpost has shipped recently
Campaigns
- Added safeguards so publishers can't accidentally send broken upgrade links (e.g., copy-pasted Ghost links that don't work for existing paying subscribers). Outpost now warns you and forces you to use its own link system, which auto-rewrites links per recipient.
- Campaigns are best used for money-focused, one-off sends (Black Friday, upgrade pushes, free-to-paid conversion), not general announcements, which Ghost email-only sends are best for.
- Campaigns are treated as marketing emails, so marketing opt-outs are respected.
- Learn more about Campaigns
Theme Connect Wizard
- Simplified reconnecting a theme after edits. It no longer requires sending files to the Outpost team manually. Just download your theme from Ghost, upload it to Outpost, and it pushes the changes back.
- An advanced option (found under the carrot toggle) lets technical users connect directly via an Outpost-hosted GitHub repo that you can use to make theme changes instead.
- Only needed when switching themes or if Outpost flags your theme as disconnected.
- Learn more about the Theme Connect Wizard
Gift Subscriptions
- New messaging flow: gift recipients now get distinct messages for an extension vs. the original gift, plus a nudge to self-purchase if the giver doesn't renew.
- Pricing (initial, renewal, and recipient self-pay price) is now centralized in one settings location instead of scattered across templates.
- Tip: export gift subscription messages periodically — they're a nice morale boost (real readers explaining why they value your work).
- Good to promote via social, footer/nav links, CTAs, and product cards in newsletters, especially heading into the holidays — though gift subs are more of a "nice bonus" than a major revenue driver.
- Learn more about gift subscriptions
Group Subscriptions
- Minimum group is now automatically defaulted to two.
- Direct sales (reaching out to businesses/organizations, invoicing with net-30 terms) are more effective than the self-serve group signup page.
- Underused feature: you can add a "friends & family" benefit to a high-tier plan, letting that subscriber give away a group subscription automatically. Fully automated welcome/invite comms are included. Find this under "Add Benefit to Existing Tier" in the Group Subscription options.
- Learn more about Group Subscriptions
Upgrade/Tier-change Promotions
- Ghost doesn't natively support offering upgrades (e.g., 30% off annual) to existing paid subscribers.
- Outpost ensures tier or billing-frequency changes never result in the publisher losing money (prorates credit, defers negative-value changes to the end of the current term).
- Recommended use case: send monthly subscribers annual upgrade offers, especially at cancellation. Annual subscribers tend to be worth more long-term.
- Learn more about Outpost promotions
New Events Feature (Beta)
Outpost has a new events feature in Beta where you can add in-person and onlin events to your site and have members register in one click.
The system keeps all the event data in your Ghost system and is member-level and registration-level aware. In less fancy terms, that means that when a free member who is logged in sees an event on your site, there is a one-click button for them to register.
When they come back to the site and see that event, whether on the homepage, your events page or the event's own page, they'll see that they are registered.
This is intended for your events, not to be a community calendar. Outpost isn't replacing the tool you use for online events; you'll still need to use Zoom or Meet or whatever, but it replaces everything else.
You can control whether events are for free+paid members or just paid members, and you have an entire communication system right inside Outpost for registering and reminding your readers.
- A full events calendar/RSVP system built into Ghost sites via Outpost, replacing the old static "Event Creator" tool (which is being phased out).
- Readers can one-click RSVP anywhere the event appears (event page, individual post, homepage); free vs. paid-only gating is supported (a way to drive free-to-paid upgrades).
- Event creation lives in Outpost; it auto-generates/updates a matching Ghost post, so publishers don't have to build the post manually, but still have lots of control over what the content of the event post is.
- Event types (webinar, in-person, conference, etc.) are theme-defined, so custom fields/templates can differ per type; Events setup does require some theme work.
- Automated communications throughout: confirmation emails, customizable reminder emails (up to two), calendar-add links, event-change/cancellation notifications, and a post-event wrap-up email.
- Campaign integration: sending an "announce this event" campaign auto-pulls event details, and recipients can register with one click straight from the email; already-registered people are automatically excluded from repeat asks.
- Currently Luna-tier only (may expand to Voyager later)
- If you want to try the events feature, reach out to Outpost to get set up! It requires a little theme work to go live.
Questions from publishers
Question: Can you use campaigns to build up to events?
Yes, there's a tool inside each event that lets you launch a campaign for that event with a pre-written template. You can also start in the Campaigns, and add a Register button, which then puts a Campaign into event mode.
Question: How do you make sure people get on your list when they RSVP?
You have to be a member to RSVP (free or paid). Non-members are prompted to sign up first, so it also works as a list-growth tool. Events can also be restricted to paid-only members as an upgrade incentive.
Question: Is the events feature only available on the Luna tier?
Yes, for now. It may eventually move to Voyager once the team has ironed out support needs, but it starts as Luna-only.
Question: For RSVPs, can you collect additional data or fields?
Not currently, though you could ask for info in the confirmation email as a workaround. This may change soon.
Question: Can you charge for events yet?
Not yet — it's the most requested feature and is planned (likely version 2.1/2.2), starting with online/paid events before expanding to in-person ticketing (with QR codes eventually). A bridge option to let you have some of your events link registration out to third-party ticketing (e.g., Eventbrite) for paid events is coming sooner.
Question: If we already use an internal "events" hashtag/tag, will it conflict with Outpost's events tag?
No, the default event tag is customizable in your events settings.
Question: Can events be limited by tier (not just free vs. paid)?
Not yet, but definitely on the roadmpa.
Question: I use Ghost.org and want to set up multiple email sequences or educational email courses — can I do this with Outpost's advanced automations?
Yes, likely with Advanced autoresponder. Trigger a labeled tag on a member (e.g., via a button click), then build an automation targeting that label with a timed sequence of emails.
Question: Can I connect Transistor (podcast host) directly to publish podcast episodes as Ghost posts?
Yes, there are two separate Transistor integrations: one for publishing episodes automatically as site posts, and a separate one for a private/membership podcast feed tied to specific subscriber tiers. Sync status indicators were also recently added to Outpost's Transistor integration.
(Event summary compiled with the help of an LLM)
Join us for our next live session
We host regular live events about new Outpost features and how to get the most out of our tool. Check out the calendar and join us!