If you’re building a newsletter in 2026, you aren't just "writing a blog." You are building a High-Concurrency Media Engine.
You are sending thousands of emails, handling thousands of concurrent web visitors, and processing membership payments—all at once. And in this world, the underlying technology stack matters more than ever.
WordPress is built on PHP—a language designed in the 1990s for "Personal Home Pages." Ghost is built on Node.js—a runtime designed for the modern, real-time web.
At Leapjuice, we support both. But if you want the ultimate performance advantage, we recommend Ghost. Here’s why.
The Problem with the PHP Lifecycle
PHP is a "Request-Response" language. When a user hits your WordPress site, the server starts a new PHP process, loads the entire WordPress core, connects to the database, renders the page, and then kills the process.
This is fine for a few users. But when 5,000 people click a link in your newsletter at the same time, your server has to spawn 5,000 separate processes. Even on powerful hardware, this creates a massive amount of overhead. The server spends more time "starting and stopping" than it does actually "serving content."
The Node.js Difference: Event-Driven Performance
Ghost uses Node.js, which is built on an Event-Loop architecture.
Instead of starting a new process for every user, Ghost stays "alive" in memory. It handles thousands of concurrent connections using a single-threaded, non-blocking I/O model.
- Persistence: Because Ghost is persistent, it can cache data in memory, making it orders of magnitude faster than a traditional PHP app.
- Concurrency: Node.js was built for the world of WebSockets and real-time updates. It handles the "Newsletter Spike" with grace, while PHP often collapses under the pressure.
- Resource Efficiency: Ghost requires significantly less RAM and CPU to handle the same amount of traffic as WordPress.
The "App-Like" Feel
Because of its Node.js backbone, the Ghost editor and admin interface feel like a desktop application. There are no page reloads. Everything is instantaneous.
For a professional writer or a media team, this "Frictionless" experience is a competitive advantage. It allows you to stay in the state of flow, rather than waiting for a spinning wheel every time you hit "Save."
Ghost on Leapjuice: Unleashing the Speed
When you host Ghost on Leapjuice, you aren't just getting Node.js. You’re getting it backed by:
- Titanium NVMe: Ghost’s database (MySQL/Postgres) runs on raw silicon.
- LiteSpeed Edge: We cache your Ghost content at the edge, ensuring sub-50ms load times globally.
- Managed Updates: We handle the Node.js versioning and security patches so you can focus on your writing.
Choosing Your Engine
If you need the infinite flexibility of a massive plugin ecosystem, choose WordPress. We’ve optimized it to the limit.
But if you want a lean, mean, high-performance media machine that owns the inbox and the web, choose Ghost.
The future of media is event-driven. And the future is running on Node.js.
Technical Specs
Every article on The Hub is served via our Cloudflare Enterprise Edge and powered by Zen 5 Turin Architecture on the GCP Backbone, delivering a consistent 5,000 IOPS for zero-lag performance.