I didn't leave WordPress because of one disaster. I left because publishing had quietly become a chore — and when publishing is a chore, you publish less. For a creator, that's the whole business eroding one skipped week at a time.
The bill nobody itemizes
Hosting. A premium theme. Fourteen plugins, four of them paid. A newsletter tool that didn't talk to any of it. Between $60 and $90 a month, plus the Saturday afternoons lost to updates that broke the site in new and creative ways.
The real cost wasn't the money. It was that I dreaded opening my own website.
What one clean tool changes
This site — the one you're reading — is Ghost. The website, the newsletter, and paid memberships are one system. I write, I hit publish, it's on the site and in every subscriber's inbox. There is no plugin chain. There is nothing to babysit.
If any of this sounds familiar, start with the export: back up your posts and your subscriber list today, even if you never move. Owning a copy of your own work shouldn't be a radical act.