Creator Stack

What this stack is

Creator Stack is the independent-creator infrastructure pack — one-click deploys a newsletter-first publishing platform (Ghost), privacy-friendly web analytics (Plausible), a self-hosted photo + video library (Immich), and S3-compatible object storage (MinIO) for assets and downloads. All on a single VPS under the creator's own domain.

For the hosting provider, this is a "creator economy" product: sell to writers, photographers, podcasters, course creators, indie consultants who want to own their audience, their content, and their analytics — without Substack's 10%, Squarespace's $50/mo, or Google Analytics' privacy issues.

What it's for

• Newsletter + paid subscriptions — Ghost handles email-first publishing, paid tiers, Stripe integration, member-only content. No 10% cut to Substack
• Privacy-friendly analytics — Plausible shows visitor numbers, sources, top pages, without cookies, without GDPR banners, without Google
• Photo + video library — Immich is a self-hosted alternative to Google Photos with face recognition, places, albums, sharing
• Asset & media storage — MinIO provides S3-compatible storage for podcast episodes, video files, course downloads, image hosting at zero per-GB egress fees
• Content sovereignty — creator owns the domain, the email list, the analytics, the media. No platform can shadowban or deplatform

Who it's for

• Newsletter writers building paid subscription businesses (Substack alternative, 100% revenue retention)
• Photographers & visual artists wanting a portfolio + photo library outside Adobe/Apple's walled gardens
• Podcasters self-hosting episodes + RSS instead of paying $40-100/mo to Buzzsprout/Transistor
• Course creators delivering downloadable course materials directly from MinIO
• Indie consultants & coaches running their entire content business off one VPS
• Privacy-conscious creators who care about visitor consent + zero tracker pixels

Apps in this stack

Sizing & deployment

• Recommended VPS: 4 GB RAM, 2 vCPU, 100 GB NVMe storage (plus object storage as media library grows)
• No GPU needed
• Storage scaling: MinIO can mount additional block storage volumes (Hetzner Volume / Contabo Object Storage / S3) as the media library outgrows the VPS disk
• Deploy time: ~15-20 min one-click, all SSL automatic via Let's Encrypt
• Backup profile: nightly Ghost DB dump + Plausible data export + MinIO bucket-to-bucket replication (off-VPS)

Why hosters sell this

This stack lets hosters tap into the creator-economy upmarket migration: creators who outgrew the cheap newsletter SaaS tier and want to own their stack but don't want to be DevOps engineers.

Common resale shape:

• Solo creator tier — newsletter + analytics, smaller VPS, no GPU
• Pro creator tier — newsletter + photo library + audio assets + object storage, full stack on a mid-size VPS
• Creator multi-property tier — multiple newsletters / course platforms / brand verticals on the same infra, isolated as separate Ghost installs

Stack retail pricing is set by the hoster based on their cost stack (VPS + Bluix license + support). See the suggested retail hint on this page as a starting anchor; refer to bluix.net/bluixapps.php for the Bluix module license layer.

Easy upsell from existing WordPress/email-hosting customer base. Cross-promote with affiliate programs for Stripe (creators need it for paid subscriptions) and the photography vendor ecosystem.

GDPR & compliance profile

• No cookies, no consent banner needed — Plausible is cookie-free by design
• No third-party trackers — visitors hit only the creator's domain
• EU hosting by default across all major regions in the catalog
• Creator-owned audience data — email list, subscriber payment info, analytics — never shared with platforms
• Right-to-be-forgotten trivially supported (delete subscriber row in Ghost, MinIO object, Plausible visitor)
• Stripe = the only third-party processor for paid subscriptions, with the creator as direct merchant of record