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Offers let you present special pricing to prospective or existing members. They’re built on top of tiers: an offer is a discounted or promotional way to access a tier. Ghost provides its own offer system, and so does Outpost. You can use either or both.
Ghost Offers page listing offers with tier, discount type, amount, duration, redemption count, and status

The Ghost Offers page showing active offers with discount details and redemption stats

Go to Subscriptions → Ghost Offers to manage Ghost-side offers, or Subscriptions → Outpost Promotions to manage Outpost-side promotions. The two use similar configuration forms but differ in how the checkout flow runs (see comparison below).

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Offer types

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Discount duration

When creating a percent or fixed discount, choose how long the discount lasts. The dropdown labels in the form are:

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Creating a Ghost Offer

Go to Subscriptions → Ghost Offers and click New Offer. Configure:

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Creating an Outpost Promotion

Go to Subscriptions → Outpost Promotions and click New Offer. Promotions check out directly through Stripe instead of Ghost Portal, and add quarterly and semi-annual billing, redemption caps, and native support for existing paid and complimentary members: Outpost creates the corresponding Stripe price/coupon automatically. When a member subscribes via an offer or promotion, the discount is applied at checkout.
Each offer is tied to a specific tier and billing interval. If you want to offer the same discount on both monthly and annual plans, create two separate offers.

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Sharing an offer

Each offer has a unique URL. Share it in: When a visitor clicks the offer link, the discounted pricing is pre-applied to the subscription checkout page.

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Tracking offer performance

The offer detail page shows performance metrics:

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Archiving and restoring offers

  • Archive an offer to deactivate it. The offer URL will no longer work for new signups, but existing members who redeemed it keep their discount.
  • Unarchive to reactivate an archived offer and make it available again.
Archived offers are hidden from the main list but can be viewed by filtering for archived offers.

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Archiving an offer used in an autoresponder email

If a Ghost Offer is still assigned to an autoresponder action when you archive it, Outpost flags the problem in three places:
  • On the Basic Autoresponder page, the action’s Offer cell reads “Archived: ” followed by the offer’s terms, and the action row is highlighted so you can spot it. (If the offer was deleted from Ghost entirely rather than archived, the cell reads “Removed offer” instead.)
  • Opening the offer selector for that action shows a message telling you the template is assigned to an archived offer and asking you to choose an active one to replace it.
  • Outpost sends an “Archived offers needs attention” notification listing every action affected.
Archived offers never appear in the offer selector, so you either pick an active offer or clear it by choosing No Offer and saving. An offer that’s still active but whose tier has been archived is flagged the same way.

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Offers in autoresponder emails

Offers integrate with the Autoresponder: many pre-built email actions include an Offer dropdown where you can attach a discount. You can select any existing Ghost Offer or Outpost Promotion rather than creating a new one each time. For example:
  • Welcome drip emails can include progressively better offers to convert free members
  • Cancellation emails can include a retention offer
  • Renewal reminder emails can include a loyalty discount
  • The Nudge action automatically uses the offer a reader originally clicked
Reusing an existing offer across multiple autoresponder actions keeps your Ghost and Outpost offer lists clean, and makes it easier to update a discount in one place and have it apply everywhere.

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Tier vs. Ghost Offer vs. Outpost Promotion

These three terms get conflated a lot. Before comparing offer types, the lay of the land: So both an Offer and a Promotion are pricing modifications on top of a tier. They aren’t tiers themselves. Pick between them based on the comparison below.

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Ghost Offers vs Outpost Promotions

When attaching an offer to an autoresponder action, or choosing which type of offer to share, you have two options. They behave differently in important ways:
You don’t need to worry about showing the wrong offer type to the wrong member: Outpost automatically ensures any offer shown to a reader is one they can actually use. “Auto-converted” means that when you attach a Ghost Offer to an autoresponder action and the recipient is an existing paid or complimentary member (who can’t check out through Ghost Portal), Outpost turns it into an equivalent direct checkout so the discount still applies.

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When to use Ghost Offers

Ghost Offers appear in Ghost Portal and are the natural choice when a free or unknown visitor is converting to a paid subscription for the first time. They stay in sync with Ghost automatically. Best for: free-to-paid conversion, welcome drip sequences, any scenario where the reader doesn’t yet have a subscription.

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When to use Outpost Promotions

Outpost Promotions route checkout through Stripe directly, which lets them do things Ghost Offers can’t:
  • Existing paid and complimentary subscribers: Ghost Offers are built for free and signed-out visitors checking out through Ghost Portal. When you attach one to an autoresponder action, Outpost automatically converts it to a direct checkout for paid or complimentary recipients so it still applies, but Outpost Promotions use that direct checkout for everyone natively, which makes them the cleaner choice for retention, upgrades, and plan changes.
  • Subscription schedules: set an introductory rate that automatically transitions to a standard renewal price after a set period. This is useful for 3- or 6-month intro plans.
Best for: retention flows, upgrade offers, annual-to-monthly or monthly-to-annual switches, any scenario involving an existing subscriber.

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Frequently asked questions

An Offer (also called a Ghost Offer) is created through Ghost’s native offer system: checkout goes through Ghost Portal. An Outpost Promotion is Outpost’s own offer system: checkout goes through a direct Stripe page. Promotions are more flexible: they work for existing paid and complimentary subscribers and can use subscription schedules. See the comparison table above for full details.
Yes. When creating a Ghost Offer, set the offer type to Free trial and choose the trial length in days. Readers who redeem the offer get full paid access for the trial period and are charged when it ends. Outpost Promotions support free trials too, so pick whichever checkout flow fits: Ghost Portal for new signups, or a Promotion for existing subscribers (see the comparison table above). Ghost separately supports a tier-wide trial, a setting on the tier itself that applies to everyone who subscribes to it.
Yes, when you attach them to an autoresponder action. Ghost Offers normally check out through Ghost Portal, which only works for free or signed-out visitors. But when Outpost sends an offer to a member it already knows is complimentary or on a paid plan, it automatically converts the Ghost Offer into an equivalent direct checkout so the discount still applies. (A raw Ghost Offer link opened by a signed-out visitor still goes through Ghost Portal.) If you’re specifically targeting existing subscribers, an Outpost Promotion skips the conversion and is the better fit.
No. A member can only use one offer when subscribing. If they click a new offer link while already on a discounted plan, they would need to cancel and resubscribe to use the new offer.
When the discount duration ends (e.g., after 3 months), Stripe automatically starts charging the full tier price on the next billing cycle. No action needed from you or the member.
You can update some fields on an existing offer, but certain fields may be locked once members have redeemed it. If you need substantially different terms, create a new offer and archive the old one.
Many autoresponder actions have an Offer dropdown. When you attach an offer to an action, the email includes a button or link that takes the member directly to checkout with the discount pre-applied. This is particularly useful for retention emails: you can automatically offer a discount to members who cancel.
Offers themselves don’t have audience targeting, but you control distribution. Share the offer URL only with the audience you want (via targeted email campaigns, specific CTAs, or private links). You can also set an expiration date to control usage.
Outpost validates the customer’s Stripe currency against the offer before checkout. If a returning customer already has a currency on file (for example, USD) and the offer is priced only in a different currency (for example, EUR), the checkout is blocked and the customer sees “Currency mismatch. Please contact support.” This is a safety net: most publications run a single Stripe currency and never see this. If you intentionally run multi-currency offers, configure each offer’s prices with currency_options for every currency you sell in.

Tiers & Pricing

The subscription products that offers are built on top of

Autoresponder

Attach offers to automated emails for conversion and retention

CTAs & Auto Display

Display offers in conversion popups, slide-ups, and in-post CTAs

Subscription Schedules

Two-phase pricing as an alternative to offer-based discounts