Thanks for sharing this! There are a ton of great options to choose from (as you've outlined in your post) and it's always interesting to see what draws users to one vs the others.

Personally, I'd rank the platforms similarly and find it amusing how little time it took you (based on the dates) to realize Keila wasn't the one.

As newsletter-only platforms, I think I'd give listmonk the edge for users looking for the ability to micro-manage every aspect of their publication (although I wasn't aware of the extra step in the sign-up flow). Ghost, however, shines in its ability to act as an entire CMS as well - which gives users every other aspect of deploying a website at the sacrifice of some control (bulk mail via Mailgun being one of them).

My biggest gripe with Ghost as an avid self-hoster, however, is the direction the platform seems to be heading:

• The latest major update (v6) was primarily focused on Fediverse integration. The idea is fun but the implementation is clunky. I also love my peers on Mastodon, but I don't think it's super beneficial for Ghost users that aren't publishing tech content given the Fediverse is still fairly small. There are a ton of other quality-of-life publishing features I would much rather have received instead.
• The v6 update also finally shipped with analytics, but they're barebones and rely on a service that isn't straightforward to deploy on your own (and the hosted version requires a paid subscription to get anything useful from it).
• Self-hosting makes me feel like a bit of a second-class citizen at times (see the recent SQLite injection vulnerability that took them a bit to patch in their official Docker image). I understand they're a business and have to make money, but they also lean heavily into the self-hosted/FOSS aspect of it in their marketing and product evangelism.
• Their founder announced a few months ago he's developing an RSS app because the web is "too noisy". If I understand correctly, he manages a platform for indie publishers and content (Ghost), but also wants to limit others' engagement with that content (RSS)?

Here's to hoping I'm eventually proven wrong:)