Pricing
Specter has two paths: buy the official supported macOS app, or use the open-source GitHub project for free forever.
Open source
Price: Free forever.
What you get:
- Source code you can inspect, fork, and build
- A community route for technical users
- The right to run your own local build under the project license
What’s missing:
- Signed official installers
- Automatic commercial updates
- Priority email support
Specter Pro
Price: $99/year. Pay through Paddle (cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, regional methods). Checkout may show a localized currency where Paddle supports it. Cancel anytime.
What you get:
- Unlimited syncs across every platform and every site you connect
- Every update while your subscription is active — new features, new CMS connectors, fixes
- Priority email support — a direct line to Axel, the actual builder
- Runs on up to 2 Macs on one subscription
- 14-day refund, no questions asked
Cancel whenever you like: you keep Pro until the end of the period you’ve already paid for. Nothing is deleted — your content is plain files on your own disk. If you prefer not to pay for the official app, the open-source project remains available on GitHub.
Same price for one CMS or all three
Your $99/year covers however many CMSes you connect. Publish only to Ghost, and it buys unlimited Ghost sync. Publish to Shopify and WordPress and three Ghost sites, and it still buys unlimited sync to all five. There is no per-platform tier, no per-site tier, no metered upload tier.
This is deliberate. Specter runs entirely on your hardware, so the cost of supporting one more CMS connection is zero for us. Charging per CMS would be inventing a constraint where none exists. We don’t.
Multiple Macs
One subscription, two Macs. Run Specter on a desktop and a laptop with the same license. Replace a machine, and you deactivate the old one and activate the new one — no extra charge. For more than two machines (an agency setup, a small team), email me and we’ll work something out.
Agency and reseller
If you’re managing client sites and want Specter on each client’s Mac, the simplest model is: the client subscribes under their own account, you deploy the app and connect the credentials. Their content, their subscription, their refund window. Agencies that want a bulk arrangement — pre-paid seats you assign as needed — should get in touch.
Why a subscription
Straight answer: because Specter is under active development, and a subscription is what funds that.
One, the work doesn’t stop. The Shopify, WordPress, and Ghost connectors all need ongoing maintenance as those platforms change their APIs — and there are more CMSes to add. A subscription pays for the work that keeps your sync working next year, not just the day you bought it.
Two, you’re always current. Every update ships to you while you’re subscribed — new connectors, new features, and the signing and notarization that keep the app launching cleanly on each new macOS. There’s no “upgrade to v2” wall.
Three, it keeps Specter independent. A predictable $99/year from the people who actually use the tool is what lets this stay a focused indie product — instead of chasing one-time-sale spikes, raising prices on a whim, or monetizing your data. You can cancel the moment it stops being worth it, which keeps the incentive honest: we have to keep earning it.
The official app is paid. The free forever version is the open-source GitHub project, which technical users can build themselves.
How updates work
Updates ship through the in-app updater. New versions land with a “what’s new” note; you click Install Update; the app restarts. Same folder, same connections. Every update is included while your subscription is active.
You can opt out of updates if you want to stay pinned to a known-good version — we don’t force updates and we don’t kill old versions remotely.
Refunds
14 days, no questions asked. If Specter doesn’t do what this site says it does, email me and I’ll process the refund the same day. No form, no support-ticket triage.
The only thing I ask in return is that you tell me why — not to argue (the refund happens either way), but because the only way Specter gets better at the work you’re actually doing is if I hear about the gaps from the people who hit them.
Comparison to alternatives
- The CMS’s own AI plugin (Ghost AI, the various Shopify article generators, WP AI plugins). Usually $10–40/month per site, locked to one model, locked to one CMS. Specter is one $99/year across all your sites and all the AI tools you already pay for.
- The Obsidian Ghost-sync plugin (legacy). Free, but unmaintained, no WordPress or Shopify support, runs inside Obsidian’s process. Specter is a strict upgrade if you’ve been on that plugin.
- Hand-rolled scripts against the API. Free if your time is free. Most of what Specter does — sync queues, rate-limit handling, conflict detection, dry-run previews, two-way watching — is the boring middle of every “I’ll just write my own sync script” project. We wrote the boring middle once, well — and a subscription is what keeps it working as the APIs shift.
Buy Specter Pro — $99/year — every platform, always current. Or use the free open-source project on GitHub.