Issues with Ghost blogs

When the Ghost project started, its devs claimed it was going to be a blogging platform, and only a blogging platform. Not a CMS, not a general-purpose site builder, but a blog. I have been using it since the beta version, and I have to say they did stick to their word. But lately, I find that the direction they're going is not one I like.

Ghost has always been free to self-host, which is great; and its devs make their money by providing hosting and services for people and organizations who do not want to do it themselves. It then stands to reason that they develop features that facilitate earning money with blogging. After all, the people whose businesses depend on Ghost are more likely to pay for the service.

While I understand that, it also happens to be orthogonal to what I want from a blog. I just want to write things in an editor that doesn't get in the way. Ghost was never perfect, but it was good enough. However, when I look at the post I wrote when I started using it 8 years ago, I see that none of the things I've been missing have been added, and some of those that were present got worse.

I no longer wonder why at least simple analytics aren't included - anyone that seriously needs that data will be running separate, fully-featured analytics anyway. But I don't get why there's still no built-in search, even in the default themes. And the fact that there is no way to edit on mobile devices is baffling. No apps, and not even a web version that would work on a phone.

And while Ghost's Koenig editor got better in many ways, providing snippets and many 'cards' for embedding content, etc, it got worse in others. Markdown editing is no longer the default, but you can still embed an MD card and use that.

So what's the problem, you might ask? Well, editing experience in the MD card is a lot worse than it was when it was MD only, and you can't insert any other cards in the middle. You could insert an MD card, then an embed card, then continue with another MD card, but that doesn't work too well, either.
For example: if you try to write a footnote or ^superscript^ in the default Koenig editor, you'll find that you just can't. The suggested solution is to use the MD card. But each MD card acts as a separate document - so in the case where you have two separate MD cards, each one will have its own footnotes, resulting in the first set of them being in the middle of your post. And as you might have noticed, while superscript is supposed to be supported, it just doesn't work, the issue is known, and has been closed without being solved.

So it's clear the paid membership features and glossy card options are the priority, not the editing experience with " " "advanced, exotic" " " features like footnotes.

I'm not sure what to do about this. I'm annoyed, but at the same time, I don't see any better alternatives: I definitely won't be switching back to WordPress thankyouverymuch, none of the other platforms I've tried were strictly better, and since I want an actual online editor, static site generators aren't an option, either. Not to mention what a time sink another migration would be.