Lifetime Mac
Writing, notes & markdown

MarsEdit 5

Desktop blog editor for WordPress, Ghost and Micro.blog

Price: $59.95 once

Paid upgradesMajor versions cost again

Price read on redsweater.com, the page Buy direct opens.

The catch

Major versions are a separate paid upgrade, at about half price for existing owners

The full picture

Major versions are paid: MarsEdit 4 owners paid $29.99 to move to 5, so budget for something similar when 6 arrives. Where you buy it matters a little, because Mac App Store and direct licences cannot be crossed when upgrade time comes. Mac only, with no iOS app. It is a posting tool, not a site builder - you still need the blog, and some newer platforms need their API switched on or a plugin installed before MarsEdit can connect.

Pays back in
18 months
Seats
No Mac count statedNo seat number: Red Sweater's FAQ says a single-user licence may be installed on all your own computers as long as you are the only person using it. The $89.95 family pack covers up to 5 people in one household.
Developer account
None needed
Buy once$59.95Rent 5 years$200

$140 kept over five years, and you still have the app.
Against Ulysses at $40 a year, $39.99 a year; it also publishes to WordPress, Ghost and Micro.blog. Also replaces WordPress.com paid plans.

What it looks like

Images belong to their developers.

What you’re buying

MarsEdit is a desktop app for writing blog posts and pushing them to a site you already run: WordPress, Micro.blog, Ghost, Blogger, Tumblr, Movable Type, and anything else speaking the older XML-RPC and AtomPub APIs. You compose offline in markdown, plain text or rich text, keep drafts and images on your own disk, preview against your site's real theme, and publish when you decide to. Nothing autosaves into a browser tab, and losing your connection mid-paragraph costs you nothing.

Red Sweater has shipped it continuously since 2007, which shows in the unglamorous parts: a media library that remembers what you have already uploaded, per-blog settings, categories and tags pulled from the server, AppleScript hooks for people who automate their publishing.

The licence is $59.95 direct or $59.99 as an in-app purchase on the Mac App Store, with an $89.95 family pack for a household of Macs. Version 4 owners paid $29.99 to move to 5 and recent buyers paid nothing, so expect a similar paid step when 6 lands. A 14-day trial is built in.

If you post a few times a year, the editor in your browser is fine and this is money spent on a preference. It makes sense when you publish most weeks, when you write on trains without signal, or when you keep several blogs and are tired of remembering which tab belongs to which one.

What owners report

Points that recur across the discussions below. A report of what users say, not our verdict: we don’t review software.

Praised

  • Users answer "how do I preview a post in my real theme" with MarsEdit, because it fetches the blog's own CSS rather than approximating it
  • The round trip is what people say has no substitute: pulling existing posts back down, editing them and re-publishing

Details

The price in full

Direct from Red Sweater: $59.95 single user, $89.95 family pack. On the Mac App Store the same licence is a $59.99 in-app purchase, with "Upgrade from MarsEdit 4" at $29.99 and a free upgrade for recent MarsEdit 4 buyers. A 14-day free trial is a listed product on both routes. Mac App Store licences cannot be used to buy upgrades on the direct store, or the reverse.

The MarsEdit 5 page at redsweater.com
The developer’s own page. redsweater.com, captured 22 Sep 2026
Free trial
Yes
Works offline
Partly
Apple Silicon
Native
On Setapp
No
Minimum macOS
not stated
Developer
Red Sweater Software

Also bought outright