Roughly 43% of all websites and over 60% of the CMS market run on WordPress - the GPL-licensed platform that scales from a personal blog to publishing operations and WooCommerce stores. The Gutenberg block editor composes pages from reusable blocks, and full site editing extends block control to headers, footers, and templates; tens of thousands of plugins and themes cover essentially every capability a site might need, from SEO and caching to membership and e-commerce. WordPress 7.0 "Armstrong" marks the platform's biggest structural update since Gutenberg itself: a React-based DataViews admin replaces the legacy list tables with instant filtering, a provider-agnostic AI Client API ships with connectors for OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, media processing moves into the browser via WebAssembly, and a universal Font Library manages typography across block, hybrid, and classic themes with local hosting for GDPR compliance. New Breadcrumbs, Icons, and lightbox Gallery blocks reduce plugin dependence, and server-side PHP block registration simplifies development. The REST API and WP-CLI make it automatable end to end. Self-hosting is what WordPress was designed for: your content, database, plugin choices, and upgrade schedule stay entirely under your control, free of wordpress.com plan limits.

Content types, media libraries, workflows, roles, search, and a GraphQL API all ship in the box with Orchard Core, a free CMS and application framework that hosts many separate websites from one install. Editors build content types in the admin by combining parts and fields, with no migrations to write, and preview an item live before publishing it. Designers adjust page HTML safely with Liquid templates, and developers add their own modules. Multi-tenancy runs many isolated sites from one deployment, each with its own content, users, settings, and theme, and a setup screen lets you pick a recipe and database for each site. Media uploads can be resized on the fly and stored on remote providers, and a visual workflow editor automates content approvals, webhooks, and form submissions. A typed GraphQL API feeds headless sites and single-page applications, and custom SQL or Lucene queries can be exposed as endpoints. Roles and fine-grained permissions decide who can do what, OpenID Connect handles external sign-in, and two-factor authentication protects accounts. Content and the admin interface can be localized, and deployment plans move content and configuration from staging to production. SQLite works out of the box, SQL Server, MySQL, MariaDB, or PostgreSQL can be chosen at setup, and the official Docker image starts a site with one command. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. BSD-3-Clause licensed.

If editors should publish without waiting on developers, and developers should keep full control of the design, Umbraco is the free content management system built around that split. A page begins in the Block Grid editor, where reusable blocks nest inside Areas and each block is sized on a column and row grid. Live preview shows the result before anything goes out. Publish and unpublish times can be scheduled in the editor's own time zone, and any page can roll back to an earlier version from its Info tab. One content node can exist in several languages, and split view puts two of them side by side. The Media section holds images, video, and other files. Visitors can register and log in as members, new members can be placed in member groups, and pages can be hidden from anyone not logged in. On the code side, templates and partial views shape the front end, while the opt-in Content Delivery API returns content items as JSON for mobile apps and any other front end. Webhooks notify outside services when content is published, unpublished, or deleted. Custom dashboards and property editors extend the backoffice, and the Marketplace lists open-source and commercial packages for the rest. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.

Backed by over 20,000 GitHub stars, 800 contributors, and organizations like Google, NASA, and the NHS, Wagtail is the Django-powered content management system that gives editors creative freedom through StreamField while keeping developers in full control of data structure and front-end rendering. StreamField lets editors compose pages from a custom library of content blocks — rich text, images, embedded videos, tables, code snippets, and developer-defined custom types — without compromising the underlying data model or breaking responsive layouts. The built-in JSON API supports headless deployments with versioned endpoints for pages, images, and documents, enabling decoupled front-ends in Next.js, Nuxt.js, or any framework that consumes REST. Editorial workflows provide configurable approval chains where content moves through draft, review, and publish states with commenting, task assignment, and email notifications built into the admin interface. Integrated search connects to Elasticsearch for full-text indexing with faceted filtering, or falls back to PostgreSQL and SQLite backends with fuzzy matching support added in v7.4. Multi-site management serves multiple domains from a single Wagtail installation with independent page trees, while the internationalization framework handles content translation with locale-aware URL routing. Image management includes focal point detection, responsive renditions, and automatic format conversion. The platform supports Django 5.2 and 6.0 with Python 3.10 through 3.14 and PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, or SQLite databases. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. BSD-3-Clause licensed.

Halo is a modern CMS that handles blogs, knowledge bases, corporate sites, and full e-commerce storefronts from a single installation, distinguished by a polyglot plugin architecture that runs both Java and JavaScript extensions on a GraalVM runtime. Built on Spring Boot 3 with a Vue.js admin console, the platform delivers a clean content management experience with Markdown and rich-text editing, live preview, scheduled publishing, draft management, media uploads, and granular multi-user role-based access controls. Plugins can be enabled or disabled at runtime without restarting the server, and the official marketplace offers over 100 free themes plus a growing library of extensions covering SEO optimization, search integration, paid content access, AI writing assistance, and Q&A chatbots. Storage backends are configurable through plugins, supporting local disk, S3-compatible object storage, and other providers. The fully documented RESTful API enables headless CMS usage for decoupled frontend architectures. Database support includes embedded H2 for quick starts, with production deployments on PostgreSQL or MySQL. Nearly 40,000 GitHub stars and over 2.5 million Docker pulls reflect the project's maturity and active development pace. A single Docker command gets a functional instance running on port 8090. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. GPL-3.0 licensed.

Vvveb, an open-source CMS with a drag-and-drop page builder and a built-in store, runs a blog, a portfolio, and a webshop from one dashboard, with every page edited visually on a true WYSIWYG canvas. Reusable blocks, page revisions, a code editor, and an optional AI assistant plugin sit alongside media management, custom fields, custom posts, and custom products that shape content well beyond plain pages. The store handles one-page checkout, subscriptions, digital downloads, vouchers, coupons, product options, attributes, variants, reviews, and Q&A across multiple payment methods and currencies. Content can be published in several languages, the admin interface switches with language packs, many sites or subdomains share one installation, and action-level permissions are assigned to each user role. A bundled SEO plugin generates sitemaps, robots.txt, Open Graph tags, hreflang links, and schema markup, and hybrid headless mode serves the same content to any frontend through GraphQL and REST endpoints. A randomized admin login URL, two-factor authentication, brute-force defenses, and a built-in integrity check guard the dashboard, and manual or automatic backups plus import and export tools cover recovery and migration. Any HTML template converts into a theme in minutes, a demo importer loads sample content for a fast start, and plugins and themes install with one click from the admin dashboard. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. AGPL-3.0 licensed.

No database anywhere in the stack: Grav, the leading flat-file CMS, builds every page from a folder of Markdown and YAML on PHP, Symfony components, Twig templating, and Doctrine caching. That architecture is the whole argument: content is Git-versionable, rsync-able, and lock-in-free; pages render in well under 100ms without database round-trips; and backup means copying a directory. Content authors write Markdown (or plain HTML), configure with readable YAML, and define custom page structures via blueprint files that generate editing forms automatically. The optional Admin panel adds a polished editing layer: dashboard with site activity, page management with a syntax-highlighted editor and live preview, drag-and-drop media uploads, one-click plugin/theme updates, and normal/expert modes for form-based or raw YAML editing. The ecosystem runs deep - hundreds of open-source plugins and themes installed through the GPM package manager, with an event-hook architecture that gives plugins full control over the request lifecycle, and downloadable skeletons providing entire pre-built sites. Grav 2.0 modernizes the stack (PHP 8.3+, Symfony 7, Twig 3) and adds a first-party REST API, an MCP server for AI agents, and a SvelteKit single-page admin with real-time collaborative editing. Ideal for docs, blogs, and marketing sites. MIT-licensed.

WordPress without Gutenberg: ClassicPress, the community-led fork, keeps the TinyMCE classic editor as the default and strips the block editor and Full Site Editing out of core entirely. The result is roughly half WordPress's size - obsolete libraries like jQueryUI, Thickbox, and Flash support are gone, replaced by native HTML5 elements and modern alternatives like SortableJS - which translates to a measurably faster admin and a leaner attack surface. Forked from WordPress 6.2, it remains compatible with the vast plugin and theme ecosystem targeting that lineage (anything not requiring blocks generally works, helped by a blocks-compatibility mode), and the PHP-first WordPress API developers have used for over a decade works unchanged - no React required to extend your CMS. The fork adds its own improvements: built-in media categories and tags with bulk editing, revision management that lets you prune database bloat, native HTML5 dialogs for accessible touch-friendly menus, and recent releases bring APCu object-cache support, vanilla-JS core widgets, and performant translations. Governance is democratic and community-driven rather than corporate. For content sites, business sites, and blogs where the classic editing workflow is the feature, ClassicPress is stability as a philosophy.

EmDash rebuilds the WordPress publishing experience as an open-source CMS, with drafts, revisions, scheduled posts, a media library, menus, widgets, and plugins that run in sandboxes and can only do what they declare. Writers get a rich-text editor with featured images, slugs, bylines, categories, and tags, plus signed preview links for unpublished work and a calendar of everything published or scheduled. Site builders define their own content types in a visual schema builder, choosing required and searchable fields, URL patterns, comments, SEO metadata, and edit locking so two people never overwrite each other. Uploads are drag and drop, with folders and filename search in the media library. Menus, sidebar widgets, reusable sections, and redirects with a 404 log shape the public site. Access is passkey-first, with OAuth and magic-link fallbacks, four roles from Contributor to Administrator, comment moderation, and personal API tokens. Coming from WordPress? Point the importer at a migration key, a site URL, or an exported XML file and it carries over posts, pages, media, and taxonomies. Plugins add hooks, settings, admin pages, dashboard widgets, custom blocks, and API routes after declaring capabilities such as content:read or email:send, while a built-in MCP server and CLI let AI assistants manage content directly. Blog, marketing, and portfolio templates give new sites a head start. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.

The leading open-source headless CMS with over 72,800 GitHub stars and more than 20 million npm downloads, Strapi has powered content APIs for thousands of organizations since its creation in 2015, providing a complete backend for websites, mobile applications, IoT devices, and any frontend framework through auto-generated REST and GraphQL endpoints. The visual Content-Type Builder lets editors define collections, single types, components, dynamic zones, and relations without code, while Strapi AI introduced in 2026 generates complete content schemas from natural language descriptions, Figma file uploads, or existing JavaScript application code analysis. Version 5 rewrote the platform with a TypeScript-first architecture, replacing the Entity Service with the Document Service API, switching admin panel builds from Webpack to Vite, and integrating internationalization directly into core with unlimited locale support. Database flexibility spans PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, and SQLite with automatic migration handling. The media library manages uploads to local storage, Amazon S3, or Cloudinary with image optimization and responsive formats. Granular role-based access control defines permissions per content type, field, and locale. The plugin marketplace extends functionality with GraphQL, SEO, email, custom fields, and community contributions, while lifecycle hooks, custom controllers, and middleware enable arbitrary backend logic. Draft and publish workflows, webhooks for external system integration, API token authentication, data import and export, and CRON job scheduling round out a platform that handles content operations from prototype to production. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.

Backed by 44,000 GitHub stars and now part of Figma, Payload is the first headless CMS that installs natively into your Next.js application's /app directory rather than running as a separate service. The code-first architecture uses TypeScript config files to define collections, globals, and field schemas — from which Payload auto-generates database tables with migrations, a fully customizable React admin panel, REST and GraphQL endpoints, and type-safe Node.js local APIs you can call directly in React Server Components. The Lexical-based rich text editor supports block-based layout building, inline media embeds, and nested field structures, while the built-in localization engine handles unlimited locales with field-level translations. Authentication ships out of the box with HTTP-only cookie sessions, CSRF protection, role-based access control definable at the document, field, and operation level, and support for OAuth providers. Version history tracks every document change with full draft and publish workflows, and Live Preview renders content edits in real-time using server components. The job queue system manages background tasks and multi-step workflows deployable via Vercel Cron or standalone workers. Database flexibility spans PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and SQLite through swappable adapters, and the plugin ecosystem includes official modules for SEO, form builders, redirects, nested documents, and search alongside hundreds of community extensions. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.

With 37,000 GitHub stars and over 45 million downloads powering 500,000+ deployed projects, Directus is the most widely adopted open-source backend platform that connects to your existing SQL database without requiring schema migrations or data duplication. Point it at PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MS SQL, SQLite, OracleDB, or CockroachDB and it instantly generates production-ready REST and GraphQL APIs complete with filtering, sorting, pagination, field selection, and relational queries — all derived from your actual schema with zero configuration. The visual Studio provides a full no-code management interface where non-technical teammates create content, manage assets, build dashboards, and configure access policies without engineering involvement. Field-level granular permissions govern every API request and Studio action through composable policies applied to roles, users, and AI agents identically. A built-in AI Assistant writes copy, translates content across languages, creates records, and routes items for review directly within the Studio interface. The native Model Context Protocol server connects Claude Desktop, Cursor, ChatGPT, or any MCP-compatible tool to your live data governed by the same access policies. Real-time WebSocket subscriptions push collection changes instantly for collaborative editing and live dashboards. Extensibility covers custom endpoints, hooks, interfaces, displays, layouts, modules, and operations. Deploy via Docker with environment-variable configuration or use Directus Cloud for managed hosting. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. BSL-1.1 licensed with free self-hosting.

Keystone turns TypeScript schema definitions into a complete GraphQL API and React Admin UI automatically, eliminating the gap between data modeling and application scaffolding. Nearly 10,000 GitHub stars and over 270 contributors across a decade of development back a framework where list definitions map directly to Prisma models on PostgreSQL or SQLite, generating database migrations and exposing every field relationship through Apollo Server's GraphQL endpoint. Granular access control operates at the list, field, and operation level with filter-based restrictions that limit which records users can see, create, update, or delete based on session data and custom logic. The document field provides a structured WYSIWYG editor with content blocks, inline relationships, and custom React components that render consistently across the Admin UI and frontend applications. Event hooks fire before and after create, update, and delete operations for validation, side effects, and external service integration. Custom GraphQL queries and mutations extend the API beyond auto-generated CRUD for bespoke business logic. The Admin UI built with Next.js and the Keystar UI component library supports custom pages, branded navigation, and internationalized interfaces. OpenTelemetry tracing provides observability into operations, queries, and hook execution. Deploys via Docker or any Node.js host with Prisma managing schema evolution. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.

Editors can update a static website without learning Git, because Pages CMS puts a visual editor on top of the repository itself. A single .pages.yml file defines what is editable: collections of Markdown files that share a schema, standalone files such as site settings, and nested groups that organize the sidebar. Fields cover strings, rich text, code, dates, numbers, booleans, selects, images, files, references, objects, and repeatable blocks, with front matter stored as YAML, JSON, or TOML. Plain text files like robots.txt open in a raw editor, redirect files in a code editor, and CSV files as an editable datagrid. Collection lists can be searched, sorted, and shown flat or as a folder tree. The media manager supports drag-and-drop uploads, multi-file selection, allowed extensions, and safe or random renaming. People without GitHub accounts join through email invitations and edit content and media, with their saves committed through the GitHub App. Custom action buttons dispatch GitHub Actions workflows after a confirmation dialog or input form, so one click can rebuild a preview or deploy the site. Commit message templates and a choice of app or user commit identity shape how each save appears in Git history. The responsive interface works on mobile screens, and suits Jekyll, Hugo, Astro, Next.js, Eleventy, VuePress, and similar site generators. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.

Design a website on a canvas, manage its content in spreadsheet-style tables, and publish plain HTML, all from one self-hosted Instatic server. Designers see several breakpoint frames side by side, or switch to live mode and edit one full-size page in place. A built-in design system expands one brand color into a full shade scale, generates fluid type and spacing scales, and writes the utility classes into a single small stylesheet. Reusable Visual Components take typed parameters and named slots, templates set site-wide or per-post-type layouts, and loops repeat a design over posts or media. Editors work in custom post types and data tables, and posts move through draft, scheduled, and published states. Forms on the site save their submissions to tables of your own. An AI agent can do the building, placing real, editable nodes on the canvas using Claude, OpenAI, OpenRouter, or Ollama with your own key, and an MCP connector lets Claude, ChatGPT, and other remote agents work on the site too. Super Import converts a whole static site into pages, styles, tokens, and media. Teams get roles built from 38 capabilities, TOTP two-factor sign-in, and an append-only audit log, plus site branches with private copies, shareable preview links, and merge review. Everything published is baked to plain HTML and CSS on disk. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.

Webstudio delivers a professional-grade visual website builder that outputs semantic HTML and clean CSS without inline style pollution or JavaScript-heavy render paths. The live canvas editor provides direct manipulation of all CSS properties — flexbox, grid, spacing, typography, transforms, and filters — with real-time preview across responsive breakpoints. The component system supports reusable instances with variants and overrides, while design tokens maintain consistent colors, fonts, and spacing across the entire site. Data bindings connect to external content sources through native integrations with Strapi and Supabase, plus a generic CMS interface for any REST API backend. The Scroll Timeline API powers animations at 120 FPS off the main thread, with presets for rotate, scale, translate, opacity, color, and filter effects. Projects build as dynamic Remix applications with server-side rendering or export as static HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. The Webstudio CLI generates Docker-ready builds that run a Node.js server on port 3000, with Nginx reverse proxy configuration for SSL termination via Let's Encrypt. The builder requires minimum 1 GB RAM and 1 CPU core for Docker builds. MCP integration enables AI agents to create and modify websites programmatically. On RepoCloud, deploy Webstudio projects on a dedicated VPS with root SSH access, persistent storage, and complete control over your hosting, custom domains, and deployment pipeline, all under the AGPL-3.0 license.

A campaign engine wrapped around a contact database: Mautic, the largest open-source marketing automation platform, replaces HubSpot or Marketo without per-contact pricing. Contacts arrive through forms, landing pages, imports, or the REST API and flow into segments: dynamic filters that update automatically from behavior, custom profile fields, or point scores. Segments decide who qualifies; campaigns decide what happens. The drag-and-drop Campaign Builder composes multi-step workflows from actions, positive/negative decision trees, and conditions (field values, tags, device type, segment membership, point thresholds), with static or relative delays, a Jump-to-Step action for moving contacts between branches, and handoffs that push contacts into CRMs or entirely different campaigns. Messaging covers email, SMS, and web/app push out of the box, with A/B testing and a drag-and-drop email builder; dynamic website content swaps page sections per known contact. Lead scoring assigns points for clicks and visits with decay for inactivity, while stages track funnel position. Native integrations cover Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, and Dynamics, plus a full REST API for custom sync. It runs on PHP and MySQL with cron jobs processing campaigns and segment rebuilds - self-hosting keeps your entire contact database and behavioral history under your control.