Open Source Craft CMS Alternatives
A curated collection of the 3 best open source alternatives to Craft CMS.
The best open source alternative to Craft CMS is Statamic. If that doesn't suit you, we've compiled a ranked list of other open source Craft CMS alternatives to help you find a suitable replacement. Other interesting open source alternatives to Craft CMS are: ProcessWire and Typemill.
Craft CMS alternatives are mainly Content Management Systems (CMS) but may also be Frameworks & Platforms or Documentation & Knowledge Base. Browse these if you want a narrower list of alternatives or looking for a specific functionality of Craft CMS.
Flat-first CMS for Laravel applications, storing content in files that live in Git rather than rows in a database.
Content kept in a database sits outside version control. Statamic takes the other road, a flat-first content management system powered by Laravel and Git, where the content of a site has the same history, review and rollback story as its code.
This repository holds the core Statamic Composer package, meant to be installed into a Laravel application you already have. A separate application repository holds a Laravel app preconfigured with Statamic, and that is what the Statamic CLI tool starts from when you create a new project.
A few consequences follow from that arrangement.
- Laravel-native: the CMS is a dependency of your application, so routing, packages and deployment stay the way Laravel already does them.
- Git-powered content: content changes travel through the same branches and reviews as everything else in the repository.
- Two entry points: add Statamic to a running app through Composer, or scaffold a fresh project with the CLI.
- Migrator: a companion Statamic Migrator project is maintained alongside the core package.
- Documentation: an extensive docs site is maintained daily, and the team treats anything unclear or incomplete as an issue worth filing.
Support is split by audience. Official developer support comes with Statamic Pro projects, while community help runs through GitHub Discussions and a Discord server. Contributions are welcome once you have read the contribution guide, and the project asks everyone taking part to abide by its code of conduct.
A PHP content management system and framework built on custom fields and an API developers use to model sites of any size.
ProcessWire is a content management system and a content management framework in one, built so developers model content with their own fields rather than bend a fixed schema. It gives more control over fields, templates and markup than most platforms while keeping an admin simple enough to hand a client without training.
The project has been around a long time. It started in 2003, took the ProcessWire name in 2006, and has been open source since 2010, with new versions landing on the development branch most weeks. It is also deliberately quiet, valuing quality over quantity and sustainability over growth, and it is meant to be a silent partner that is not easily identified from a site's front end.
Several traits explain how it is used in practice.
- Custom fields throughout: content structure comes from fields you define, not a template the CMS chose for you.
- An API for content: it stays consistent at any scale and is why developers stay once they try it.
- A client-facing admin: the interface is valued by the people updating content, not the ones building the site.
- Simple installation: extract the files somewhere reachable over HTTP, load the address, and the installer starts.
- Low-friction upgrades: moving between 3.x versions usually means replacing the wire directory, with documented paths from 2.x and from before 3.0.135.
- Modules: free modules sit alongside commercial Pro ones such as FormBuilder, ListerPro, ProFields and ProCache.
Support comes from the forums, a weekly newsletter and a showcase of sites built with it.
A flat-file CMS for markdown websites and eBooks, suited to manuals, documentation, knowledge bases, wikis and handbooks.
Typemill stores a website as markdown files on disk. There is no database to install, back up or migrate, which fits the text-driven sites it is aimed at, from user manuals and documentation through to knowledge bases, wikis and handbooks.
The stack is Slim PHP on the server with Vue.js and Tailwind CSS in the interface, and the whole application is roughly two megabytes gzipped. Authors get both a visual block editor and a raw markdown editor working over the same files, so writing and structuring do not require separate tools.
Extension points are aimed at developers who need the site to do something specific.
- Twig templates: themes are written against the template engine.
- Event dispatcher: the Symfony dispatcher exposes the hooks plugins attach to.
- YAML definitions: settings and forms are declared rather than coded by hand.
- Plugins and themes: both extend the system, with commercial options alongside the free ones.
- eBook plugin: the same content is published as PDF and ePUB from one source.
Running Typemill needs a web server, PHP 8.1 or higher and a handful of standard extensions, with five folders made writable. It installs from a zip uploaded over FTP followed by a setup page, from a clone plus Composer, or from the official Docker image. The core is MIT licensed, while plugins and themes are split between MIT and commercial terms.
