Top Free Open-Source Content Management Systems

Top Free Open-Source Content Management Systems

1. WordPress

WordPress debuted in 2003 as a blogging platform, later evolving into a sophisticated content management system built on PHP and MySQL, powering numerous websites worldwide, from blogs to major news portals. With over 54,000 plugins and themes, WordPress facilitates customization – including e-commerce functionality, galleries, mailing lists, forums, and analytics.

- Get WordPress here.

2. Joomla

Joomla, the versatile CMS, empowers users to craft basic websites and advanced web applications. With mobile-friendly features, multilingual support, and thousands of third-party extensions, Joomla is a go-to platform for approximately 10% of global business websites.

Explore Joomla's potential by downloading it here.

Drupal, the open-source PHP-based CMS, offers a flexible content architecture, seamless authoring experience, and an extensive integrated ecosystem. Trusted by some of the largest websites like Weather.com, Drupal facilitates content sharing across multiple languages and devices.

Download Joomla from this link.

Get your hands on Drupal by downloading it here.

4. Magento Open Source

Magento Open Source, formerly known as Magento Community Edition, is an ecommerce CMS packed with marketing tools, SEO optimization, and robust product management features. Explore a variety of themes and extensions covering customer support, payment security, shipping, website optimization, and more. Join Magento's large community of partners for deployment and development.

Download Magento Open Source from this link.

5. Webflow

Webflow offers intuitive support for building custom blogs, ecommerce stores, and other websites. Designing on this platform is clear-cut and methodical. Tailor the checkout experience to fit your store, highlight specific product features, and showcase images and other information with customizable templates. Additionally, Webflow allows for cart layout adjustments, positioning, and animations to captivate customers.

However, Webflow only offers free usage for the first 2 projects; thereafter, users must subscribe to various service plans starting at $16/month (up to 10 projects).

Download Webflow from this link.

6. SilverStripe

SilverStripe presents a user-friendly, free platform with template tools for frontend web development and a plethora of extended modules to enhance functionality. Additionally, it enables you to create fields, page types, and data structures to tailor the CMS to your needs. With over 2,500 modules and 50,000 live websites, SilverStripe is a robust choice.

Download SilverStripe from this link.

7. Craft

Craft CMS empowers you to craft tailored experiences for your projects without making assumptions about content. Simply choose the features and functionalities you need. For instance, Craft Commerce offers seamlessly integrated plugins for shopping and shipping workflows, allowing you to focus solely on managing products and the rest of your content. Utilize Twig for templating and Live Preview for content previews.

Individual projects are free on Craft, but for building professional websites, you'll need to pay $299 per project.

Download Craft from this link.

8. Contao

Contao, an open-source CMS, enables the creation of professional websites and scalable web applications. It offers multiple languages and supplementary themes, license systems, version control, flexible form builders, integrated advanced search and sorting options with numerous modules. Additionally, it provides eCommerce website templates integrated with payment providers, inventory management, analytics tools, and more. Contao boasts over 150,000 built websites.

Download Contao from this link.

9. Umbraco

Umbraco is designed for users to freely build custom websites and applications. To use Umbraco's CMS, you need to employ CSS and JavaScript programming languages. Umbraco hosts over 300 free extensions, with a user base of over 200,000 active users. For hosting packages, users can expect to pay around $30/month.

Download Umbraco from this link.

10. Fork

Download Fork from this link.

Fork is an easy-to-use open-source CMS, allowing the use of Symfony software for design. It features an intuitive and user-friendly interface, supporting the building, monitoring, and updating of your website. Fork also offers numerous free themes and applications to extend your website.