Though WordPress is quite popular with everybody, people are always looking for alternatives to test drive only to come back to WordPress. Here are some popular free alternatives to WordPress which compete in the same space.
Ghost
Ghost is a fully open source and a hackable platform for building and running a modern online publication powering blogs, magazines, and journalists from Zappos to Sky News. Ghost is coded in Node.js, a server-side JavaScript execution engine, based on Google’s V8. Also read, is Ghost really a WordPress killer by SitePoint.
Drupal
Drupal is a free and open source content-management framework coded in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. It provides a back-end framework for at least more than two percent of all web sites worldwide, ranging from personal blogs to corporate, political, and government sites. Companies also use Drupal for knowledge management and for business collaboration.
Joomla!
Joomla is a free and open source content management system (CMS) for publishing content on the web. Joomla is primarily coded in PHP, uses object-oriented programming techniques and software design patterns, stores data in a database and includes features such as page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, search, and support for language internationalization.
Craft CMS
Craft is a proprietary, content-first, focused content management system for developers, designers and web professionals that blends flexibility, power, and ease of use for clients and aims to make their job enjoyable. But since this is proprietary software, the free personal version doesn’t give you much features or freedom. The Client version (sites built for clients with only one content manager) comes at $199 per site and the Pro version comes at $299 per site.
Grav
Grav is a fast, simple and flexible file-based web-platform with zero installation required. Just extract the ZIP archive, and you are already up and running. Although Grav follows principles similar to other flat-file CMS platforms, it has a different design philosophy than most. Grav focuses primarily on your content and turns your content structure into a navigable site. Moreover, it is also an open source project.
Concrete5
Concrete5 is an open source content management system (CMS) for publishing content to the web. Concrete5 was designed for ease of use and for users with a minimum of technical skills by enabling users to edit the site content directly from the page. It also provides version management for every page similar to the wiki software. Moreover, Concrete5 allows users to edit images through an embedded editor on the page.
ProcessWire
ProcessWire is a free content management system (CMS) and framework based on PHP built to make work easier and save time. ProcessWire provides simpler and stronger control over your pages, fields, templates, and markup at any scale and it provides a powerful template system that works the way you already do. ProcessWire’s open source jQuery-inspired API is the best, making content management easy and enjoyable. Managing content and developing a site in ProcessWire is shockingly simple–and fun–compared to what you may be used to.
MODX
MODX (or MODx) is a free and open source content management system (CMS) and web application framework for publishing content to the internet and intranets. MODX is licensed under the GPL and is coded in the PHP & supports MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server as the database. It was awarded Packt Publishing’s Most Promising Open Source Content Management System in 2007.
GetSimple CMS
GetSimple is an XML based, stand-alone, fully independent and lite open source Content Management System (CMS). To go along with its best-in-class user interface, it is loaded with features that every website needs. GetSimple is truly the simplest way to manage a small-business website.
Bolt
Bolt is an open source Content Management Tool written in PHP and based on Silex and Symfony components, uses Twig and either SQLite, MySQL or PostgreSQL for its database. Bolt strives to be as simple and straightforward as possible. It is quick to set up, easy to configure, fully responsive and uses elegant templates. Bolt requires a minimum of PHP 5.5.9 to run and is fully compatible with the latest PHP 7.
Conclusion
Thus I hope this post gives you a rough idea of some popular WordPress alternatives. While looking at these alternatives, you may also want to have a look at AWeber – the best email marketing platform for your site.
So helpful. I always wondered what other options were to further my online presence.
You’re welcome Doug, glad that you found it helpful.
Also phpEnter is a good alternative.
phpEnter is just a news publishing script and is not as popular as the above alternatives. Neither does it directly compete with WordPress.
Useful articles Antony!
Thank you, Bharathi. I’m glad you found it useful.