Wondering which CMS platform to use to build your website? A Content Management System or CMS platform makes it easy to create a website without knowing any code. Well.. at least for most of them.

There are a lot of options out there. Which means that you might struggle to choose what is the best CMS that suits your needs. Below in this post, I will be explaining why it’s vital to choose the right CMS platform for your website at the start.

What is a CMS Platform?

First, a CMS platform or (content management system) platform is software that allows you to efficiently manage content and build websites. We usually come across web pages written in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS programming languages. If you want to develop a website without using a CMS, you need to learn these programming languages ​​and write code.

Well, to solve this issue you should use a CMS platform, by enabling you to make a website easily without writing or knowing any coding languages. Except of course, if you are looking for a developer-friendly CMS which means you previously know how to code.

How to Choose the Best CMS Platform for Your Website

There are loads of different CMS platforms out there, but which one should you pick? Before we can start choosing our CMS platform, here are a few tips that you should look for within a good CMS.

Ease of use

You should want a CMS that makes it easy for you to create and edit content. Oftentimes it means having a drag-and-drop interface, so you can add different components into your web pages. A CMS platform should be quick and straightforward for you to make changes to the content on your site.

Design options

Your CMS platform should offer you a lot of website design templates to choose from. Also, it should allow you to easily customise those designs to your requirements with or without code knowledge).

Data portability

Another option is where your CMS platform that you pick should have tools that easily allows you to export your data and move it elsewhere such as to another hosting company etc.

Extensions, plugins and add-ons

Like many things in the world. Websites aren’t all the same, that is why no CMS platform can come with all the features that would be required for all the websites in the world. So Extensions, plugins and add-ons should be here to fix that problem. These are separate components, lets you install on your CMS platform to extend its features and functionality.

Help and support options

Though most CMS platforms are here to make it straightforward as possible for you to build a website, you might still find yourself having questions about it. You’ll need to find a platform that has help and support is available if you ever get stuck.

The cost?

You will notice that some CMS platforms are completely free. While others may charge either a monthly or annual fee. Even though you notice with some free CMS platforms, you will often need to pay for third-party extensions, plugins, add-ons, template designs, and/or site hosting services.

So make sure to try and find out as much as you can about the pricing structure of the CMS before choosing your CMS. So you don’t have any bad surprises arising up.

With these tips in mind. Let’s now take a look at the 10 CMS platforms alternatives, that  you can choose from in 2022 for 2023. However you won’t find the popular CMS platform like Drupal or WordPress.

1. October

OctoberCMS is another Laravel-based CMS which get used by thousands of digital institutions and businesses to build their websites. This CMS offers flexibility, simplicity, and a modern design for building high quality apps and websites.

As this is a self-hosted open source CMS. You can also install it separately on your hosting server. This CMS works well with third-party integrations. And boasts a large community supporting over 300 themes and plugins.

2. Craft CMS

Craft is a sort of new CMS platform written in PHP. As it has a low user base. But not because it’s missing something. But market penetration can take a while for everything. However, the developers acknowledge it. So you can seamlessly build front-end environments with Craft.

All you need is knowledge of HTML and CSS. The back-end is clean and the content editors won’t have a hard time working with it feature. In many cases, you can publish your content using the Craft PHP content management system.

As it’s lightweight. It can integrate with your hosting provider online and you won’t be abusing your server resources, so less performance issues. The only drawback that you the developers will notice is that it’s not open source. But it works well, supports a ton of features, is developer friendly, and provides effective security.

3. Publii

Publii is one newest Static CMS apps that run on the desktop. Rather than on a server. Simply download the app, and use it to build a static site. Then upload that site onto a hosting solution of your choice.

In particular, this platform seems to have modern and feature-rich CMS, that is open source and free to use. The platform seems to be more foucsed on blogging There’s a marketplace that has both free and paid theme design options.

Additional features include website syncing that supports FTP, GitHub Pages, Gitlab, AWS, Netlify, or Google Cloud, a preview function, WordPress importer, and a focus on SEO.

4. Flextype

Flextype is a simple, PHP based flat-file CMS platform that is designed to keep things flexible. Allowing you to create more or less anything you want. This CMS platform makes it dead-easy to define custom fields for any content entry and plus it has a built-in theme editor

Writing the actual content editing is easy, as it comes with a simple WYSIWYG editor, although Markdown support is available via a plugin.

But doing anything creative with the content will requires the use of shortcodes that you could find with the past WordPress style. Flextype is a solid foundation for a CMS to use.

5. ExpressionEngine

If your website has a lot of content. Then you should consider using ExpressionEngine and it handle this load. Developers can modify the script by tinkering and tweaking it a bit. And more functionality can be added.

When updating your content it is immediately visible to visitors. This CMS platform is very versatile, fetching content from various databases and applying relevant formatting. Your visitors and users will get the best visual and reading experience on all devices.

So, take advantage of custom edit forms, HTML-agnostic templates, preview pane, SEO integration, security improvements and more. While on the downside the context boxes can make navigating and editing content a little bit difficult.

6. Squarespace

Squarespace isn’t the easiest CMS, as there are significant differences in CMS platforms and how they work. However, from an end-user perspective. Both can do the same job and create functional websites.

It’s an all-in-one website platform. This means you don’t have to install any software. Just sign up for a Squarespace.com account and follow the steps to create a website – the DIY way! is the perfect tool for a blog, an eCommerce store or to showcase your portfolio of work.

In short, Squarespace does it all. It houses your site, manages the software running on it, and lets you focus on creating content.

7. Ghost

Ghost is a great tool if you want to create a content-only website or design your own online publication, it is perfect. While it isn’t famous as WordPress or Drupal but you can use to customise your website to suit your needs.

For flexibility, Ghost allows you to host your site yourself or on the Ghost server. Get a fully managed and secure service that includes a wide range of powerful and effective publishing tools. The expandable editor also allows you to move and expand dynamic blocks of content such as videos, images and even text.

Dynamic routing and tagging capabilities let you create custom URL structures and multilingual content. Plus, you get the added benefits of a fully SEO-optimised website with AMP support, structured data, subscription capture forms, RSS feeds, and more.

Ghost prices fluctuate because you can host your own website for free, like WordPress, but PHP and programming knowledge may be required. If you choose Ghost to host your website, you can access their service for free for 14 days but then it comes with some pricing packages are $29.00,$79.00 and $199.00 depending on your needs and those pricing are per a month.

8. Webflow

Webflow is a nice website builder perfect for designing responsive websites. So If you are looking for a  alternative like Drupal but that still offers a lot of cutting-edge features. This is a great tool to use. Unlike other CMS options, this CMS focused entirely on ensuring an easy experience while designing a website, how ever, Webflow requires some basic background knowledge.

Like I shortly mentioned about that you will ned some programming experience required to get the most out of all the features available in Webflow. You should be familiar with markdown, flat files, mySQL, etc. So basically if you are used to messing around with WordPress plugins and static websites, you’ll have no problems here.

Compared to options WordPress, WebFlow requires a lot of time and effort to get the most out of this tool. However, if you’re willing to do some extra coding work, you will end up with a truly unique website that’s nothing like what you’d get from a simple drag-and-drop site builder. Hosting is available through WebFlow, so you can manage all your needs in one place.

9. ProcessWire

Processwire is an easy-to-use and powerful open source CMS with a powerful API. ProcessWire gives you more control over fields, templates, and markup than other platforms. And ProcessWire’s API makes working with content easy and fun.

This CMS gives you more control over fields, templates, and markups than other platforms. And ProcessWire’s API makes working with content easy and fun.

While web developers love ProcessWire because it’s simple, easy, and fun to develop, powerful, highly scalable for sites large and small, consistent, predictable, and proven stable. and have the best community and support.

10. Concrete CMS

Concrete CMS is an open source content management system for teams. This is a solution that combines robust functionality with ease of use and low cost of entry.

Its features include secure, supported and powerful permissions. Concrete CMS gives you complete control over who can do what on which part of the page. Train your new content editor in minutes and edit mobile-optimised, responsive websites as easily as creating a document.

The concrete CMS is licensed under the MIT license and written in the PHP language.