It’s understandable why so many people choose to utilise WordPress to build their websites. WordPress to create their websites. WordPress makes it simple and quick for users of all skill levels to create unique websites with its drag-and-drop block builder and thousands of plugins, widgets, and themes.
Because of WordPress’s flexibility and built-in functionality, you can do a lot of things, including add live chat and forms to your website, alter the appearance of each page in your categories, use various themes on different pages, and much more.
Yet not all website owner’s wants can be satisfied by WordPress. A WordPress alternative will be desired by those who want hosting and website creation resources in one location or who want less control over the management of their website.
How to Choose a WordPress Alternative
You have a range of alternatives to consider when comparing WordPress alternatives. Another open-source content management system is an option. Or you might use a proprietary CMS if you want hosting and website creation tools in one place. Also, a proprietary CMS typically provides more functionality, such as superior security features and built-in SEO tools.
A website builder like Weebly can work instead if you don’t have the time to learn about, research, or utilise all of a CMS’s built-in capabilities and add-ons. You won’t have to pay for more complicated features that you won’t have the time to master or use because you’ll get website construction tools and hosting in one location.
However, if you want to completely avoid worrying about site upkeep, you may open a free account on a blogging or publishing website like Tumblr or Medium. By doing this, you can continue to post multimedia content and expand your following without having to pay for any features or services you aren’t using.
It’s crucial to remember that no platform is better or easier than another; rather, they are each created with a specific goal in mind. To determine which tool is best for your website, consider the following factors:
- How much can you spend?
- How frequently will new pages be added to your website?
- How much say do you want in how your website looks?
- What about your website’s performance, security, and speed?
- Will numerous people contribute to the operation of your website?
- Would you prefer pick your own hosting company or use a hosted platform?
- Are you expanding your website with a blog?
WordPress Alternatives for CMS
A content management system (CMS) is a platform that enables many users to build and manage a website without needing to start from scratch or have any coding experience. You may simply alter your site’s appearance, include multimedia in your postings, group content into tags and categories, control numerous users, update the source code, and a ton of other things.
In the event that you determine that a CMS is the ideal option for your company, you may consider a wide range of platforms before making your decision. You should consider each platform’s adaptability, affordability, usability, security, and dependability before choosing one. You need one that will let you create a website that satisfies user needs, supports your brand, and grows over time.
Consider the goals of your site as you choose which CMS will help you reach them. This will enable you to choose the functionality you require. For instance, WordPress can be the best option if you want to build a video sharing website because it has a large selection of plugins and themes designed specifically for that usage. On the other hand, Drupal can be a better option if you need to manage and safeguard a lot of data.
But, if security is your top concern, you should think about utilising proprietary software that restricts access to its source code to make it less vulnerable to security breaches.
These are just a few instances of how the goals and requirements for your site may change. To assist you in choosing where to create your site, we’ll examine some of the most popular CMS systems in-depth in this piece.
You might prefer to use a CMS, a website builder, or a publishing platform to launch your online business, depending on your needs and wants. I’ll go over a list of WordPress alternatives.
1. 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 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.
2. 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.
3. Drupal
Drupal is a free and open-source CMS platform that is coded in PHP. It was initially developed as a student community solution. But later evolved into a full-fledged open source PHP CMS. This CMS provides developers with the opportunity to develop flawlessly highly optimised websites. And this platform is preferred by most developers, due to its rich features of modern app development.
WordPress uses plugins, while Drupal provides modules to perform custom functions on websites. The platform has a wide range of features and other options. Making it one of the best PHP CMS on the market. Many large organisations around the world uses Drupal for their app.
A CMS is an application plan to make website development easy and simple. This allows you to add various functionality and monitor the content for your website. These type of sites are typically created by designers using various languages and technologies such as PHP, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. So Custom Drupal modules are modules that you assemble yourself. Developing custom modules requires some knowledge of Drupal’s API and PHP coding.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. Squarespace
Squarespace isn’t the easiest WordPress alternative, as there are significant differences in 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.
8. Shopify
Shopify isn’t a clearly a WordPress competitor unless you want to start an eCommerce business online.
It offers one of the most intuitive and user-friendly shop builders. With nearly 800,000 users worldwide, they must be doing something right. They give you access to cutting-edge, responsive designs designed to make your store look great. Plus, as it is so popular, you can reach out to the company’s community for help and guidance if you need it. And even the option to extend Shopify’s functionality through the App Store.
While it’s a great solution, it also has some drawbacks to consider, like dealing with multiple currencies at once. If you are using Shopify Payments as your primary payment processor, you’ll need to pay a transaction fee.
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.
11. PrestaShop
PrestaShop is another powerful eCommerce platform for a successful online store, but it differs from Shopify in two important ways. This means that you can use the core software for free and modify its code according to your needs. This also means that you will have to find your own hosting provider.
Also offers more features than Shopify. So while the dashboard looks complicated and the setup process is more involved than with Shopify, you can create a more custom website in no time.
If you want to customise the functionality and look and feel of your website, you can choose from over 3,600 modules and over 2,400 themes to install in the official add-ons marketplace. With so many customisation options, Prestashop appeals to large online stores with extensive product catalogs.
12. Grav
Grav is a modern open source flat file CMS perfect for non-developers looking to run a website. It requires no installation and, like WordPress, is relatively easy to customise and manage.
This CMS is in PHP language, licensed under MIT license. Which stores data and files in text files and folders instead of databases. It offers features such as one-click installation, robust API, dynamic content types, content filtering, multilingual support, image media processing, extended plugins, and easy backup and restore of theme customisations. Grav can be used to build short-lived websites, micro-sites, high-traffic campaign sites, single-page or small-page standalone sites.
The only downside is that you cannot use Grav if your site requires multiple account profiles, databases and dynamic web pages.