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Development
Open Source
Web
Software
Writing
CMS
What are the best open source headless CMS's?
22
Options
Considered
299
User
Recs.
Aug 24, 2023
Last
Updated
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19
Options
Considered
Best open source headless CMS's
Price
Multi Language Support
Technology
77
Strapi
Free / paid
Yes
Node.js
71
Flextype
free
Yes
PHP
--
Plone
Free
-
Python
--
ProcessWire
-
Yes
-
--
Cockpit
Free
-
PHP
See Full List
77
Strapi
My Rec
ommendation
for
Strapi
My Recommendation for
Strapi
All
10
Experiences
3
Pros
5
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Out-of-the-box administration panel
Easy way to manage your application. This panel allows you to add/edit/delete entries for your APIs, manage your users, groups and permissions. In the future, it will be such as WordPress-like administration panel dedicated to your application.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Buggy, poor set of features
Buggy rich text editor Lack of WYSIWYG html (or at least raw html) editor Cannot change content type when production deploy
See More
Long Tran's Experience
Day to day management for a large enterprise, highly customizable and scalable
See More
Specs
Multi Language Support:
Yes
Technology:
Node.js
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac, Docker
License:
MIT
See All Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Auto-generate REST APIs
Strapi comes with blueprints that let you create, read, update and delete your data. You also can paginate, sort and filter your results in a matter of seconds with simple but yet specific parameters.
See More
SociableEnyo's Experience
Quite buggy, after playing with it and trying to adjust to our needs, we have decided to drop it - is not stable and is not recommended for production.
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Top
Pro
•••
Users, groups and permissions
Manage user settings, login, registration, groups and permissions on the fly. Strapi delivers all those essential features out-of-the-box.
See More
OpinionatedIusaaset's Experience
buggy af
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Support GraphQL out of the box
And there is a good GraphQL documentation for 3.x.x.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Room for high availability and scalability
There are both horizontal and vertical way to scale for not only PAID but also FREE plan.
See More
Hide
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Free / paid
Recommend
91
17
71
Flextype
My Rec
ommendation
for
Flextype
My Recommendation for
Flextype
All
14
Experiences
3
Pros
8
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Flexible
Simple but powerful Core API's.
See More
Top
Con
•••
No user-friendly
No user-friendly for beginner, this type of CMS is especially for developers.
See More
ProudAbhartach's Experience
Flextype is lightweight, fast and modern. In my opinion the best self-hosted hybrid Content Management System on the market. Hybrid means it can be used as headless or traditional CMS best of both worlds.
See More
Specs
Multi Language Support:
Yes
Technology:
PHP
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac
License:
MIT
See All Specs
Top
Pro
•••
No external DB required
See More
Top
Con
•••
Same CMS repackaged
See More
CaffeinatedAmurru's Experience
Easy to install and configure. Easy to teach/explain how to work with CMS to a new customer. Lightweight and fast CMS
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Built-in REST API
Provides APIs organized around Representational State Transfer (REST) for working with content.
See More
Awilum's Experience
The freedom of a headless CMS with the full functionality of a traditional CMS.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Free
MIT-licensed open source project and completely free to use.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Tokenized API
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Dynamic Content Types
Define unlimited custom fields for any of your entries.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Super fast
Elegant architecture and built-in smart cache.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Version control
It is easy to version control all content in Flextype with GIT or any other Version Control System.
See More
Hide
See All
free
Recommend
54
7
--
Plone
My Rec
ommendation
for
Plone
My Recommendation for
Plone
All
10
Experiences
2
Pros
7
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Can run on virtually anything
Plone runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, Chromebooks, RaspberryPi, servers, and cloud services.
See More
FascinatingMalingee's Experience
I have many years of developing content with Plone CMS. Plone 6 / Volto is a strong competitor in the headless CMS scene
See More
Specs
Technology:
Python
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac
Top
Pro
•••
Remarkable level of security
Plone has been around for almost two decades and to date less than 50 vulnerabilities were discovered in the platform. That's at least ten times less than any of the popular alternatives, including Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla. In fact, government agencies, such as NASA and FBI use Plone for its high level of security.
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IndependentMalingee's Experience
I have built portals, websites and intranets since a long time with Plone. I love it's flexible software architecture, outstanding security, content management concept and user friendliness. Meanwhile I'm a core developer. I worked with a lot of other platforms too, Django, Wordpress, Drupal, EZ, Liferay - all have their strengths and weaknesses but compared to Plone they fall short - in my opinion. However, Plone is a niche product, that is to be considered.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Open source
Not only does this provides complete transparency to the user, it also enables a large base of developers to work simultaneously on solving any arising the issues and improving the platform.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Multilingual UI and documentation
Plone platform along with all documentation is available in more than 40 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Great for long term projects
It’s rare to get an issue using Plone. More fiddly than WP to manage media but given the security it’s a winner.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Extensible code architecture
Plone's functionality can be flexibly extended in various ways without touching any core components. Plone is built with Python and uses the Zope Component Architecture with the adapter software pattern at it's core.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Flexible from small website to high-performance Enterprise CMS
With embed ZODB databe it fits for small sites and scale up to ZEO architecture distributed large environments.
See More
Hide
See All
Free
Recommend
24
--
ProcessWire
My Rec
ommendation
for
ProcessWire
My Recommendation for
ProcessWire
All
12
Experiences
1
Pros
9
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Open source
Source available on GitHub.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Multi-language
See More
EnergeticPonos's Experience
Secure and Fast!
See More
Specs
Multi Language Support:
Yes
License:
MPL 2.0 and MIT licenses
PHP version:
5.3.8
GraphQL:
Yes
See All Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Powerful and easy API
The API is jQuery like; // find some pages: $pages->find('template=skyscraper, architect=john, sort=title')->limit(4); // mutate $pages->get('title=Hello You')->set('title', 'HelloWorld')->save(); $pages->get('title=Old')->trash(); // trash page // check user… $user->isLogedin(); echo $user->name; // guest $session->login($name, $pass); $session->logout(); // redirect $session->redirect($url);
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Template engine agnostic
By default, ProcessWire comes with 0 assumption on how you handle the output. You have 100% freedom on how you want to develop the frontend. Want to plain output stuff, go ahead. Want to use any number of Templating Engine, do it. Just use as Headless-CMS, okay!
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Top
Pro
•••
Easy to learn
Processwire is extremely easy to learn. Consider this: echo $pages->get('title=Hello World')->title; // "Hello World" echo $pages->get('title=Hello World')->parent->title; // "Home" echo $pages->find('Template=Category')->count; // 126 echo $pages->find('Template=Category')->each('title'); // ['Audio', 'Video' …] Selectors are so powerful but yet so easy. Check out the cheatsheet.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Extensible
Either using the modules already available or writing your own module, using the jQuery-like API.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Nice and helpful growing community
You will always find one to respond politely in the forums. Sometimes even the creator Ryan Cramer himself.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Custom Fields on steroids
ProcessWire is heavily based on custom fields. All objects (Pages) inside ProcessWire are based on extensible templates comprised of fields that can be easily defined. Many useful fields come prebuilt and they can be extended with modules.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Powerful selector engine
The way you fetch, access and manipulate objects (Pages) in ProcessWire is extremely powerful and easy. You can receive any page and its custom fields, filter, travers, add…
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Secure
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
4
--
Cockpit
My Rec
ommendation
for
Cockpit
My Recommendation for
Cockpit
All
14
Experiences
2
Pros
8
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Open source
See More
Top
Con
•••
Documentation not a strong as it could be
See More
Russell Hutson's Experience
Used this for 3 years now in a corporate setting, for a variety of uses. Very flexible and does most things you need a headerless CMS to do. Call from PHP or JS, or anything which can do a GET. Plays nicely with IntercoolerJS
See More
Specs
Technology:
PHP
Platforms:
Linux, Docker
Top
Pro
•••
Free
See More
Top
Con
•••
Small dev team supporting it
See More
drfeld's Experience
Cockpit CMS has huge potential for a particular type of project, but is hampered by having limited documentation.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
V2 is awesome
Beautiful UI.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Built on slightly proprietary / little known framework
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Flexible API
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Webhooks
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Cockpit addons
Rich features addons like (GraphQL, ElasticSearch, Group Permissions).
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Simple concepts: regions and collections
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Works well with IntercoolerJS
See More
Hide
See All
Free
Recommend
24
5
--
Netlify CMS
My Rec
ommendation
for
Netlify CMS
My Recommendation for
Netlify CMS
All
6
Pros
5
Cons
1
Top
Pro
•••
Experimental support for GitHub's GraphQL API
Experimental support for GitHub's GraphQL API is now available for the GitHub backend. Without mutation.
See More
Top
Con
•••
A lot of configuration
Example: a few plugins and some code are needed for gatsby-img or markdown to work.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Easy Creating Custom Widgets option
The NetlifyCMS exposes a window.CMS global object that you can use to register custom widgets, previews, and editor plugins. The same object is also the default export if you import Netify CMS as an npm module. The available widget extension methods are listed here.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Modern
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Open-source
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Built in React.js
See More
Hide
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Free
Recommend
10
3
--
Prose.io
My Rec
ommendation
for
Prose.io
My Recommendation for
Prose.io
All
2
Pros
1
Cons
1
Top
Pro
•••
Open source
You have the ability to make amends to the source code that improve the platform.
See More
Top
Con
•••
There is no support team
No support is currently offered for Prose, although you can report technical issues on GitHub.
See More
Hide
Get it
here
Recommend
4
--
Graphweaver
My Rec
ommendation
for
Graphweaver
My Recommendation for
Graphweaver
Hide
Get it
here
Recommend
1
--
Kentico Kontent
My Rec
ommendation
for
Kentico Kontent
My Recommendation for
Kentico Kontent
All
1
Cons
1
Top
Con
•••
Not really open-source
Although open-source side projects are available on GitHub, the CMS source code is not.
See More
Hide
Free / paid
Recommend
4
--
Superdesk
My Rec
ommendation
for
Superdesk
My Recommendation for
Superdesk
All
11
Experiences
3
Pros
5
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Visual
The interface is clean and well designed. You can tell someone with a UX background worked on it and not just software engineers.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Sometimes buggy
Sometimes, when trying to publish a post I was getting errors which was a bit annoying. However, after we updated to the latest version the instance was running smoothly.
See More
TallPluto's Experience
I spent some time doing some freelance work for Sourcefabric, and I had been using Superdesk quite often. It was pretty cool to be honest, had a lot of automation functions and a real user-friendly interface. It's super useful for editors, as it does a sound job managing content and workflow.
See More
Specs
Technology:
Python, Javascript
Top
Pro
•••
Easy to use
Putting together an article is straightforward: you type the text into the main fields and then use drag and drop to add photos.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Not one-click publishing
At least in our company’s system you need to do a couple of extra steps to publish an article.
See More
AwesomestPachamama's Experience
I have used Superdesk to publish articles and update other content on my company's website.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Publish to more than one website
You have the option of setting up publishing routes to choose where something gets published in case you have multiple websites.
See More
DedicatedBarraiya's Experience
I have used Superdesk to publish articles for my company’s website.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Customizable
I like that you can set up a personal workspace and also add different widgets to your dashboard depending on what you’re interested in.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Newsroom automation
Superdesk can aggregate and automate multiple mundane newsroom jobs.
See More
Hide
See All
Free
Recommend
9
--
GraphCMS
My Rec
ommendation
for
GraphCMS
My Recommendation for
GraphCMS
All
6
Pros
4
Cons
2
Top
Con
•••
Not open source
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Webhooks
Webhooks enable you to trigger custom code as soon as your content changes.
See More
Top
Con
•••
No content versioning
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Image processing
On-the-fly image transformations, such as resizing or cropping just by adding parameters to your media´s URL.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Roles and permissions
The roles and permissions feature allows you to assign your collaborators different roles, such as Developer, Editor and Collaborator.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Multi-project management
You can manage multiple projects and create up to 50 users per account to help manage those projects.
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
4
5
--
Prepr
My Rec
ommendation
for
Prepr
My Recommendation for
Prepr
All
2
Experiences
1
Pros
1
Top
Pro
•••
Data driven headless CMS
Content management for bigger teams is really nice.
See More
CommunicativeGugalanna's Experience
Nice easy-to-use headless CMS, based on GraphQL and loaded with non-complex personalization options.
See More
Hide
FREE
Recommend
2
--
ButterCMS
My Rec
ommendation
for
ButterCMS
My Recommendation for
ButterCMS
All
2
Pros
1
Cons
1
Top
Con
•••
Not really open-source
Although API and SDK's are available on GitHub, the CMS source code is not.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Integrate with any language/framework
See More
Hide
Free / paid
Recommend
9
3
--
Webiny
My Rec
ommendation
for
Webiny
My Recommendation for
Webiny
All
7
Pros
6
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Advanced features
Integrations with enterprise systems, data compliance mechanisms, security, best-in-class tooling for Site Reliability Engineering, SLA based support, consultancy services.
See More
Specs
Open source:
Yes
Self hosted:
Yes
Advanced Publishing Workflow:
Yes
Headless cms :
Yes
See All Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Accessible
Enterprise-grade capabilities accessible to everyone.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Unified
Single experience that brings content creators and developers together.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Serverless
Unlimited, responsive, and adaptable scale that’s cost-effective and fully managed.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Open source
Released under an MIT license and architected for extensibility.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Self-hosted
Webiny runs inside your own AWS cloud. Your data, under your own rules.
See More
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here
Recommend
2
--
Comfortable
My Rec
ommendation
for
Comfortable
My Recommendation for
Comfortable
All
7
Pros
5
Cons
2
Top
Pro
•••
Easy and fast to start
See More
Top
Con
•••
Not open-source
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Flexible API
See More
Top
Con
•••
Small team
See More
Top
Pro
•••
REST and GraphQL
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Image Processing
imgix integration for realtime image transformations, such as resizing, cropping, face detection, etc.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Powerful content collections
See More
Hide
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Get it
here
Recommend
3
1
--
Gentics Mesh
My Rec
ommendation
for
Gentics Mesh
My Recommendation for
Gentics Mesh
All
1
Specs
Specs
Multi Language Support:
Yes
Technology:
Java
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac
License:
Apache License 2.0
See All Specs
Hide
Free / paid
Recommend
2
--
Squidex
My Rec
ommendation
for
Squidex
My Recommendation for
Squidex
All
12
Experiences
1
Pros
6
Cons
5
Top
Con
•••
Limited to SImple Content
Limited to simple displaying of contents but will struggle with complex business rules ie ones that require cascading drop-downs, complex nested documents, etc..
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Open source
See More
RespectfulFionnuala's Experience
For making reference screens / displaying invoices, user management and blog content, this tool was great for the team. However, when we tried to implement the more complex rules. its limitation shows compared to other established CMS already out there.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Un-debuggable Script Editors
You can't debug any of its in-built script editors
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Versioning
See More
Top
Con
•••
References
It will allow you to delete references which are used by documents and when you come to open those documents, it will then perform its 'shake' logic to remove it (make it balnk') and will also disappear from history / versioning
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Powerful rule engine for integrations
See More
Top
Con
•••
UI can be messy to navigate for an editor
See More
Top
Pro
•••
REST and GraphQL
See More
Top
Con
•••
Small team
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Slick UI
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Generous free package
2 locales, 2 collaborators, many API calls
See More
Hide
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Get it
here
Recommend
3
1
--
Gridly
My Rec
ommendation
for
Gridly
My Recommendation for
Gridly
All
3
Experiences
1
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Con
•••
Not really open-source
Although there are some repositories on Github, it does not seem to be fully open-source.
See More
LD's Experience
Easy to use, better than a spreadsheet, has enough functionality in a free version
See More
Specs
Multi Language Support:
Yes
Runs in any cloud:
Yes
Image handling:
Yes
Hide
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Free / paid
Recommend
2
1
--
Cosmic
My Rec
ommendation
for
Cosmic
My Recommendation for
Cosmic
All
1
Specs
Specs
Multi Language Support:
YES
GraphQL:
YES
Price:
Free to Enterprise
GraphQL API:
YES
See All Specs
Hide
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here
Recommend
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--
Enonic XP
My Rec
ommendation
for
Enonic XP
My Recommendation for
Enonic XP
0
Recommend
1
1
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