<a class="_question-link QuestionHeader-TitleLink" href="/topics/9652/~flat-file-cms">What are the best flat-file CMS?

The price went up with Kirby 3 as the CMS grew. It's still worth it but maybe not for small websites. Tip: They sometimes offer social pricing on demand for small structures or students. See More

PHP version:7.3+

Template Engine:PHP

See All Specs

Top Pro

Great Community

Top Con

Kirby 3 pricing went up

IngeniousHuitztlampaehecatl's Experience

After more than a decade working with CMS systems I finally found the CMS I always wanted. Fantastic docs, extensive cookbook with ready-made solutions, complete control over code base, custom dashboard, page builder, post types, site & page options... Uh, whatever you need Kirby has. And pricing model is great thing too. You can't expect something free to be this good. See More

Top Pro

Good support

Well documented and friendly community. See More

Top Con

Price model

NobleIshat's Experience

Great product + team + community See More

Top Pro

Markdown syntax

Write your content with plain Markdown or use Kirbytext. See More

HelpfulSangarius's Experience

Easy setup, good documentation, awesome support on so many levels and a great community. See More

Top Pro

Custom panel

You can create custom panel (admin section) for every page type with ease. See More

ImpartialJanus's Experience

The perfect CMS if you like it clean, simple, smart and powerful. Kirby CMS makes web development fun! See More

Top Pro

Very customisable

From very simple pages to highly customised content models, almost anything is possible. Fast prototyping. See More

ImpartialIsis's Experience

coming from wordpress, kirby is so fun to create websites with. elegant and straightforward! See More

Top Pro

Great community

StrongBunbulama's Experience

Kirby is the first CMS I've worked with that truly adopts the "be like water" mindset. Instead of taking an existing CMS structure and trying to modify it to fit your client's needs, Kirby effortlessly shapes itself to whatever the scope of your project is. See More

Top Pro

Open source

MemorableAdikia's Experience

By far the best cms I've used. Great documentation and awesome community. See More

Top Pro

Not free for commercial

This is good thing. Free CMS always have some hidden pricing model that you eventually pay actually more than this. See More

FascinatingPolyphemus's Experience

Several Websitues for friends. Using it for my own artist website. See More

Top Pro

Super Flexible

The entire CMS is extremely flexible and very easy to use. See More

HumbleSarakka's Experience

The best there is. See More

Top Pro

Open for unconvetional/exoerimental solutions

ArtisticAmeretat's Experience

I used Kirby when I first started building websites professionally, and it was easy for a beginner to pick up, with lots of layers of complexity and power to explore and learn too. See More

ComposedCottus's Experience

Flexible as hell! See More

MagicalBoreas's Experience

Using it since v1, never found a better experience elsewhere, I guess is also a question of habit. Very short learning curve when you know php Great clean and readable documentation with many usable examples in the cookbook Amazing community, very helpfull Amazing support A small but very active team provinding a healthy development pace Can't complain on the price with this high quality and time saving for both customers and devs. See More

OpinionatedCaicias's Experience

It's my favourite solution so far. Strikes a good balance between simplicity and flexibility. The pricing is appropiate. I am sure it has saved me some time and money in comparison to some less enjoyable tools. See More

KindLeucothea's Experience

Simple, modern and still highly flexible CMS with a good community. Also, it's not a machinery like WordPress, as the description says. See More

FerventRhadamanthus's Experience

Easy to install, easy to maintain, easy to extend, excellent support. See More

DedicatedNinhursag's Experience

I've used many systems in the last 20+ years and can honestly say this the best CMS I have used. Very fast, very capable and very very flexable. See More

ResourcefulIxpiyacoc's Experience

The most flexible CMS out there. See More

SmartMantus's Experience

Well, best there is. Tested them all, but flexibility, extensibility, and speed from Kirby CMS are unparalleled. See More

InterestingKagutsuchi's Experience

Easy to install and absolutely stunning community. Support is great either. See More

Define unlimited custom fields for any of your entries. See More

score 145 · Answer 2

Flextype

Top Pro

Dynamic Content Types

Top Con

Same CMS repackaged

Same CMS that got regurgitated over and over for years. See More

Cronos's Experience

One of the great advantages is that Flextype is a flat file CMS, if you need to change hosting providers you can simply zip up your website content and extract it somewhere else, without the messy database exports. It also means you can define custom fields for any of your entries and it is easy to edit going forward. See More

Specs

MIT-licensed open source project and completely free to use. See More

PHP version:8.1+

Template Engine:TWIG

See All Specs

Top Pro

Free

MightyGerda's Experience

In total it was hard to figure out how to use it in the beginning, but after you get hang of it, it gets very pleasant to work with See More

Top Pro

No external DB required

AffableInuus's Experience

Easy install, easy handling very minimalism but powerful. See More

Top Pro

Built-in REST API

Provides APIs organized around Representational State Transfer (REST) for working with content. See More

MagicalHemithea's Experience

Where's the demo? Where are pages with themes? It's not hard to put the menu button DOWN THERE BY DEFAULT. Why are ALL CMS creators that stupid? Man, I miss Texpattern's non-idiots. 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

IntuitiveVili's Experience

Small but powerfull enough. No SQL, filebased data storage. Minimal knowledge of php + html is enough to start new project. FREE. See More

Top Pro

Flexible

Simple but powerful Core API's. See More

Anastasia's Experience

Great experience. See More

Top Pro

Super Fast

Elegance architecture and built-in smart cache. See More

Top Pro

Tokenized API

just installed it and it just work out of the box. Very fast too! Google page speed gives it 100%. See More

score 57 · Answer 3

Bludit

Top Pro

Plugins

EfficientShulsaga's Experience

Specs

I like it its ease of learning, easy themes editing, and responsivity, low server resources :) See More

Top Pro

Themes

mtsmayad webaholic's Experience

Top Pro

Pure PHP

FunAirmid's Experience

I currently use and support Bludit via Patreon and in the forum. I've been an active member for a long time now. It's what my main site is built on. Highly recommend using it as user-friendly and speed makes it a great tool for building sites. See More

Top Pro

Really Clean code base, easy to create new plugins or themes

ToughPsamathe's Experience

using Blutdit on one of my websites, it's dirty damn fast! See More

Top Pro

Docker

Also available as a Docker image. See More

LikableScylla's Experience

easy to use, work like a charm, enough themes to be satisfied with https://lucy-racquel-and-me.com/ See More

Top Pro

Markdown support

UnbiasedPerun's Experience

For non-programmer, GRAV is too difficult. However, Bludit is SUPER EASY and far faster than GRAV (at my environment). I hope we can get more themes. See More

You only need a text editor and PHP on your system. See More

score 56 · Answer 4

Grav

Top Pro

Easy development

Top Con

Not the fastest

Especially when deploying. See More

TrustingGangrimDoryeong's Experience

Non-intuitive for amateurs. It took a few hours to begin grasping the system, but ultimately it did not meet the requirement of being fully pre-cached html. The system is great at what it does, and is probably overkill for our purpose, it just does not quite address our need. See More

Specs

Very good lightweight and still "sexy" CMS See More

Template Engine:Twig

See All Specs

Top Pro

Open-source and free

PowerfulMneme's Experience

Top Pro

Built-in package manager

JoyousVirbius's Experience

Takes a while to get used to, but when you do, you'll find that Grav is very flexible and powerful. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use admin panel

Well designed, easily usable and modern admin panel is a boost as it lets Clients edit the content easily. See More

UnbiasedPerun's Experience

Too difficult! I couldn't even find out how to display my own post on my GRAV site. I couldn't make the plugins work. My GRAV site took too much time to display every page. I can't believe it introduce itself as "Super Easy to Use" and "fast". See More

Top Pro

Can be hosted with any provider

Since Grav is built with PHP, it can be hosted on almost all web hosting providers. If the provider supports Wordpress, they also support Grav. See More

DashingYuqiang's Experience

Several web sites. BTW, your description of Grav is really incomplete: add plugins, admin, and many others... See More

Top Pro

Custom fields for content

YAML-based page headers allow you easily add custom dynamic fields to your content. See More

EfficientAiakos's Experience

The themes are all outdated and most of them don't work! The ones that did work looked like crap. See More

Top Pro

Extensive documentation

Documentation is not an afterthought. Grav has a dedicated documentation site plus loads of tutorials and guides. See More

JoyfulSterope's Experience

I'm not a programmer by any means, i just wanted the fastest and cheapest solution with the most flexibility, Grav + GoDaddy economy hosting + CloudFlare caching has made my site one of the fastest on the web according to pingdom. I have google maps api, messaging with ZenDesk free, user logins, email alerts, status page, and just about anything an ISP would need for a website. Thank you Grav Devs! https://firewi.com See More

Top Pro

Great backup options

Wide variety of backup options and retention. Also allows (via Plugin) to use Git as a Backup each time the content changes. See More

Awilum's Experience

I was trying to build on top of Grav a website more than 1000 pages, but unfortunately it is not possible to do without buying the powerful servers and hosting with a lot of hardware resources. See More

Top Pro

Easy creation of templates and content

Supports Twig for templating with Parsedown for fast Markdown and Markdown Extra support. See More

ConscientiousJavine's Experience

Open source, free and user friendly. See More

Top Pro

CLI Tools

Command line tools such as dependency installation, cache clearing, user creation and backups. See More

All you have to do is unzip and upload files without any database setup. See More

score 34 · Answer 5

WonderCMS

Top Pro

Easy to install

Top Con

Your website will break itself automatically

ProductiveThaumas's Experience

The easiest and fastest CMS I have ever used. See More

Specs

Languages:PHP, jQuery

Free and no "powered by" links. See More

PHP version:7.2+

Price:Free

Top Pro

Free and white label

AuthenticKhumban's Experience

All the sudden my website says file not found. What a load of BS. I spent hours and hours customizing this site, and now I have to find a new script that won't just break itself for no good reason. See More

Top Pro

Easy to theme

LoveableGalene's Experience

Blows PicoCMS away for Resume/CV, Portfolio, Landing/Single Page. Only Jekyll is faster (but no average client can edit it) See More

Top Pro

Very fast and easy enough for clients to edit

Blows PicoCMS away for Resume/CV, Portfolio, Landing/Single Page. Only Jekyll is faster (but no average client can edit it). See More

score 26 · Answer 6

Automad

Top Pro

Easy to understand and implement

Top Pro

Flexibility

Top Pro

Nice UI/UX

score 13 · Answer 7

Typemill

Top Pro

Requires very little technical skills

Specs

Great for documentations, manuals or structured content. See More

Top Pro

Focus on content

Top Pro

Themes

All themes available look professional and fit for purpose See More

Very easy to spin up a good looking basic website with polished look and feel. Local dev UI with upload to ftp, netlify, Amazon S3, GitHub. See More

score 9 · Answer 8

Publii

Afforester's Experience

score 9 · Answer 9

Typesetter

Top Pro

Many features

Bootstrap, CKEditor, multiuser, editing reviews, very fast. See More

GutsyHendursaga's Experience

not compatible php8+ - Obsolete See More

CheerfulAjtzak's Experience

I have been using it for five years and I am very satisfied. See More

score 11 · Answer 10

Archivarix CMS

Top Pro

Fast and simple flat-file CMS

DiligentShalim's Experience

Good See More

Specs

High speed - Because of HTML, CSS, JAVA and images optimization Archivarix CMS works much faster than many others. It has a positive effect on site indexing by search engines. Portability - just 1 file! No need to create databases or accounts, the system works immediately after uploading to the server. Functionality - With Archivarix CMS you can edit website content in the WYSIWYG editor, create and delete pages, search and replace by regular expression, add your own scripts and images. And also our CMS can work together with any other CMS (like Wordpress, Drupal etc.) on one website. Flexibility - Ability to convert any website running on any CMS or even made in plain HTML in Archivarix CMS. See More

Language:PHP

Top Pro

Archivarix CMS is a free compact open source CMS specially made for our Wayback Machine Downloader and Website Downloader tools

IngeniousSogbo's Experience

Really fast cms. See More

Top Pro

Fast and simple flat-file CMS

David Archivarix's Experience

Working with Archivarix.com website downloader See More

Can be used as a flat-file CMS with the option to wire-up a database if needed. See More

score 16 · Answer 11

Pico

score 6 · Answer 12

Statamic

Top Pro

Can work as a static site generator

MagicalHemithea's Experience

One-click install is when you drop files on your FTP, visit install.php, add your SQL credentials as needed - DONE. Not this. See More

Top Pro

Developers have extra incentive to maintain it, considering it's a commercial product

So it keeps the bar high. Provides extra-incentive for the developers to fix bugs and make sure it maintains solid. See More

InterestingKagutsuchi's Experience

Too complex. Not easy to understand. See More

Top Pro

Multi-lingual support baked into the core

No need for plugins. See More

Top Pro

Great documentation

The documentation is extremely detailed and explains everything thoroughly. See More

Très bon cms, communauté française active. See More

score 3 · Answer 13

PluXml

Top Pro

Facile à mettre en oeuvre

RationalAsteria's Experience

Top Pro

Communauté active

DynamicCoronus's Experience

I have bee using it for years (2006-2011) and then was very happy to find out in 2020 that it was still around and improved a lot. It takes a few minutes to set online and runs right away. You only need php to run it, no need to configure a database server. Configuration is easy if you want to tune the default. the forum is of a great help , at least for me who was not a developer. A few plugins will come to add some extra functionality (search engine, contact form, reading time, .. and a few more) . themes are available and quiet easy to modify for a beginner, else the forum will help. Plugins are also easy to install and if you are familiar with coding, it won't take you long to create and modify your owns. See More