If you search for “blogging software,” WordPress would be among the first results you would see. However, the obvious question is that, is WordPress the only choice available to you? Alternatively, is it the best choice? Are there any alternatives available to you? Of course, yes and for that reason, we have brought out this post of 15 Best WordPress Alternatives that would present to you free as well as paid WordPress Alternatives.
As a blogger, you must be familiar with the WordPress Content Management System (CMS). WordPress is by far the most popular and widely used blogging platform.
WordPress has become the preferred choice for bloggers and presently runs millions of blogs over the internet. Above all, it is free, completely flexible, and thoroughly customizable, provides hundreds of themes for download and has tons of plugins too.
However, at times you need to fulfill your specific needs and want to change from your present WordPress blogging platform. You may want to redesign your blog, want to start a new blog, moving hosts, or for some other reason. In such scenarios, you look for WordPress Alternatives that proves better than WordPress. You look for alternatives to WordPress for websites.
So, we have brought out this post featuring 15 WordPress Alternatives that would present to you free as well as paid WordPress Alternatives.
Each of the CMS that have been shown here comes with lots of options and features, but we sincerely recommend you to choose the one that fulfills all your present requirements and can meet your future demands as well.
So, let’s begin this wonderful journey and explore the 15 WordPress Alternatives presented hereunder.
15 Top WordPress Alternatives
1. Joomla Best WordPress Alternative
Joomla is a free, multi-purpose and open source content management system (CMS) which has become so popular that millions of websites around the world are using it. Be it bloggers, small and medium-sized businesses and even large organizations; it is easily used worldwide to create and build various types of websites and web-enabled applications. So, Joomla has a large community of users and developers.
Although Joomla is a Content Management System, it can also be used as a blogging platform. Joomla has most of the features of WordPress and some more capabilities. It can do things that WordPress can do. Joomla offers extensions and templates. It comes with extensive documentation and also has a community support system. Moreover, Joomla runs on most web hosting platforms.
Joomla has been built on the model-view-controller web application framework. It has completed thirteen years of establishment and had millions of users by its side. Joomla offers additional extensions such as components, modules, plugins, templates, files, libraries, languages, and packages. Each of these is used for a specific purpose and has been built by Joomla itself.
Joomla comes with thousands of free plugins available at the home page. The Joomla modules are flexible and allow users to manage a site with even hundreds of sub-pages easily. Plus, Joomla is SEO friendly. Most of the URLs generated are in for better SEO ranking. However, Joomla interface can be difficult to comprehend in the beginning. Its third-party community is not as large as WordPress. Moreover, some of its plugins are difficult to run. It is not as user-friendly as WordPress.
On the whole, Joomla is a great alternative to WordPress. It’s best for sites with a lot of contents, multimedia sites, corporate sites, advanced web projects, educational sites, and also for large publishing houses.
Price: Free
2. Drupal Free CMS
Drupal is one of the most popular open source content management (CMS) platforms out there. Millions of websites and applications nowadays use Drupal to run their business online. Drupal can be used to build blogs & personal websites, forums, social networking sites, and even enterprise based applications.
It provides lots of designs, themes, and modules, plugins that let you create and build any website you can imagine. It provides the platform to create feature rich websites. You can build online communities, media portal, online store and much more with Drupal.
Drupal has a huge user base and developer community just like WordPress and Joomla. Drupal powers almost 2.1% of all websites on the Internet. It has a 4.7% market share. Drupal offers modules and themes similar to WordPress. Its software requirements are similar to WordPress and Joomla. It can run on any web host that supports WordPress.
Drupal successfully delivers the ambitious digital experience. It is ideal for creating highly advanced websites. Drupal can handle huge amounts of data. It comes with modules and themes. It offers various extensions in the form of modules. However, Drupal is more suitable for experts than beginners. It requires optimum skills to use it to its full potential. Once you have a hang of it, you realize that it is highly extensible.
Drupal offers an advanced administration panel with five sections such as Content, Appearance, People, Structure, and Configuration. It is multilingual, offering over 70 languages. It offers complete control over the content presentation with themes, views, jQuery integration, and more.
All in all, Drupal is suitable for advanced users and experts. Its learning curve is bigger than WordPress. It has a low count of actively maintained themes.
Price: Free
3. Wix Free Website Builder
Unlike Joomla and Drupal which are “pure” content management systems, Wix can well be described as a website builder. So, you don’t have to install the software on your website. Wix hosts the software for you allowing the building of your website through its interface. However, you can still use your domain name.
Wix comes as a freemium website builder. It allows you to create your entire website using drag and drop. It comes with many Wix templates which can be edited as needed to create your site.
The biggest “plus” with Wix is that it is “dead simple.” So, Wix is very much suitable for beginners.
With the free plan, you can’t use your domain name and ads are displayed on your site. To avoid these issues, you can go with the premium plan by Wix. It’s a perfect tool for creating stunning websites.
Wix offers a step-by-step wizard-like environment wherein you are guided through the entire process of website building. You can choose from over 500 pre-made designs. The designs have been optimized for mobile devices and tablets. You can build your site with drag-and-drop. There’s even a blog module. You get functional editors for text content and images.
Moreover, Wix is a hosted solution. So, with Wix, you don’t need to bother about housing your website. You can focus on creating the content.
With Wix, you can build and customize a website on your own. It is suitable for users with no prior experience.
Price: Free and Paid
Paid Plan: $1 Per Month
4. Weebly Website Builder
Weebly is an awesome WordPress alternative. It’s a fully hosted online site builder. It takes care of housing your website and all the technical details with it. It allows users to create and build the ideal site easily. Weebly makes website creation available for everyone. In fact, Weebly is one of the most easy-to-use site building solutions out there.
Weebly offers a large selection of tools for creating elegant and beautiful websites. It offers eight categories of over 100 pre-made designs. Designs have been optimized for mobile devices as well as tablets.
You get a decent amount of amazing themes. It features drag-and-drop content builder. Weebly offers social media integration. It features eCommerce and blogging modules. All sites get a default sub-domain (example: yoursite.weebly.com). The custom domains are available for a price.
On the whole, Weebly is suitable for smaller and single-purpose websites.
Price: Free and Paid
Paid Plan: Start from $12/mo
5. Shopify Create your Online Shop
Shopify is the most popular eCommerce solutions on the web. In fact, Shopify happens to be the preferred platform for thousands of entrepreneurs for online business and eCommerce.
It’s an amazing alternative to WordPress when you want to create your online shop easily. It’s a simple, secure, and stable platform for growing your online business with very little effort.
With Shopify, you don’t have to take care of hosting the online store yourself. Shopify manages that part for you. So, you can focus your efforts on selling products.
Shopify offers some amazing eCommerce based features. It has the shopping cart module, inventory management, payment gateway options, automatic tax handling, and much more. Shopify offers hundreds of themes and designs. It is optimized for mobile devices and tablets.
Plus, it features an integrated blogging module. You get customized branding for your store. It comes with social media integration. Shopify also offers traffic analytics. The best part, Shopify is extremely flexible and user-friendly.
So, Shopify is exclusively focused on eCommerce purposes. It’s a great platform for new businesses and the ones who want to start an eCommerce store with little or no technical knowledge in that area.
Price: Starts from $29/mo
6. Ghost – Professional Publishing Platform
Ghost is a lightweight and open source content management system. It is a NodeJS based blogging open-source platform. It’s another popular CMS out there. Ghost has been specifically built for blogging and online publishing as opposed to complex websites. So, Ghost only supports blogging. It offers a clean writing and blogging experience for bloggers as well as for readers. It is suitable for all those who want to create a simple, elegant, and easy-to-manage website.
Ghost has two basic versions of their product. There’s the pro version at $8 – $200/month (depending on the plan) or you can download the free software and install it on your server. So, Ghost is available as a hosted blogging platform as well as downloadable blogging software.
Ghost offers an easy-to-use and intuitive interface that allows content creation and editing with Markdown syntax that is shown on the left and the preview which is on the right. Moreover, Ghost facilitates drag-and-drop editing. The designs have been optimized for mobile devices and tablets.
Ghost has features that enrich your blogging experience. It has been built on the latest technologies. Ghost offers plenty of themes to have a perfect look for your website. It allows you to customize page layouts, schedule posts, inject analytics code, and more. You get complete control over API integration and theme development.
So, Ghost turns out to be one of the best alternatives to WordPress when you are solely focused on blogging.
Price: Starts from $29 per month
7. Squarespace Website Builder
Squarespace is another very popular website builder. It’s closed source software. Squarespace turns out to be a versatile builder for portfolio sites, blogs, as well as online stores. It’s truly a great alternative to WordPress Page Builder. It’s perfect for casual users.
Squarespace is ideal for building a basic website. It offers a drag-and-drop builder to add and customize the elements of your site. Squarespace has an easy-to-use interface. It has many beautifully designed templates. You simply have to create an account on Squarespace. There’s no need to sign up for hosting, purchase a domain, or make any extra hassles.
With Squarespace, you can come up with a working website in a matter of a few minutes. It is perfect for small-scaled websites having a range of useful components. The sites on Squarespace are secure and have fast loading time. However, there’s no support from third-party plugins and extensions.
It’s primarily the ease of use which makes Squarespace a great alternative for WordPress website builder.
Price: Starts from $12 per month
8. SilverStripe Open Source CMS
SilverStripe is another pioneer website builder. It’s a CMS that is more focused on content management rather than blogging. Moreover, it’s relatively new on the web scene as compared to other content management systems on this list. However, it is growing in popularity.
The platform has gained the loyalty of large communities from all over the world. It has about one million+ downloads and 24000+ community members. It’s similar to WordPress and comes in dozens of languages. SilverStripe is well known for its development versatility and user-friendly admin interface. It takes care of the SEO side of things, as well.
It offers a large array of tools for having a professional looking website in just a few minutes. Plus, it has many useful modules and well-designed templates. With SilverStripe, you can have a professional looking website that can grow and scale as required. However, SilverStripe lacks documentation, and the number of modules available is comparatively much lesser than WordPress.
Price: Free
9. Concrete5 Free CMS
Concrete5 is a free and open source CMS (content management system). The platform enables you to create beautiful and yet powerful websites. Concrete5 provides such a platform for website creation and building that is revolutionary in simplicity. It is so simple that anyone can start building their website and that too in seconds.
The editing experience is also easy with click-based change operation. Its powerful editor allows you to customize your site easily, the way you want. There’s no creative limit for you. It also provides a flexible and robust framework to developers for building sophisticated web applications. There are a wide variety of add-ons that help you to extend the functionality of your website.
It offers personalized fonts, colors, and layouts for getting the custom look you want. It has the form builder with which you can create and edit forms easily. Concrete5 supports mobile optimization & responsiveness. So, your website will look awesome on any device. It employs the latest HTML, CSS, and JavaScript techniques. It offers integrated reporting in one interface. There’s even an integrated commenting system.
Plus, Concrete5 is optimized for search. It offers fast social share buttons. It uses the latest technology protecting all your sensitive information. There’s top-notch support as well. Well, Concrete5 proves a great experience for site owners, webmasters, and developers, too.
Price: Free
10. Movable Type
Movable Type is a professional publishing platform which also functions as a simple yet powerful content management system. It lets you create & build beautiful websites and blogs. You can even build a vibrant social network with Movable Type.
It constantly works to improve security and strives to incorporate new technologies as well. Keeping its spirit of innovation alive, it has recently introduced its latest version which has been empowered with many new features that would certainly enhance the quality, power, and security of your websites.
Movable Type 7 is now available. It has been loaded with new and enhanced features allowing improved editing and managing an asset. It has Data API for managing content beyond the web. There’s even extensive documentation helping you to handle the learning curve. However, you need to purchase its “Technical Support Services” additionally for getting standard technical support.
Price: $499 Per Year
11. Expression Engine
Expression Engine is another very capable paid CMS based on PHP+MySQL. However, a basic free version is also available for download. It has very limited features. Expression Engine has been built using the development framework known as CodeIgniter. It works similar to Joomla or Drupal and delivers advanced content management functionality for websites and web applications.
Expression Engine proves to be a great WordPress alternative when you are looking for best workflow streamlining for complex sites. It allows you to tailor specific types of content with multiple channels & custom content fields. So, Expression Engine works as a truly flexible CMS. The platform allows you to manage your content on mobile devices as well as tablets easily. Its architecture is so structured that it supports in rapid troubleshooting.
Expression Engine comes with extensive content publishing capabilities. It offers highly customizable layouts. It has plenty of default SEO tools together with advanced anti-spam tools. With Expression Engine, you get advanced admin features such as logs, data export, and more. Plus, there are many built-in modules such as discussion forum, wiki, mailing list, simple eCommerce, RSS, and many others.
Expression Engine offers advanced traffic analytics. It allows you to create custom content beyond text and articles. It has advanced user management capabilities. It’s known for delivering top-notch security. It has over 2200 third-party add-ons. Customer support is also available.
So, Expression Engine proves a highly capable CMS that is perfect for larger websites and web development projects. Expression Engine is available in a free version.
Price: Free
12. Contao Open Source CMS
Contao provides an open source content management system (CMS). With Contao you get a thorough professional presence over the Internet in the form of websites, blogs, and web applications. Using Contao as your preferred CMS maintenance is also easy. It offers a structure that creates a high standard of security. You get to have SEO friendly websites using Contao. It also offers Live Update Service, advance CSS framework, integrated modules as well.
Contao has proven itself among companies and international agencies that have successfully set up Contao sites. Contao follows high development standards. Plus, you get regular updates, fast and reliable fixes, as well as four years of support for LTS versions.
Moreover, Contao works out to be a secure, reliable, easy, and intuitive CMS out there. It is easily adaptable to your needs having based on open web standards. Contao offers search-engine friendly and barrier-free design implementation for desktop, smartphone, and tablet. It has a strong community who respond in the forum offering top-notch support.
Contao offers numerous capabilities including:
- Create your Intranet and associated applications
- Manage multiple instances via API
- Multilingualism and SEO features
- Extensions are available for design frameworks, social media and much more
- You get analysis tools, and much more
- Contao provides a simple and easy platform for creating portals
- Multi-Domain Capability
- Search engine optimized source code
- Full design freedom
- Moreover, much more
Price: Free
13. TypePad
TypePad provides a blogging platform to the site owners, webmasters, and designers that are completely reliable, thoroughly flexible and customizable too. It gives the publisher full control for site creation, updating and maintenance as well. TypePad can be especially useful for bloggers in crafts, food, style, clothing, etc.
It comes with tons of beautiful themes too. TypePad allows you to share your passion with the world in the best possible way. It is fully customizable and comes with unmatched personal support. It offers beautiful designs to create the blog the way you want. Millions of people are using TypePad every day.
Price: Starts from $8.95 per month
14. Textpattern
Textpattern is more of a lightweight WordPress alternative on this list. It’s a “small” content management system made to handle big ideas. Textpattern turns out to be a solid option when you like to create simple, elegant, and beautiful websites. It can structure your content the way you want.
Textpattern is beginner-friendly and well supported with extensive documentation. Textpattern allows you to extend its functionality through the use of plugins. Plus, there are numerous front and back-end themes which can be easily tweaked to meet your specific needs.
Textpattern has streamlined comment management and visitor log capabilities. So, Textpattern is powerful, versatile, and well-supported WordPress alternative. Moreover, Textpattern is completely free. Textpattern turns out to be a great platform for bloggers who want to create simple yet powerful websites.
Price: Free
15. Unify CMS
The underlining power of Unify CMS is its simplicity. Unify is a simple content editor that can be used by anyone. Unify is installed at your server location. It’s best suited for small and static websites where you require editing the existing content on the site’s existing pages. It also protects your site design and semantic markup. Editing is easy, and you get full support from the Unified team.
Unify CMS has been developed using open source technologies. It makes use of custom developed components and modules that are equipped to handle any website needs. Unify CMS is suitable for businesses, education, government, individual portfolios, and even online retail stores. So, Unify CMS helps you to build websites that are scalable and modular.
You can create cross-browser and platform compatible websites. Moreover, Unify CMS offers a user-friendly control panel for website management. It comes with third-party API integration capabilities. Moreover, there’s more …
Hope you liked these 15 Best WordPress Alternatives Software. Please do share which CMS or blogging platform you use.