Backdrop CMS

I'm one among many who searched for Drupal 8 alternatives and in Backdrop CMS I finally found it.

Drupal 8 / 9 is appropriate for bigger business projects with sufficient budget, but is a bad choice for a normal website.

When discovering Backdrop CMS, one of my first impressions was: "Hey, this is how Drupal 7 should always have been!"
It's flexible and extendible as Drupal 7, but has additional well-considered concepts for quick and easy website development.
And its user interface is much better.

So it's not astonishing that the Backdrop CMS community is constantly growing.

[Edited by indiweb, May 22]

I see Drupal 8 and newer versions as a totally different piece of software, so for me Backdrop is not just an alternative; it's everything that Drupal 7 could/should have been.

With Drupal focusing on the enterprise market and "elite" developers, I have found Backdrop to be the perfect match for solo web developers or small digital agencies, and owners of sites under a limited budget.

As a developer, you can come to the project with only the good-old basic PHP/CSS/JS knowledge ...no need for composer/symfony and complex workflows -> means less time spent to get things done -> means you will be able to make competitive offers to your potential customers.

As a site owner, you'll still get the same feature set as Drupal 7 + most features of Drupal 8 + new features unique to Backdrop CMS. You will appreciate the low system requirements, which means that your site can run on affordable hosting plans.

As a content editor, your content editing experience will be similar to Drupal, so there will be almost nothing new to learn; simply jump in and start producing content as you previously did. We are passionate about fixing all the annoying things, so you will find each new version making your life a little bit easier.

As a site administrator/builder, you will see that the user interface has received so many usability improvements and fixes, that you will find it easier/faster to manage your site and perform everyday tasks. We've are doing our best to put things where you'd expect to find them, so there will be less pogo-sticking around admin pages.

And if you, like me, love getting involved with the community, then you'll absolutely love Backdrop: Amazing people, with beautiful minds, and most of all, approachable, helpful and thoughtful. All that, topped with a Project Management Committee comprised by a diverse set of community members, providing a more "democratic" form of leadership, putting the community and the end users first.

As Drupal 7 reaches it's end-of-life, I expect that Backdrop use will surge. Many of the small to mid-sized websites that are built on Drupal 7 will not find Drupal 8 to be appropriate for their needs, and with the easy transition to Backdrop they will find the critical features they need along with a bunch of usability improvements and new features they're going to love.

Backdrop is a great alternative to Drupal – if you are evaluating options for your Drupal 7 site, definitely include Backdrop in the mix.

Backdrop is finding its niche in the sweet spot between Drupal and Wordpress -- the power, flexibility, and scalability of Drupal with UI and UX improvements that make it simpler to use out of the box.

Backdrop CMS is the best alternative for the Drupal platform: a very powerful CMS solution for creating sophisticated SME websites. The flexibility of Drupal combined with great new functions is attracting more and more Drupal sitebuilders. Here's my summary after doing some smaller projects with Backdrop CMS https://mazze.ch/backdropcms (in German)