Best WordPress Alternatives in 2021

    WordPress is currently the most popular website creation tool in the world, and according to the experts at W3Tech, it powers more than 40% of all websites on the Internet. While this content management system (CMS) has become the global standard, it has some drawbacks (security, based on PHP…), and there are some good alternatives out there with their own pros and cons.

    WordPress is offered as a free CMS that you have to host yourself, but also as a paid hosted blog platform, so there are different alternatives based on what you're looking for. Whether you're a developer looking for a free and open source flexible tool, or you're just looking for a simple website builder, you should easily be able to find something that will suit your needs.

    This page was last updated Sep 27, 2021
    1. Drupal is a free and open source CMS that has been created “by developers for developers”, and is therefore slightly more complicated to learn than a solution like Wix or WordPress. It's intended for an audience with technical skills, which is why it is perhaps less popular. This drawback can also be an advantage: thanks to the great flexibility of Drupal, it is possible to obtain much more advanced results thanks to more in-depth functionality. And like WordPress, it can also be extended with thousands of themes and modules.
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      Drupal vs WordPress opinions
      Almost everyone thinks Drupal is a great alternative to WordPress.
      franKEY extremely easy to get used to and pretty advanced features that can be used in a variety of options,
      Top positive comment  over 1 year ago

      0
      yellowvest Fine tuning and tweaking features available to pros.
      Top positive comment  almost 3 years ago

      2
      Drupal is really nice CMS
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

      0
      vladsmarrr choice of mine! recommend to all
      Positive comment • over 2 years ago

      0
      rishabhistwal In Drupal you get more plugins than any other CMS provide in this list to customise site .Virgin like many big companies use drupal . Easy to install and customise. Have a big community support.
      Positive comment • almost 3 years ago

      -1
      Wordpress is a good framework for absolute beginners, Drupal for more advanced users, imo
      Positive comment • almost 4 years ago

      0

    2. Joomla

      • Free • Open Source
      • Self-Hosted
      • PHP
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      Joomla is another free and open source popular CMS. It's a powerful, versatile, and flexible platform with a large community of users and developers. It is known to be more accessible than Drupal, but more complex than WordPress. Like the other two, it can be extended with themes and extensions. Joomla still requires some technical skills and is primarily intended for developers.
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      Joomla vs WordPress opinions
      Almost everyone thinks Joomla is a great alternative to WordPress.
      Joomla is the only CMS that allows you to make a simple website to a complex website with an optimal learning curve.
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

      0
      All in one installation with extensions I need improve the security. No problem of compatibility of extensions when I update.
      Positive comment • over 1 year ago

      0
      Joomla is a CMS, Wordpress was more concepted for blogging - even if it's a CMS similar Sw today...
      Negative comment • about 3 years ago

      -12

    4. Ghost

      • Free Personal • Open Source
      • Online
      • Self-Hosted
      • Cloudron
      • Node.JS
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      Launched in 2013, Ghost is a modern blogging platform that you can self-host or pay for a hosted version (a bit like WordPress). But unlike the three CMS mentioned above, it's not based on PHP but on NodeJS, which can be a good thing for JavaScript developers. Ghost has a very sleek interface and offers useful tools like subscriptions, memberships, analytics, and integrations to easily grow your audience. You can also download beautiful themes from their marketplace to speed up the process of launching your website.
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      Most users think Ghost is a great alternative to WordPress.
    5. Yes, the famous Blogger is still alive! Launched in 1999, and bought in 2003 by Google, it's the veteran of this list. It's a free blogging platform that offers most of the features you would need for blogging: a commenting system, built-in social features, ease of use, templates, the ability to use your own domain name… It's more limited than WordPress, but if what you're looking for is a simple solution to publish blog posts, this might be a good fit for you.
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      Blogger vs WordPress opinions
      Most users think Blogger is a great alternative to WordPress.
      Add JavaScript in post page easily.
      Positive comment • over 3 years ago

      -4
      jgemmba9901 Good ecosystem, blog builder
      Positive comment • almost 3 years ago

      0
      ndlinn This is really in no way comparable to WordPress
      Negative comment • over 5 years ago

      0
    6. Grav is a powerful and easy to use open source CMS written in PHP and based on the Symfony web application framework. Compared to other content management systems, it is a fast, simple and flexible file-based platform. This means that Grav doesn't use a database like MySQL or MongoDB, but stores all the information in YAML files. This also means that the learning curve is pretty straightforward, there are less security risks, and the websites are usually pretty fast. There's also a marketplace with themes and plugins, but don't expect to see as many as for WordPress, Joomla or Drupal.
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      Grav vs WordPress opinions
      Almost everyone thinks Grav is a great alternative to WordPress.
      It's not a messy pile of spaghetti code. It uses modern tools like Composer and Twig.
      Top positive comment  about 4 years ago

      5
      The features you want, without the bloat you don't
      Top positive comment  almost 2 years ago

      2
      therojam Grav is easy to deploy by just extracting the downloaded archive. It got an terminal client where to install plugins/extensions like an administrative backend or other themes. It has spotless file structure.
      Positive comment • 4 months ago

      0
      AlanLeiken The interface is cleaner and more modern, making for a much more pleasant experience than WordPress. Easier to set up as well.
      Positive comment • over 2 years ago

      0
      It is more developer friendly. The project structure is very clean, easy to configure and deploy. Using flat files instead of a SQL database might be limiting for some, but it's perfect for most standard sites like blogs, agency websites and even E-commerce. Twig for templates leads to cleaner code and a better separation of concern (Almost impossible to mix business logic in your templates). I guess the only downside is lack of plugins and templates for now.
      Positive comment • over 3 years ago

      0
      Grav does not save things to a database, and does not ship with the same functionality such as having posts with categories.
      Negative comment • over 4 years ago

      -5
    8. Jekyll is a static site generator (SSG) created in 2008 by Tom Preston-Werner, the founder of GitHub. It's coded in Ruby and requires NodeJS. It's very different from WordPress on many points. For starters, it's a static site generator, which means it takes your text and generates static HTML pages for your site (with no database).

      Like Grav, it's pretty fast and simple to use, but it requires a bit more technical knowledge as you don't have access to an admin dashboard to manage your website. One advantage, though, is that you can use the free hosting provided by GitHub Pages with Jekyll.
      Almost everyone thinks Jekyll is a great alternative to WordPress.
    9. Write.as is an online platform that allows you to publish an article and even an entire blog on the web in a few seconds. It comes in the form of a minimalist and distraction-free online word processor, and reduces the technical part of online publishing to a strict minimum while respecting your privacy and anonymity. Write.as can be used without even having to log in. The interface is as simple as it gets: just choose a title and start writing. Write.as is an open source and ads-free platform that you can use for free, or you can pay a monthly subscription (from $6 to $30) to get more features (custom domain, themes, private blog, custom CSS, and more).
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      Almost everyone thinks Write.as is a great alternative to WordPress.
    10. Squarespace is a versatile CMS, suitable for bloggers, e-commerce, companies wanting to present their activity, musicians, photographers… The platform has few themes, but they are all of high quality. The administration interface is clear and well-thought-out - which has not always been the case. Several statistical data are also provided: page views, RSS feed subscriptions, most popular pages… Squarespace is proprietary and doesn't offer any option to self-host it, so you'll have to pay between $12 and $54 per month to get started.
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      Squarespace vs WordPress opinions
      Most users think Squarespace is a great alternative to WordPress.
      Squarespace is a SaaS platform; WordPress can be self-hosted
      Negative comment • about 1 year ago

      2
      Ola It's a great tool to buil simple websites. Therefore a great alternative.
      Positive comment • about 1 year ago

      0
      DJbutit It is a website builder it is not a blog
      Negative comment • over 4 years ago

      -7
    11. ProcessWire is a free and open source content management framework (CMF) and content management system (CMS). The backend is clean and structured for easy handling. This tool gives you all the freedom you need to design your website. It is not as well known as the giant WordPress or its competitors Joomla and Drupal, but this lightweight software stands out from the competition with certain advantages (ease of use, security, stable API, page templates…).
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      Most users think ProcessWire is a great alternative to WordPress.
    12. Hugo is a general-purpose website framework for generating static web pages. Hugo flexibly works with many formats and is ideal for blogs, docs, portfolios and much more.
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    Showing 10 of 415 alternatives