• http://www.xpress-media.co.uk Web Design Sheffield

    Great advice on what else to use in place of WordPress, but I think personally wordpress is the daddy of all CMS’s, but still a good choice of alternatives.

    • PixelTunnelVision

      Daddy of them all? It’s not even the oldest one. And up until 3.0 it wasn’t even a CMS. Heck, even with 3.0 it’s technically still not a real CMS. And there are plenty of better alternatives.

  • http://www.andreagarza.com Andrea Garza

    Don’t forget Concrete5. Talk about simple for a developer and no design constraints or plugins needed to get multi-column layouts and editing areas, not to mention easy to use for the novice client editing their own site.

    I love WordPress too, but Concrete5 is my go to CMS for a more in depth layout style with more than one content area per page. Click the area while viewing the page, edit the content, save. Done. Simple.

    Both have very strong points for different kinds of sites and users.

    Nice list you have here.

    • http://andrewblackmore.com andrew

      Cheers for concrete5…it could use better documentation but forum support is good and its so easy to learn even with just a few video casts its hard motto recommend for small-medium size sites

  • http://www.panthersweat.com Michael

    Surprised not to see MODx on here. Very easy to make templates with.

  • bob

    Never heard of the first 3 you list. Strange you neglected to mention Textpattern. Without doubt, the best CMS I’ve ever used. Yes WordPress is a little easier out of the box, and no it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of Drupal, but it really is the ‘designers’ best friend!

  • http://flowsimple.com Pashmina

    I understand your intent, but why would you want to steer your readers away from WordPress? What are the pros for using any of your choices? LiveJournal and Typepad aren’t suited for CMS, especially not LiveJournal. Of all your alternatives, if an overwhelmed client came to me and said “Please, help me choose!” WordPress would still be the top choice.

    Unlike you I believe there is harm in delving into the wrong platform or service to power a website. It’s a waste of time and won’t help a business maximize their web presence.

    Personally the only alternative to WordPress for me is Expression Engine. Check that out. Robust and great for heavy customization. Otherwise it’s WordPress all the way.

    • Shaymein

      Great reply Pashmina, I totally agree.. why ho away from WordPress, especially with these options. We use Expression Engine too, but for a free one WordPress is the way to go.

    • Dan

      Gots to agree with Pashmina. Love’s me some Expression Engine. Haven’t found much I cant do with it.

      • http://iamautocomplete.com/ Angelee

        but I guess EE is quite expensive! anyway, happy holidays everyone!

    • Skipp

      Blinkered!

    • http://mesonprojekt.com/ Karl Francisco Fernandes

      Pashmina, I’d have to say a worthy alternative (if not replacement) to both WP and EE would have to be Textpattern (http://textpattern.com/) It’s built for designers, is incredibly flexible, and theming and customization is a breeze.

      TXP is a true CMS, it’s not a blogging-platform-that-can-be-used-as-a-CMS. It can power everything from static sites, to complicated blogs and even simple e-commerce sites.

      It’s used by great designers like Jon Hicks and Tim van Damme. In fact, Jon himself has often wrote of how he prefers TXP over EE…

      • http://flowsimple.com Pashmina

        Karl, I like Textpattern, but my concern (at least for now) and wariness to adopt is the rather small support community. It doesn’t have the maturity of WordPress or some of the other alternatives like Drupal or Joomla.

        • James

          Size doesnt matter. Its quality not quantity. The Textpattern support community is extremly helpful. They really go out of there way to help.

          I abandoned WordPress a couple of years for Textpattern and I have never once regretted the move.

          From concept to live site, Textpattern is infintly faster than WordPress to develop on. Ive done in hours with it what would take days with wordpress.

    • http://www.sufyan.co.nr Sufyan bin Uzayr

      We aren’t trying to steer anyone away from WP. As I’ve stated at the start of the article itself, we love WP and its features. This is just a list of “alternatives”, not “replacements”.
      Please note, Live Journal has been grouped under “blogging websites”, if you’d notice. Its an alternative to WP.com, not WP.org

  • http://starsandthesea.com Shane

    As Rodney Dangerfield said. “You left a whole lot of stuff out here”

    CMS Made SImple the best there is.

    http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/

    • http://www.sufyan.co.nr Sufyan bin Uzayr

      The included options are the ones that seemed apt in my humble opinion, and those that have done well for me over the years. Yes, Textpattern and a lot many others may deserve a mention, but if we were to adhere to everyone’s favorite, this Top 10 list would easily become Top 100+.

  • Skipp

    Like Michael, I’m surprised not to see ModX included

  • http://squareflair.com Alan Houser

    I cannot believe you didn’t include Squarespace here.

    The ultimate benefit of Squarespace over all of these listed is the fact that you don’t need to update on every point release. My WordPress sites are hacked at-least yearly from some third-party plugin, or because I didn’t update soon-enough.

    Also, I haven’t heard of the first three either, and honestly is it worth dabbling in yet-another unknown app when there are mature alternatives out there?

  • http://babblative.com Becky

    Textpattern should really have been mentioned here. It’s a nice non-bloated alternative to WordPress that’s pretty feature-rich. Anything you can do in WordPress, chances are pretty good you can do it (most of the time easily) with or without a plugin.

    The admin-side may not be as visually appealing as WordPress was (personally I think it’s become a bloated piece of garbage, but that’s just me), but there are admin-side themes that can be applied to change the appearance. The template language is relatively easy to learn, especially if you already have a good grasp of HTML (the template tags heavily resemble X/HTML.)

    WordPress is not the end all be all and it certainly isn’t well-suited to every project. Even when I used WordPress extensively I understood that. Some people want limited functionality and to have everything taken care of by someone else. That’s where services like Tumblr, LJ and whatnot come in. They’re still a System that Manages Content, just not to the scope that some people want.

  • http://www.electrictoolbox.com/ Chris

    I use SilverStripe myself http://www.silverstripe.org.

  • http://snipto.dk Søren Schrøder

    Nice read. I prefer Joomla!

  • http://en.nashekrashe.com nashekrashe

    1. Textpattern

  • http://www.joostmaes.nl joostmaes

    Not a great roundup of cms system in my opinion. The information is too basic and the real competitors of WordPress aren’t even mentioned. At least you should have mentioned ModX, Silverstripe, and CMSMS.

  • http://www.joomlasrilanka.com Amila

    No arguement that wordpress is the easiest cms out of the box.

    but Joomla has the potential to be anything on the web, with correct set of extensions and themes it can easily beat any other solution by quality and by user friendliness. Its not an out of the box solution ,
    but with an EXPERIENCED developer, Joomla is the ultimate CMS solution for any type of website or web application.

  • Dizet Sma

    Joomla is simple to maintain, I have built several sites using it and handed it over to ‘non-techies’ to update and manage.

  • http://www.ChiefAlchemist.com Mark “Chief Alchemist” Simchock

    WordPress is a great tool. For many things I love it. But the truth is (as long as you have some programming chops) that ExpressionEngine is a full and proper CMS. EE has had custom post types, custom fields, etc. for some time now. Also, you don’t “hack” EE, it’s more a (programming) framework (based on PHP) than a semi-closed system.

    WordPress has it’s place. But in terms of a properly architected CMS for robust and sophisticated websites, ExpressionEngine is tough to beat.

  • http://lucmuller.free.fr Luc

    Well…

    IF WORDPRESS WAS AS CMS.

    Sorry.

    but you can add TYPO3 instead of bloggerlol.

  • http://rescuecreative.com John

    Just came across another very cool CMS beta called couchCMS. It installs similarly to WordPress but allows you to take a pre-made flat site, wrap whatever portions of content you would like to be editable into some simple php tags, and BANG, you can edit those sections within a dashboard. It also included blog and portfolio functionality. Very cool.

  • Zuus

    This is perhaps one of the poorest articles I have seen here (my opinion). But LiveJournal as a CMS! Really! The average reader (certainly for this site) could probably have come up with better suggestions. The only one I would agree with on this list would be Drupal (Joomla to a point, just don’t try going outside the box).

    Concrete5 looks interesting, hadn’t seen that one before (thanks Andrea Garza).

    Also maybe CMS Made Simple (thanks Shane).

    By the way I do love this site, really I do!

    • http://www.sufyan.co.nr Sufyan bin Uzayr

      Thank you for the opinion, and am glad you “love this site”. Much thanks for that.
      “Live Journal as a CMS”: Please note, Live Journal has been grouped under “blogging websites”, if you’d notice. Its an alternative to WP.com, not WP.org

  • http://adajer.byethost5.com/ David

    As so many have pointed out, there’s a lot left behind here! Even if the point is the limit of “ten” … well, I know my ten would have been very different!

    For the bloggers, I would have included Habari. For those looking for something a bit different, I would have included Symphony CMS.

    And for the masses of people who would like a light, simple, fast, powerful, easily themed there is my own favourite: Wolf CMS. http://www.wolfcms.org/ :)

  • Jordan Zurack

    Drupal is the real deal. Don’t believe the hype? Check this out: http://drupal.org/cases

    • Yak

      Drupal is very powerful. However, when you’re developing sites for people that would need a CMS (clients that don’t know how to code AT ALL) Drupal’s catastrophic user experience will make your life difficult.

      WordPress has succeeded so well, so quickly because above all — it is VERY intuitive and easy to use for people that are afraid of the web.

  • Ben

    I have to agree that i am also suprised not to see Modx

  • laurent_h

    Nuts cms is also a simple open source alternative

    http://www.nuts-cms.com

  • http://tontodigital.com.au Troy Dean

    WordPress really is the best entry-level platform for managing basic sites and blogs. Let’s not forget people, this article is only here to get juice from SE’s. Seen the ads? Don’t put too much emphasis on the editorial content.

    EE is a great enterprise solution.

    And SquareSpace is turning some heads. And rightly so, too.

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  • http://superdit.com aditia

    I think wordpress still great cause it simple and I can quick learn about it, than the others, very different when I tried joomla or drupal

  • perke

    Drupal is a league for itself…all others are just too weak to fight the big blue droplet :)

  • The Doctor

    Arguabley, isn’t WP a blogging platform-cum-CMS? I’ve never used it; it struck me as too limiting.

    As an Info. Architect, I go w/ Drupal… the sheer power of it really does allow one to consider it as much a framework than “just” a CMS, *if* you can get past the steep learning curve (so I’m told… I found it all quite logical).

  • http://tvdwebdesign.com Thijs Van Damme

    Very surprised not to see modx on here, its so much more then just a cms, its a framework. Total freedom without hacking the core…

  • http://www.seyfullahkilic.com Seyfullah

    http://blogsa.net/ > Open Source Blog for .Net

  • http://inertiainmotion.com.au/ Michael Rook

    Its Great to know there are other viable solutions out there, But i find for now WordPress is able to do more or less anything i want it to, And when it finally doesn’t, there are 3 options for me (in this order), Find a plugin that does it, Write a plugin that does it, Use a CMS that does it.

  • Chris Graham

    I’m very late to this party, but ocPortal should really be up here. It is, for example, the top rated CMS for “inbuilt applications” (i.e. features) on cmsmatrix.

    It allows non-developers to build very sophisticated social websites with great ease.

    Our community is extremely passionate, and ocPortal is going from strength to strength.

  • http://tvdwebdesign.com Thijs Van Damme

    I think everyone should consider @Modx:twitter 

  • Filip Basara

    Try @Contao:twitter  Its core and its flexibility is the most powerfull i know. The best choise for a CMS you can make.