Open-source alternatives to Drupal

CodeIgniter is a PHP web framework built on the Model-View-Controller pattern, designed for building full-stack web applications. It provides a lightweight toolkit with minimal configuration, organizing application logic into controllers, models, and views for clean separation of concerns. The framework includes a fluent query builder for constructing SQL statements programmatically, PSR-4 autoloading with namespace mapping, and a service-based dependency injection container for managing shared class instances. The framework distinguishes itself through its comprehensive set of built-in tools

Joomla is an open-source content management system written in PHP that enables users to create, edit, and organise digital content for websites. At its core, it functions as a template-based publishing platform, separating content from presentation so site design can be changed by switching templates without altering underlying data. As a multi-user content manager, Joomla supports multiple authors and editors with granular permissions, making it suitable for collaborative editorial workflows. What distinguishes Joomla is its extension-friendly architecture: the core functionality can be exte

Grav is a flat-file content management system that eliminates the need for a traditional database by storing site content and configuration in human-readable Markdown and YAML files. Built as a modular PHP web framework, it uses a hierarchical page routing system where the physical directory structure directly determines the site's URL paths. The platform is distinguished by its event-driven plugin architecture and a command-line interface that prioritizes system administration, deployment, and maintenance tasks. It utilizes a blueprint-driven system to generate administrative forms from stru

Wagtail is an open-source content management system built on the Django web framework. It provides a structured, tree-based approach to content modeling, allowing developers to define custom page types and reusable content components that are managed through a highly customizable administrative interface. The platform distinguishes itself through its flexible, block-based content composition system, which enables editors to assemble complex page layouts dynamically. It also offers robust support for multi-site and multi-lingual environments, allowing organizations to manage distinct websites

This project is a .NET Core content management system and multi-site management platform designed to organize and publish structured digital content across independent websites from a centralized interface. It functions as both a headless CMS and a static site generator, rendering dynamic templates into HTML files to increase loading speed and scalability. The system integrates retrieval-augmented generation to transform website documents and content into searchable AI knowledge bases. It includes a visual AI workflow orchestrator to define the logic between user queries and large language mo

Think is a PHP web framework and object-relational mapper designed for building web applications. It functions as a structured foundation for application development, incorporating a dependency injection container to manage object lifecycles and reduce coupling between components. The project includes a remote application debugger that allows for the inspection of internal state and variables from an external environment. It implements a model-view-controller architecture to separate application logic and data from the user interface. This includes a request pipeline for routing and middlewa

Yaf is an MVC web framework implemented as a compiled PHP extension in C. It functions as a performance extension designed to reduce overhead and increase request processing speeds compared to frameworks written in standard user-land PHP. The framework moves core logic, including request routing, into a compiled binary layer to accelerate the dispatch of incoming network requests to controllers. It provides a command-line utility to generate standardized project scaffolding and boilerplate directory structures. The system covers application bootstrapping to initialize environment state, conf

Apostrophe is an open-source Node.js headless content management system that delivers structured content through REST APIs while providing a visual in-context page editor for live editing. It is built on a module-based plugin architecture that extends CMS functionality through reusable modules, each encapsulating logic, configuration, and templates. The system uses schema-driven content modeling to define data structures and validation rules through configurable schemas and custom field types, with all content stored as flexible JSON-like documents in MongoDB. The platform distinguishes itsel

XWiki Platform is a collaborative content management system and enterprise wiki designed for creating, organizing, and sharing structured documentation. It functions as a Java-based application framework that enables teams to build data-driven business applications directly within a web environment. By combining a flexible knowledge base with modular development tools, the platform supports both standard document management and the creation of custom, interactive software solutions. The platform distinguishes itself through a highly extensible architecture that allows for deep customization w

Salvo is a comprehensive Rust web framework for building asynchronous HTTP servers and web applications. It features a hierarchical web router that uses a tree-based structure to map requests to handlers and an asynchronous middleware pipeline based on the onion model for request and response pre- and post-processing. The framework is distinguished by its native support for modern network protocols, including a QUIC-based HTTP/3 implementation alongside HTTP/1 and HTTP/2. It includes an integrated OpenAPI documentation generator that extracts schemas directly from handler signatures to produc

Entrust is a role-based access control library for the Laravel framework and a general permission management system for PHP. It provides a backend tool for linking users to specific roles and permissions to evaluate authorization rules. The system distinguishes itself through a logic engine capable of complex access rule evaluation, including boolean logic and wildcard-based permission matching. This allows for authorization checks based on pattern matching or requirements where a user must meet all or any of a set of specified permissions. The library covers route access restriction via mid

CodeIgniter is an open-source PHP web framework and application toolkit designed for server-side development. It implements a model-view-controller architecture to separate internal data representations from the user interface. The framework utilizes a front-controller architecture to direct all incoming web requests through a single entry point for URI parsing and request dispatching. It includes a dependency injection container to resolve class dependencies and manage the lifecycle of core system components. The toolkit provides capabilities for routing management, database interactions, a

RuoYi is a Spring Boot admin framework designed for building enterprise applications. It provides a foundation for creating management dashboards and orchestrating systems using either monolithic or microservices architectures. The project features a low-code application generator that produces ready-to-compile source code and API documentation based on database table configurations. It implements a role-based access control system to map users and roles to specific menus and buttons for secure resource access. The framework includes capabilities for system health monitoring, real-time perfo

Zheng is a Spring Boot microservices framework and enterprise J2EE development platform. It functions as a distributed service gateway and identity provider, providing a foundation for building complex business applications and microservices infrastructure. The project includes a comprehensive enterprise content management system and an OAuth2 identity provider for managing single sign-on and third-party social login integrations. It also features a MyBatis ORM code generator that automatically creates database models and boilerplate functions from existing tables. The platform covers a broa

HumHub is an open-source enterprise social networking framework designed to facilitate internal communication and team collaboration within private organizational networks. It provides a modular architecture that allows organizations to build secure, self-hosted digital workspaces where users can manage profiles, share content, and organize projects through dedicated collaborative spaces. The platform distinguishes itself through a highly extensible plugin system and a granular role-based access control model. By utilizing an event-driven hook system and a modular architecture, developers can

Pimcore is an open-source data experience platform that serves as a unified framework for managing product information, digital assets, and customer data. It functions as an enterprise content management system and a master data management platform, providing a centralized source of truth for complex business information. The system is designed to support omnichannel delivery, enabling organizations to publish content and manage digital experiences across diverse platforms through both traditional and headless architectures. The platform distinguishes itself through a metadata-driven object m

Payload is a headless content management system and application framework that uses a code-first approach to define data schemas and administrative interfaces. By utilizing a centralized, type-safe configuration object, it automatically generates database schemas, API endpoints, and a fully customizable admin panel. The system is built on a database-agnostic architecture, allowing it to interface with various storage engines while providing a unified, type-safe API for server-side operations, REST, and GraphQL. What distinguishes Payload is its deep extensibility and developer-centric design.

Vendure is a Node.js e-commerce engine and headless commerce framework built with NestJS and TypeScript. It serves as a multi-channel commerce platform that manages product catalogs, orders, and customers via a strongly typed GraphQL API. The platform is distinguished by its highly extensible architecture, featuring a customizable administrative dashboard where developers can inject custom React components and entity views. It supports multi-channel commerce, allowing the isolation of products, currencies, and regional catalogs from a single unified backend. The engine covers a broad range o

django-cms is a content management system built on Django for creating and managing hierarchical pages and reusable content blocks. It functions as an enterprise framework and modular page builder for organizing website layouts and managing complex digital content. The system features a frontend inline content editor that allows users to modify page titles and body content directly on the live site via an interactive toolbar. It provides a multilingual platform for translating pages and localized content across different languages, including built-in translation fallback support. Additionally

TubeArchivist is a self-hosted YouTube video archiving system and metadata indexer. It functions as a personal media library and download manager that allows users to create a searchable offline collection of videos, channels, and playlists. The system distinguishes itself by indexing subtitles, comments, and channel information for full-text search and retrieval. It features automated media synchronization to track subscriptions and playlists, ensuring new content is automatically queued and downloaded as it is published. The project provides a broad set of capabilities for digital asset ma

Lunar is a modular PHP e-commerce framework and headless commerce engine designed to manage the backend logic and data models of an online store. It provides a decoupled infrastructure that separates business logic from the presentation layer, allowing for the orchestration of digital storefronts via an API. The system is distinguished by its headless-first approach and a dedicated toolkit for building customized administration interfaces using pre-made components and widgets. It supports complex global operations through a multilingual commerce system that handles regional storefront configu

Lsky Pro is a self-hosted image hosting platform and digital asset management system. It provides a web application for uploading and organizing images into albums, while functioning as an image hosting API and processing gateway for programmatic asset management. The system distinguishes itself by supporting monetized storage services, integrating payment gateways and coupon systems to manage user subscriptions and storage quotas. It features a decoupled storage architecture that integrates with S3, OSS, WebDav, and other cloud providers to separate file storage from the application server.

Strapi is an open-source headless content management system and JavaScript framework used for defining content schemas and managing structured data. It functions as a REST and GraphQL API gateway that decouples backend data storage from frontend delivery. The system includes a self-hosted administration interface for managing content entries and defining data models without manual database queries. The framework utilizes a plugin-based extension system to inject custom logic into the application lifecycle. It employs schema-driven content modeling to automatically generate database tables and

Keystone is a GraphQL headless content management system and Node.js backend framework. It functions as a schema-driven data manager that automatically generates a GraphQL API and a React administrative dashboard based on a central data model configuration. The system uses an adapter-based database abstraction to decouple core logic from storage layers and a storage-provider abstraction for managing media assets via local or cloud drivers. It distinguishes itself through a component-based field rendering system and a hook-based middleware pipeline for data validation and automation. The fram

October is a self-hosted content management system and website engine built on the Laravel PHP framework. It provides a modular platform for developing custom websites and web applications, featuring an integrated administration interface for organizing and delivering digital content. The system utilizes a plugin-based extension model that allows core functionality to be expanded through independent modules. This architecture enables the registration of custom routes, views, and database schemas to build complex web features. The platform includes tools for asset compilation and bundling, a

Dokploy is a self-hosted platform-as-a-service designed to simplify the deployment and management of containerized applications and databases. It provides a centralized control plane that decouples administrative management from application workloads, allowing users to oversee infrastructure across multiple server nodes through a unified web interface or a command-line tool. The platform distinguishes itself through an extensive library of pre-configured application templates, enabling the rapid deployment of databases, identity providers, and various productivity or development tools. It sup

SpringBlade is a development framework and platform designed for building multi-tenant SaaS applications. It provides a comprehensive scaffold for both Spring Cloud microservices and monolithic Spring Boot architectures, enabling the rapid construction of enterprise-grade software. The platform distinguishes itself through integrated LLM orchestration and industrial IoT management. It features an LLM orchestration platform that combines large language models with knowledge bases and visual AI agent workflows, alongside an IoT hub for device connectivity, state synchronization, and edge flow o