What is the best content management system?

WordPress powers roughly 30% of all web pages online. It's a free and open source CMS designed and developed for self-hosted publishing by Automattic, Inc. The software is written in PHP and utilize either MySQL or MariaDB as a database, and is compatible with most web hosts. Wordpress includes a plugin architecture and a templating system that can be used to extend and customize your website. These are commonly known as WordPress plugins and WordPress themes and make up a whole open source and commercial eco-system where anyone is free to create products for the platform. 

Strapi is a free and open source headless CMS developed with JavaScript for Node.js. The software makes it really simple to generate REST and GraphQL APIs. Simply create your database schema and relationships in the Strapi admin panel UI, and Strapi will auto-generate API endpoints to represent the data structures provided. Strapi comes packed with features you come to expect from normal CMS's such as authentication, authorization, content management and a media library. The software can be used for free and can be self-hosted on any server and platform. Extra enterpise functionallity is currently being developed, and will be sold at cost.

An open-source tool for managing content across all your omni-channel digital experiences. Directus is free and open-source headless CMS written in PHP, that takes a data first approach. Developers and content creators use Directus to manage content and generate a powerful API that can be used by any frontend technology. Directus can be self-hosted and is absolutely free.

A hybrid content management system that includes classic CMS and Headless CMS features. With dotCMS content managers can create content that fuels the brand experience. The API-first approach provided by the headless part of dotCMS allows developers to build extremely fast front-ends with popular third-party front-end framework and deliver content optimally. The content management system allows content creators to build engaging and memorable content that can be reused across sites.

Netlify CMS is a static site generator that is based on client-side JavaScript with a reusable APIs and prebuilt Markup. Simply pull in Netlify CMS to /admin of you site and you have an SPA (Single Page Application) admin panel that can edit content stored in a Git repository. Serving applications like this, the JAMstack way, improves performance, lowers cost of scaling and provides for a better development experience.

Prismic is a commercial headless CMS and content (Content-as-a-Service) platform. With Prismic you can get your backend infrastructure and API up in the matter of minutes, so that you can focus on building the frontend that will be shown to your readers. The feature rich backend content management system provided by Prismic is free to use for one admin, and commercially provided to organizations with large content management teams.

ButterCMS is a commercial headless content management system and content API. With ButterCMS you can quickly setup your very own headless CMS that supports In-browser editing. Where you can quickly find and filter your images and files, update and schedule content and serve you assets over a content delivery network.

Drupal is a free and open-source CMS written in PHP. Drupal is used for creating website for businesses, political parties and governments. The CMS currently powers 2% of all websites on the internet.

A headless & API-based CMS with an opt-in head and a visual editor. With Storyblok you can manage your content through an intuitive dashboard and access that data though the content delivery API, as nested JSON. Storyblok is an open-source software and can be used as such, but is also provided as a commercially hosted, cloud rendering service. As a front-end developer you can choose to work with any template engine, framework or system of your choice.

Ghost is a free and open-source headless CMS and blogging platform developed by Ghost Foundation. With Ghost you can manage content in style, the user experience provided by the software is intuitive and encourages writing. Ghost is written in JavaScript for the Node.js platform and is released under the MIT license.

With Contentstack, content and marketing teams are able to publish content with a much higher frequency than ever before. Contentstack brings business and technology teams closer together by providing a personalized, omnichannel experience with a visual editor alongside content scheduling and publishing management tools.

Contentful is a modern headless CMS that integrates with development teams and their workflows. With an API-first approach, implementing Contentful into an existing application is easier than ever. The content management system features a customizable interface, content modeling, and cloud-based governance. With Contentful you can have a RESTful API setup in minutes, which integrates well with your existing architecture.

..

..

A free and open-source headless CMS built with Node.js and MongoDB.

Tina is an open-source site editing toolkit and headless CMS for React-based sites like Gatsby & Next.js

..

..

..

..

CMS Made Simple is a free and open-source content management system that offers an easy to use interface for end users, while maintaining a powerful backend for developers. CMS Made Simple is written in PHP and got an extensive API and custom modules. The CMS also utilize the Smarty templating engine that can be used to customize sites with HTML, CSS and PHP.