Concrete CMS
Free, open-source PHP CMS where editors change content directly on the page.
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About Concrete CMS
Concrete CMS, formerly concrete5, is an open-source PHP content management system released under the MIT licence. Its main idea is in-context editing: editors browse the live site, click into areas of a page and add or change blocks without switching to a separate admin form. Behind that sit versioning, workflows and approvals, granular permissions, multilingual sites and a marketplace of themes and add-ons. It is used by small businesses, universities and some government sites that want non-technical staff to manage pages with little training. PortlandLabs, the company behind it, sells hosting and support. Compared with WordPress the ecosystem is far smaller, so you will find fewer themes, extensions and developers, and its approach is less suited to headless or API-first projects. The software is free to self-host on any PHP and MySQL server, and editing happens in the browser.
Best for: Teams that want non-technical staff editing pages directly on the live site.
Pros and cons
What works
- In-page editing that's easy for non-technical editors
- Versioning, workflows and permissions built in
- MIT-licensed and free to self-host
Why people leave
- Much smaller theme and add-on ecosystem than WordPress
- Fewer developers who know it
- Not designed for headless or API-first use
Top Concrete CMS alternatives
See all 5- 1
WordPress66.5Block editor with a much larger ecosystem of themes and plugins.
- 2
Joomla62.6Open-source PHP CMS with more built-in multilingual and access options.
- 3
Drupal59.6Better fit when content structure and permissions get complex.
- 4
ApostropheCMS57.2Open-source CMS with similar in-context editing, built on Node.js.
- 5
Storyblok55.3Hosted CMS with visual page editing, without running a server.
Why people left Concrete CMS
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Concrete CMS: common questions
Is Concrete CMS free?
Yes. Concrete CMS is free, open-source software that you can host yourself.
Is Concrete CMS open source?
Yes. The source code is on GitHub at concretecms/concretecms. You can also run it on your own server.
What platforms does Concrete CMS run on?
Concrete CMS is available for Self-hosted and Web.
What are the best alternatives to Concrete CMS?
The highest-ranked Concrete CMS alternatives right now are WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. See the full ranked list for pricing, platforms and verified facts.