First of all, I don't really know why would you want to use anything other than WordPress. I mean, let's face it, the platform has everything a blogger, a website owner, or even an online business owner might need. There are hundreds of great themes, functional plugins, a massive community of users, but okay, this post is not about WordPress, so let's get down to business.



This is all about finding alternatives. Of course, there are probably hundreds of alternative platforms you can consider. And you can even build your next site from the ground up without using any platform at all (with pure HTML, PHP, and CSS). But when it all comes down to picking the leaders in this space, there are probably not more than 20 platforms you should seriously consider. This post goes even further. So here are just 7 alternatives to WordPress, that for me are the absolute 1st league of website management platforms.

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1. Tumblr

Surprise, surprise, this first one isn't even a standard, standalone platform. It's an online service similar to what you get at wordpress.com. However, since it lets you use your own domain and have it managed on Tumblr I think that it deserves a spot here. In essence, Tumblr works great for certain types of blogs. If you want to publish photo-heavy posts, with lots of creative content, not focused around text that much, then Tumblr may be a great solution for you. Plus, you always get the benefit of taking part in the massive community of Tumblr. This is something you can surely take advantage of.

2. Joomla!

Joomla! is one of the most popular content management systems around. It can do so much more than just let you to build a blog from it. The system is very popular among some of the world's biggest brands. Just to name a few: eBay, United Nations, General Electric, Orange, and many more. The system is very scalable, so it can handle any kind of site (the small ones too). And it's completely open source, which means that you don't need to invest any money if you feel confident enough to install and then work with Joomla! on your own.

3. Drupal

Drupal is probably the main competitor for Joomla! The platform has a similar functionality, but it's built in a different way. It's highly customizable and has a big community of users and enthusiasts. In the end, whether you go with Joomla! or Drupal is your (and your business) personal decision. It's best if you check both platforms and see which one works better in your situation.

4. Textpattern

In many ways Textpattern is the first real WordPress alternative so far. The platform is targeted mainly towards bloggers, due to its structure and the way it organizes content. For instance, there's a big focus on sections and categories, managing uploads (images, attachments), dealing with comments, and the possibility to extend the main functionality through plugins. On top of that, you can import your content (posts) from other platforms, including WordPress.

5. Habari

Habari is a new project, and surely something to look at in the near future. It's a free blogging platform that works with multiple database systems (MySQL, SQLite, PostgreSQL). This may sound boring, but it can be important when you find out that your hosting provider offers only one of them, for example. The platform lets you launch multiple sites from a single installation, and there's a number of standard features you'd expect to see, like: multiple users, plugins, tagging, and more.

6. Plone

This is where it gets interesting. What separates Plone from all the other platforms on this list is that it's built on the Zope application server, which is written in Python, not PHP like WordPress. This makes it the go-to solution if you're dealing with a Python-based environment. Although it can take you a while to get a grasp of it.

7. FlatPress

FlatPress is a blogging platform. Nothing fancy so far, right? However, this one doesn't need a database to work. This means that it can run on the simplest of hosting servers. It's written in PHP (like WordPress), but it stores all content (posts, pages) in simple text files (nothing like WordPress). But wait, there's more! You can still take advantage of a number of plugins, widgets, and even themes.



In the end, a really interesting platform, surely worth to have a look at. This closes the list. Now it's your turn to share. Do you know of any other WordPress alternatives that would look good on this list?.

This great artilce was written by Karol K. (@carlosinho) is a young writer, blogger, and a grad student at the Silesian University of Technology. You can meet him at newInternetOrder.com. Tune in to get his advice on starting an online business.