For readers choosing a content management tool, the challenge is separating a good fit from projects with weaker health or delivery signals. This October 2026 snapshot uses the supplied current ToolVitals records for each tool’s score, health, shipping, openness, license, and GitHub-star context.

The list is limited to open/source-visible tools and is ordered by ToolVitals score first, then by health and shipping for equal composite scores. GitHub stars provide context only and do not set the ranking; the supplied ordering and scores are retained.

Rankings

Rank Tool Openness License Health Shipping GitHub Stars Score Status
1 EmDash CMS OSI-approved OSS MIT 98 98 13559 98 🟢 Excellent
2 Ghost OSI-approved OSS MIT 98 98 55517 98 🟢 Excellent
3 Grav OSI-approved OSS MIT 96 96 15684 96 🟢 Excellent
4 Wagtail OSI-approved OSS BSD-3-Clause 96 94 20547 95 🟢 Excellent
5 Alchemy CMS OSI-approved OSS BSD-3-Clause 95 95 905 95 🟢 Excellent
6 Halo OSI-approved OSS GPL-3.0 95 93 39938 94 🟢 Excellent
7 Orchard Core OSI-approved OSS BSD-3-Clause 95 92 8194 94 🟢 Excellent
8 Ycode OSI-approved OSS MIT 93 95 320 94 🟢 Excellent
9 Conrete CMS OSI-approved OSS MIT 94 92 851 93 🟢 Excellent
10 E107 OSI-approved OSS GPL-3.0 92 94 330 93 🟢 Excellent
11 Ech0 OSI-approved OSS AGPL-3.0 92 93 2073 92 🟢 Excellent
12 ExpressionEngine OSI-approved OSS Apache-2.0 89 90 506 90 🟢 Excellent
13 camaleon-cms OSI-approved OSS MIT 87 93 1238 89 🟢 Excellent
14 Microfeed OSI-approved OSS AGPL-3.0 84 89 4115 86 🟢 Excellent
15 Enhavo OSI-approved OSS MIT 85 79 93 83 🟢 Excellent
16 Lektor OSI-approved OSS BSD-3-Clause 74 60 3950 69 🟢 Good
17 Mecha CMS OSI-approved OSS GPL-3.0 56 39 189 49 🟡 Fair
18 PrettyBlocks OSI-approved OSS AFL-3.0 54 29 95 44 🟡 Fair
19 Umono OSI-approved OSS MIT 46 34 22 41 🟡 Fair
20 Changelog OSI-approved OSS MIT 47 25 2772 39 🔴 Needs Attention
21 lara-zeus Sky OSI-approved OSS MIT 44 29 213 38 🔴 Needs Attention
22 Vvveb OSI-approved OSS AGPL-3.0 39 25 1200 33 🔴 Needs Attention
23 Microweber OSI-approved OSS MIT 40 10 3439 28 🔴 Needs Attention
24 BlogBowl OSI-approved OSS MIT 28 12 160 22 🔴 Needs Attention
25 Squilla OSI-approved OSS GPL-3.0 35 0 1 21 🔴 Needs Attention
26 Markdown Ninja OSI-approved OSS AGPL-3.0 17 0 415 10 🔴 Needs Attention
27 Pico CMS OSI-approved OSS MIT 17 0 3902 10 🔴 Needs Attention
28 Markdown Site OSI-approved OSS MIT 12 0 627 7 🔴 Needs Attention
29 Platformus OSI-approved OSS Apache-2.0 2 0 484 1 🔴 Needs Attention
30 Rpub OSI-approved OSS MIT 1 0 62 1 🔴 Needs Attention
31 Puck CMS OSI-approved OSS MIT 0 0 170 0 🔴 Needs Attention
32 StartupEngine OSI-approved OSS MIT 0 0 141 0 🔴 Needs Attention

Top 3 Highlights

EmDash CMS ranks first with a ToolVitals score of 98, alongside health and shipping scores of 98. Its supplied project description identifies it as a full-stack TypeScript CMS based on Astro and a spiritual successor to WordPress. The record lists 13,559 GitHub stars as context only, with an openness label of OSI-approved OSS and a license label of MIT.

Ghost ranks second with a ToolVitals score of 98, with health and shipping also at 98. Its supplied description centers on modern publishing, memberships, subscriptions, and newsletters. The record lists 55,517 GitHub stars as context only; its openness label is OSI-approved OSS and its license label is MIT.

Grav ranks third with a ToolVitals score of 96 and matching health and shipping scores of 96. The supplied description identifies it as a flat-file CMS powered by PHP, Markdown, Twig, and Symfony. Its openness label is OSI-approved OSS and its license label is MIT; the record lists 15,684 GitHub stars as context only.

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