Every European content management tool reviewed
Linz, Austria
Founded 2017
Free tier / from about €99/month for teams
Free tier
Best for: Marketing teams that need visual editing with a modern front end
Storyblok is the answer to the reason headless CMS projects fail. In a normal headless setup, content becomes fields in a form and nobody can see the page until a developer builds it — so marketing files a ticket to change a headline and the promised independence never arrives.
Storyblok delivers content over REST and GraphQL like any headless CMS, but the editing interface shows a live preview of the real page and editors click the element they want to change. Content is component-based, so those blocks are reusable rather than one-off.
Storyblok GmbH operates from Linz with an EU region that is the default for European customers, giving intra-EEA processing. Localisation is unusually strong: multi-language and multi-market are first-class rather than bolted on, which matters for a business publishing the same campaign across five countries with different products in each.
An image service, editorial workflows and good SDKs round it out, and there is a usable free tier. The constraints are real: no self-hosting at all, costs rise sharply with team size and traffic, and the component-based model demands careful design up front — a badly modelled component set is expensive to unpick later.
What Storyblok does well
- Real visual editing on a headless CMS
- Excellent multi-language and multi-market support
- EU data residency by default for European customers
- REST and GraphQL with good SDKs
- Usable free tier for small projects
Where Storyblok falls short
- No self-hosting option
- Costs rise sharply with team size and traffic
- Requires careful up-front component design
- Austrian company but a hosted-only product, so no ownership
Standout feature. Live visual editing on a headless architecture: Storyblok is the only CMS here where an editor sees the actual page and developers still consume a clean API.
Paris, France
Founded 2015
Free self-hosted / Strapi Cloud from about €29/month
Free self-hosted
Best for: Development teams that want a headless CMS on their own infrastructure
Strapi is the headless CMS you own. The core is MIT-licensed and self-hosting is the primary deployment model rather than a grudging option, so there is no API call limit, no seat pricing and no vendor able to reprice the thing your product depends on. The content-type builder defines structures through the interface and Strapi generates REST and GraphQL endpoints automatically, with role-based permissions and internationalisation included.
Strapi SAS operates from Paris, and Strapi Cloud offers an EU region from about €29 per month for teams that would rather not run it themselves.
The admin panel is a React application you can extend, which is the difference between a CMS your editors tolerate and one shaped around how they actually work — a plugin system covers the rest. When self-hosted you remain the controller with no processor to assess. The costs are the usual ones stated honestly: there is no visual page editing for content teams, major version upgrades can require genuine migration work, and uptime, backups and scaling are yours.
What Strapi does well
- Fully self-hostable with an MIT-licensed core
- REST and GraphQL APIs generated automatically
- Admin panel extensible in React
- No API or seat pricing when self-hosted
- French company with an EU cloud option
Where Strapi falls short
- No visual page editing for content teams
- Major upgrades can require migration work
- You own uptime, backups and scaling
- Editors need a front end built before they can preview anything
Standout feature. An admin panel you can rewrite: Strapi is the only headless CMS here where the editing interface is a React app you extend rather than a screen you accept.
London, United Kingdom
Founded 2013
Free self-hosted / Ghost(Pro) from about $9/month, no revenue share
Free self-hosted
Best for: Independent publishers and newsletters that want to own their audience
Ghost takes nothing from your subscription revenue, and for a publisher that single fact outweighs every feature comparison. Memberships, paid tiers, newsletters and Stripe integration are in the core product rather than added by plugin, and Ghost charges no revenue share — a publication earning €100,000 keeps €100,000 minus payment processing, where Substack would take a permanent percentage. Ghost(Pro) hosting is about $9 a month, or self-host it for nothing under the MIT licence.
The governance matters as much as the economics. Ghost is owned by the Ghost Foundation, a non-profit, so there is no shareholder who can accept an acquisition and revise the terms afterwards — for a business whose income runs through the platform, that structural guarantee is worth more than any feature.
Ghost is a full CMS rather than a newsletter tool, with themes, a content API and ActivityPub support, so the site around the newsletter is a real website. The honest gap is discovery: Ghost has no recommendation network, so audience growth is entirely your own work, and the theme and plugin ecosystem is small.
What Ghost does well
- No revenue share on subscriptions, at any scale
- Owned by a non-profit foundation that cannot be sold
- Memberships, paid tiers and newsletters in core
- MIT-licensed and fully self-hostable
- A real CMS with themes and a content API
Where Ghost falls short
- No built-in discovery or recommendation network
- Small theme and plugin ecosystem
- Editor more constrained than a page builder
- UK-based foundation, so adequacy rather than EU establishment
Standout feature. Zero revenue share under non-profit governance: Ghost is the only platform here where growing your subscription income costs you nothing extra and nobody can change that later.
Basel, Switzerland
Founded 1998
Free and open source; agency and ELTS support vary
Free
Best for: Universities, public sector and enterprises with many sites and languages
TYPO3 exists for the estate rather than the site. One installation runs dozens of sites in many languages, with editorial permissions granular to page and field level and workspaces for staging and approval — so a faculty administrator edits their own pages in their own language, a translator sees only what they translate, and nothing reaches production without review. That combination is why TYPO3 runs universities, ministries and large enterprises across German-speaking Europe rather than competing for small business websites.
TYPO3 is developed by the TYPO3 Association and has been in continuous development since 1998, self-hosted only under GPLv2+, so the content lives on your own infrastructure with no processor to assess. LTS releases with extended support options answer the question a procurement cycle actually asks: will this still be maintained in eight years.
Accessibility support is serious rather than nominal, which matters now that the Accessibility Act makes it a legal duty. The costs are equally real: TYPO3 is complex enough that it usually requires an agency that specialises in it, the interface is dated next to modern CMSs, and it is substantial overkill for a single small site.
What TYPO3 does well
- Many sites and languages from one installation
- Permissions granular to page and field level
- Workspaces for staging and approval
- Serious accessibility support in core
- LTS releases with extended support options
Where TYPO3 falls short
- Complex; usually needs specialist agency support
- Interface dated compared with modern CMSs
- Overkill for small sites
- Agency dependency is the largest five-year cost
Standout feature. Workspaces with field-level permissions: TYPO3 is the only CMS here where a hundred editors across twenty departments can work on one estate without anyone publishing by accident.
Berlin, Germany
Founded 2013
Free tier / Lite from about $300/month / Premium on request
Free tier
Best for: Large organisations publishing to many channels from one content source
Contentful is the enterprise end of this category, and content federation is what distinguishes it.
Rather than requiring everything to be migrated in, Contentful can pull content from other systems and present it through one API alongside its own — which is the realistic shape of a large organisation where a product catalogue lives in one system, documentation in another and marketing copy in a third. Content modelling, REST and GraphQL APIs, localisation and an app framework round out the platform.
Contentful GmbH was founded in Berlin in 2013 and offers EU data residency, though the company now has substantial US presence and ownership — worth knowing for a buyer choosing on European grounds rather than on capability.
The workflows are what large teams actually pay for: approval chains, granular permissions and editorial governance built for distributed teams across time zones, backed by a large partner and app ecosystem. The pricing is the sharpest edge in this category: a free tier and then a jump to roughly $300 a month for Lite, which catches teams that outgrew the free plan without budgeting for it. There is no self-hosting.
What Contentful does well
- Mature enterprise workflows and permissions
- Content federation from other systems through one API
- EU data residency available
- Large partner and app ecosystem
- Strong APIs and SDKs for multi-channel delivery
Where Contentful falls short
- Expensive, with a steep jump from the free tier
- No self-hosting option
- Substantial US presence and ownership
- More platform than most organisations need
Standout feature. Content federation: Contentful is the only CMS here that can serve content it does not store, which is what a large organisation actually needs when three systems already own the content.
Berlin, Germany
Founded 2012
Free for local development / €109 one-off per production site
Free for local development
Best for: Designers and developers building bespoke sites without database overhead
Kirby removes the database, and the consequences run further than they first appear. Content is stored as files, so deployment is a file copy, backup is a file copy, and the content lives in version control alongside the code — which means a site's text and its templates move through branches, review and rollback together. An entire class of infrastructure, and an entire class of failure, simply is not there.
Kirby is built by Bastian Allgeier GmbH in Berlin and gives complete template control: blueprints define the content structure and the editing panel is configured per project, so editors see exactly the fields that project needs and nothing else.
Multi-language is supported and everything runs on PHP on your own server.
The licence is unusual and refreshingly clear: free for local development, €109 once per production site, with no subscription — over five years that is a rounding error against any hosted CMS. The limits follow from the design: flat files are not suited to very large or heavily relational content, Kirby is source-available rather than open source, and the team and ecosystem are small.
What Kirby does well
- No database: deployment and backup are file copies
- Content lives in version control with the code
- One-off €109 licence per site, no subscription
- Total control over templates and output
- Editing panel configured per project
Where Kirby falls short
- Not suited to very large or relational content
- Source-available, not open source
- Small ecosystem and small team
- Assumes a developer is available for changes
Standout feature. Content in version control: Kirby is the only CMS here where a page edit and a template change can travel through the same branch, review and rollback.
Germany
Founded 2006
Free and open source; agency support varies
Free
Best for: Municipalities, associations and SMEs in German-speaking Europe
Contao produces accessible output as the default rather than as a theme choice, which is now a legal question rather than a preference.
Accessibility is a duty across the EU under the Accessibility Act, and retrofitting it onto a CMS whose templates were never built for it costs far more than starting with one where it is the baseline. That, plus a permission system granular enough for public-sector use without enterprise overhead, is why Contao runs municipalities and associations across German-speaking Europe.
Contao is developed by the Contao Association, open source under LGPLv3, self-hosted only, and built on Symfony — so it is modern PHP rather than a legacy codebase, and a developer who knows Symfony can work on it.
Core modules cover a form generator, news and calendar, which reduces the plugin dependency that makes a WordPress installation fragile over time, and LTS releases give the maintenance horizon a public body needs. The trade-offs are about reach rather than quality: documentation and community are mainly German, the extension ecosystem is small, and Contao is not designed headless-first, so it suits a website rather than a multi-channel content source.
What Contao does well
- Accessible output as the default, not a theme choice
- Granular permissions without enterprise overhead
- Core modules reduce plugin dependency
- LGPLv3 open source with German governance
- Symfony foundation, so modern maintainable PHP
Where Contao falls short
- Documentation and community mainly German
- Small extension ecosystem
- Not designed headless-first
- Less suited outside German-speaking markets
Standout feature. Accessibility as the starting point: Contao is the only CMS here where meeting the Accessibility Act is the default output rather than a retrofit project.
Odense, Denmark
Founded 2003
Free and open source self-hosted / Umbraco Cloud from about €45/month (Starter) up to about €730/month (Professional); Enterprise on request
Free self-hosted
Best for: Agencies and enterprises wanting a mature, free .NET CMS
Umbraco is the free option for a team already committed to .NET: the core CMS is MIT-licensed and self-hostable at no cost, with a mature backoffice, a large package ecosystem and two decades of production use behind it.
Content, media and document types are modelled through the interface rather than code-first schemas, which keeps editors independent once a site is built. For a European buyer wary of licence fees creeping in later, Umbraco settles that question up front: the software itself never carries a price tag, whatever hosting decision follows.
Umbraco A/S was founded in Odense, Denmark in 2003 and also sells Umbraco Cloud, a managed hosting product on Microsoft Azure with an ISO 27001-certified platform, running from about €45 a month for a single small site up to about €730 for a Professional tier, with Enterprise quoted separately.
Both routes share the open-source core, so a project can start self-hosted and move to Cloud later without a rewrite. The trade-offs are real: .NET hosting is a smaller market than PHP, the admin interface feels less modern than newer headless tools, and Umbraco Cloud names Azure but not a specific region.
What Umbraco does well
- Free, open-source .NET/C# CMS with two decades of maturity
- Umbraco Cloud offers managed hosting on Microsoft Azure
- ISO 27001-certified cloud platform
- Large package ecosystem and active community
- No licence fee, whichever hosting route you choose
Where Umbraco falls short
- .NET hosting is a smaller, pricier market than PHP
- Interface is dated next to newer headless tools
- Umbraco Cloud names Azure but not a specific EU region
- Package quality varies across the community ecosystem
Standout feature. Two decades of a genuinely free core: Umbraco is the only CMS added here where the open-source software itself never carries a price tag.
Brno, Czech Republic
Founded 2004
Enterprise pricing on request; deploy as fully managed SaaS or in your own private cloud (Azure, AWS or on-premises)
Demo on request
Best for: Enterprises wanting the same DXP on-premises or as SaaS
Kentico Xperience is built around a choice most enterprise DXPs do not offer: the identical product deployed as fully managed SaaS, or in your own private cloud on Azure, AWS, or fully on-premises.
Kentico calls this "same product, same capabilities, no lock-in", and it is the practical answer for an organisation whose procurement rules require a self-hosting fallback but whose team would rather not run infrastructure by default. Content management, digital marketing and commerce sit in one platform, which suits a mid-to-large marketing team that has outgrown a simple CMS but does not want three separate systems to keep synchronised.
Kentico Software s.r.o. is a Czech company registered in Brno since 2004, which puts the vendor itself inside the EU regardless of which deployment a customer picks.
There is no public price list; every engagement is quoted, which is standard for this tier of enterprise DXP but means a buyer cannot shortlist Kentico on price alone the way they can with the smaller CMSs in this category. The interface and content modelling are built for marketing teams with a dedicated administrator rather than a solo developer, and the self-hosted option still leaves patching, scaling and backups to the customer.
What Kentico Xperience does well
- Identical product as SaaS or self-hosted, including on-premises
- Czech company, so EU establishment regardless of deployment
- CMS, marketing and commerce in one platform
- Two decades of continuous development since 2004
- No forced migration between the SaaS and self-hosted versions
Where Kentico Xperience falls short
- No public pricing; every deal is quoted
- Self-hosting still means owning patching, scaling and backups
- Aimed at marketing teams with a dedicated administrator
- Heavier platform than a small site actually needs
Standout feature. The same DXP either way: Kentico is the only enterprise DXP added in this wave that explicitly promises identical capabilities on-premises, in a private cloud, or as managed SaaS.
Münchenstein (Basel), Switzerland
Founded 1997
DX Core (self-hosted) from about €3,000/month / DX Cloud (managed, across AWS, Azure and GCP) from about €5,000/month, both quote-based
Demo on request
Best for: Large enterprises wanting composable content and commerce
Magnolia has been building content management in Switzerland since 1997, which makes it one of the longest-running vendors in this category, and it now positions itself as a composable DXP: content, commerce and integrations assembled from independent building blocks rather than one monolithic application.
DX Core is deployed on infrastructure you control, and DX Cloud is a fully managed option Magnolia runs across AWS, Azure, GCP and other providers depending on the customer's needs — a genuinely provider-agnostic cloud story that is unusual in this category, most of which is tied to one hosting stack.
Magnolia International Ltd is based in Münchenstein, near Basel, and states ISO 27001, SOC 2, SOC 3, GDPR and Spain's ENS certification on its own site — an unusually well-documented security posture for a CMS vendor.
The published starting prices are DX Core from about €3,000 a month and DX Cloud from about €5,000 a month, both quoted further from there, which places Magnolia firmly in enterprise territory rather than SME reach. There is no free Community Edition currently marketed, so testing the platform means a sales conversation, and Switzerland's data protection adequacy decision covers transfers but the country itself sits outside the EEA.
What Magnolia does well
- Composable DXP: content, commerce and integrations as building blocks
- DX Cloud runs across AWS, Azure, GCP and other providers
- ISO 27001, SOC 2 and SOC 3 certified
- DX Core can be fully self-hosted
- Nearly three decades of continuous development since 1997
Where Magnolia falls short
- Enterprise pricing from about €3,000/month, no SME tier
- No free Community Edition currently offered
- Switzerland sits outside the EEA itself
- Composable architecture needs real implementation expertise
Standout feature. Provider-agnostic managed cloud: Magnolia is the only DXP here that runs its managed offering across AWS, Azure and GCP rather than betting on one.
Oslo, Norway
Founded 1999
Ibexa Open Source Edition free under GPLv2 / commercial Ibexa DXP subscription, pricing on request
Free self-hosted
Best for: Teams wanting a DXP with a genuine open-source escape hatch
Ibexa is the direct descendant of eZ Systems, founded in Norway in 1999, and it is the only enterprise DXP in this category with a real open-source edition rather than a marketing claim: the code Ibexa publishes on GitHub is dual-licensed, available under the GPLv2 at no cost or under the commercial Ibexa Business Use Licence for customers with an Ibexa DXP subscription.
That structure gives a buyer a genuine self-hosted, licence-free fallback if a commercial relationship ever ends — something none of the purely proprietary DXPs in this list can offer.
Ibexa AS is registered in Oslo, which places the company inside the EEA and the GDPR but, as a Norwegian entity, outside the EU itself.
The product line has consolidated into Ibexa Headless, Ibexa Experience and Ibexa Commerce, aimed at mid-to-large organisations rather than small teams, and — like most enterprise DXPs — there is no public price list for the commercial subscription. The open-source edition removes the licence cost but not the implementation work: running Ibexa well still calls for a Symfony-literate development team, and the documentation assumes that baseline.
What Ibexa does well
- Genuine open-source edition under GPLv2, not just a trial
- Commercial subscription only needed for support and extras
- Headless, Experience and Commerce cover different project shapes
- Direct continuity from eZ Systems, founded 1999
- No vendor lock-in: the GPL code keeps working without a contract
Where Ibexa falls short
- Norway is EEA, not EU, for buyers where that distinction matters
- No public pricing for the commercial DXP subscription
- Needs a Symfony-literate team to run well
- Product positioning has shifted around a broader "orchestration" platform
Standout feature. A dual licence with teeth: Ibexa is the only DXP here whose open-source edition is the same GPLv2 code its enterprise product is built on.
Milano, Italy
Free plan (2 editors, 300 records) / Professional from about €149/month (annual) or €199/month (monthly) / Enterprise on request
Free tier
Best for: Developers wanting a generous free tier on a headless CMS
DatoCMS is a headless CMS from Milan with a genuinely usable free plan: two editors and 300 records with 10GB of traffic and 100,000 API calls a month, permanently, not a time-limited trial.
Content is delivered through a GraphQL API, and the modelling tools, image and video handling, and localisation are built for a developer shipping a marketing site or a small product catalogue without first negotiating a contract. The catch is that the free plan is a hard ceiling rather than a soft one: DatoCMS says plainly that exceeding the monthly limits breaks the service rather than quietly billing an overage.
The publisher is DATO SRL, registered in Milan, which makes DatoCMS one of the few Italian entries in the European CMS market.
Paid usage starts at Professional, about €149 a month billed annually or €199 monthly, covering ten collaborators and 100,000 records, with Enterprise quoted separately and extra projects available as an add-on from about €39 a month; a 50% discount applies for education and non-profits.
There is no self-hosting option at any tier, and DatoCMS did not publish its founding year or a specific hosting region on its own pages, so buyers with strict data-residency requirements should confirm that directly before committing.
What DatoCMS does well
- Permanent free plan, not a time-limited trial
- GraphQL-based content delivery API
- Italian company, EU jurisdiction
- Discounts for education and non-profit users
- Straightforward per-collaborator, per-record pricing tiers
Where DatoCMS falls short
- Free plan enforces hard limits rather than graceful overage
- No self-hosting option at any tier
- Hosting region not specified on the vendor's own pages
- Founding year not published
Standout feature. The only Italian entry added here: DatoCMS pairs a permanently free starter plan with published, per-collaborator pricing on the tier directly above it.
Berlin, Germany
Free Hobby plan / Growth from $199/month / Enterprise on request
Free tier
Best for: Developer teams wanting GraphQL-native headless content
Hygraph, formerly GraphCMS, builds the entire content API around GraphQL rather than bolting it onto a REST-first product, which is the reason developer teams that already use GraphQL elsewhere in their stack tend to reach for it first.
The free Hobby plan needs no credit card and covers two locales, three seats and 1,000 entries with 500,000 API calls a month — enough to build and demo a real project before any purchasing conversation starts. Remote sources let Hygraph federate content from other systems into one API, the same content-federation idea Contentful sells at enterprise scale, offered here from the free tier up.
Hygraph GmbH is registered in Berlin, and the company states on its own site that its infrastructure is ISO 27001 certified, though it does not publish which regions host customer data.
Pricing beyond the free tier starts at Growth for $199 a month, covering ten seats and 10,000 entries with overage billed per million API operations and per gigabyte of asset traffic, and Enterprise is quoted separately with SSO, audit logs and multi-tenancy. As with several other entries here, the founding year is not stated on the vendor's own pages, and pricing is published in dollars rather than euros despite the German base.
What Hygraph does well
- GraphQL-native content API, not REST retrofitted
- Free Hobby plan with no credit card required
- ISO 27001-certified infrastructure, stated by the vendor
- Content federation from remote sources available from the free tier
- German company, EU jurisdiction
Where Hygraph falls short
- Hosting region not specified on the vendor's own pages
- Pricing published in dollars, not euros
- Founding year not published
- Overage charges apply once Growth-plan limits are exceeded
Standout feature. Federation from the free tier: Hygraph is the only CMS in this group that offers Contentful-style content federation before you have paid it anything.
Dornbirn, Austria
Free and open source (MIT licence); enterprise support, training and consulting on request
Free self-hosted
Best for: Symfony developers wanting a free, self-hosted enterprise CMS
Sulu is what a PHP shop already invested in Symfony reaches for: the CMS is itself a Symfony application, released under the MIT licence, so there is no cost to the software and no ceiling on how it is deployed.
The admin interface is built for content editors rather than developers, with a page tree, customisable templates and multi-site, multi-language support out of the box, while the underlying framework stays familiar to anyone who already ships Symfony applications. That combination is why Sulu turns up as the CMS layer inside larger Symfony-based platforms rather than as a standalone product competing on marketing spend.
Sulu GmbH is registered in Dornbirn, Austria, and its own imprint confirms the MIT licence directly rather than through a separate legal page.
There is no cost for the software at any scale, and Sulu GmbH sells professional support, training and consulting on request for teams that want a commercial relationship behind their deployment, though none of those services carry published prices. The trade-off is ecosystem size: Sulu's plugin and template marketplace is far smaller than WordPress's or even Strapi's, and a project will lean on Symfony's own ecosystem to fill the gaps rather than a large catalogue of Sulu-specific extensions.
What Sulu does well
- Free and open source under the MIT licence at any scale
- Built on Symfony, familiar to PHP enterprise teams
- Multi-site and multi-language support built in
- Paid support, training and consulting available from Sulu GmbH
- Austrian company, EU jurisdiction
Where Sulu falls short
- Smaller plugin and template ecosystem than WordPress or Strapi
- Assumes Symfony familiarity to get the most from it
- No published prices for the commercial support packages
- Founding year not published on the vendor's own pages
Standout feature. A Symfony-native CMS under MIT: alongside Contao, Sulu is one of two entries here built to disappear into an existing Symfony codebase rather than sit apart from it.
Bristol, United Kingdom
Founded 2014
Free and open source (BSD licence), no licensing fees; paid support available from Torchbox and partner agencies
Free self-hosted
Best for: Python and Django teams wanting a free, no-fee CMS
Wagtail is the Django ecosystem's answer to a page-building CMS, and it takes the licensing question off the table entirely: the project's own homepage states "no licensing fees", and the licence file in its official GitHub repository confirms a BSD-style permissive licence with no cost at any scale or team size.
Page trees, StreamField content blocks and a modern editing interface make it usable by non-technical editors, while the underlying app stays a normal Django project that a Python team can extend directly rather than working around a proprietary plugin API.
Wagtail has been maintained since 2014 by Torchbox, a digital agency registered in Bristol, England — the GitHub licence file's copyright line dates the project precisely.
Torchbox and a number of partner agencies offer paid implementation and support, but the software itself never requires a subscription or per-seat fee, and the project counts more than 200 external contributors, so it is not dependent on Torchbox alone continuing to invest. Being a UK entity means Wagtail sits under the EU's adequacy decision rather than direct EU establishment, and running it well assumes a team comfortable with Python and Django rather than a no-code editor.
What Wagtail does well
- Free and open source with no licensing fees at any scale
- Built on Django, extensible directly in Python
- Modern StreamField content-block editing
- 200+ external contributors, not dependent on one company
- Paid support available from Torchbox and partner agencies
Where Wagtail falls short
- Requires Python/Django familiarity to extend
- UK company: adequacy decision rather than EU establishment
- Smaller ecosystem than WordPress or Strapi
- No managed hosting product from Torchbox itself
Standout feature. No licensing fees, stated outright: Wagtail is the only CMS added in this wave whose own homepage makes that promise in so many words.
