Joomla
Web content management software
- Features
- Ease of use
- Ease of management
- Quality of support
- Affordability
- Market presence
Take the quiz to check if Joomla and its alternatives fit your requirements.
Completely free
Free Trial unavailable
Free version
Small
Medium
Large
- Construction
- Agriculture, fishing, and forestry
- Transportation and logistics
What is Joomla
Joomla is an open-source web content management system (CMS) used to build and manage websites and web applications. It is commonly used by small to mid-sized organizations, agencies, and developers that need a self-hosted CMS with extensibility through templates and extensions. Joomla supports role-based access control and multilingual sites out of the box, and it can be deployed on standard PHP/MySQL hosting environments.
Open-source and self-hosted
Joomla is distributed under an open-source license and can be self-hosted on common PHP-based infrastructure. This supports organizations that want control over hosting, data residency, and deployment configuration. It also enables customization without being tied to a single commercial SaaS vendor.
Extension and template ecosystem
Joomla supports a large ecosystem of third-party extensions and templates for adding features such as forms, e-commerce, SEO tooling, and integrations. This allows teams to assemble a site with modular functionality rather than building everything from scratch. The extension model also supports custom development when off-the-shelf options do not fit requirements.
Built-in multilingual and RBAC
Joomla includes multilingual capabilities and role-based access control as core features. This helps organizations manage content across languages and enforce editorial permissions without requiring separate add-ons. The permission system supports multiple user groups and granular access rules for content and administration areas.
Requires ongoing maintenance
As a self-hosted CMS, Joomla requires patching, backups, monitoring, and periodic upgrades by the site owner or a service provider. Extensions and templates also introduce update and compatibility management overhead. Compared with fully managed platforms, operational responsibility is higher.
Extension quality varies
Functionality often depends on third-party extensions, and quality, security practices, and support levels vary by vendor. Some extensions may lag behind core releases, creating upgrade friction or requiring replacements. Organizations typically need a governance process for selecting and maintaining extensions.
Less suited to headless-first
Joomla can be used with APIs, but it is primarily designed as a traditional, page-oriented CMS. Teams pursuing a headless-first architecture may need additional configuration, extensions, or custom development to meet modern omnichannel delivery patterns. This can increase implementation complexity compared with platforms built around headless content modeling.
Plan & Pricing
| Plan | Price | Key features & notes |
|---|---|---|
| Joomla (core CMS) | Free (open-source) | Downloadable, self-hosted CMS; thousands of free extensions and templates; maintained by the Joomla Project. |
| Launch (launch.joomla.org - official hosted demo) | Free with limitations; upgrade option starts at $5/mo (per launch.joomla.org) | Free hosted, fully functional site on .joomla.com subdomain; limited to 500MB disk and subdomain; site must be "renewed" every 30 days to remain active; upgrades to remove limits available (paid via the launch provider). |
Seller details
Open Source Matters, Inc.
New York, New York, United States
2005
Open Source
https://www.joomla.org/
https://x.com/joomla
https://www.linkedin.com/company/joomla
