Statamic
A self-hosted flat-file content system built on Laravel, licensed per site, with a free tier for solo work.
- Price
- Core is free. Pro is $349 per site with one year of updates included, then $99 a year.
- Delivery Model
- Self-hosted software, licensed per site
- Who It Fits
- Shops comfortable with PHP who want flat files without losing a good editing screen
- What You Own
- The installed site and its content files, on your own hosting
- If You Stop Paying
- The site keeps running. The licence covers the install you already made
- Cost Shape
- Per site licence, with a free tier for solo use, plus hosting
Pay once per site rather than monthly. The free Core tier is genuinely usable, which is unusual in this category.
Statamic is the flat-file option most people have not heard of, which is a shame, because it answers a problem small shops really have.
Content lives in files rather than a database. That sounds like a technical detail and it is actually an operations change. Backups become a folder copy. Moving a site becomes a folder copy. Handing a site to a client becomes a folder copy.
It is built on Laravel, so it expects somebody comfortable with PHP. Licensing is per site, with a free tier for solo and personal work, and you host it yourself.
If you like the idea of files instead of a database but you want a polished editing experience your client will not complain about, this is the closest thing in the directory to a middle road.
Current terms and features: statamic.com/ · Price read from statamic.com/pricing