Open-source Xperience by Kentico alternatives

Orchard Core is made up of two projects. The Orchard Core Framework is used to build modular, multi-tenant applications on ASP.NET Core, and Orchard Core CMS is a web content management system built on top of that framework. Both are open source and written in C#.

The maintainers say version 3.0.1 is ready for production use, including large mission-critical applications, and the project follows the latest .NET releases. A reference of built-in modules shows the features that are provided out of the box, issue milestones show the plans for upcoming releases, and documentation covers getting started. You can also test drive Orchard Core as a user before building with it.

Support comes from searching documentation with a Gurubase AI assistant, opening issues, starting community discussions and joining chat. Orchard Core is licensed under BSD-3-Clause, and you host it yourself on any environment that runs ASP.NET Core. It suits .NET developers and agencies building content sites, intranets or multi-tenant SaaS platforms.

Umbraco is a free and open-source content management system for the .NET platform. Developers use it to build websites and digital experiences with .NET and ASP.NET Core, while editors manage content through a browser-based back office.

The homepage could not be retrieved when this entry was prepared, so details come from the repository description and metadata. The project is a .NET codebase tagged for .NET Core and ASP.NET Core. The vendor also operates a managed cloud service for hosting Umbraco sites, and an ecosystem of packages extends the core.

Umbraco is licensed under MIT, so you can self-host it on your own web servers or Windows and Linux hosting. It suits agencies and in-house .NET teams that want a flexible, extensible CMS in their existing technology stack.

Pimcore is an open core platform built for Product Experience Management. It offers an API-driven base for handling digital data and the customer experience, pairing a core framework with a modular set of extensions for product information management, master data management, digital asset management, customer data platform, a digital experience platform with CMS, and digital commerce.

A central idea is to keep data separate from any channel and send it to any destination, such as websites, apps, print or marketplaces. The code is PHP, and the project links to documentation, a live demo, a discussion forum and issue tracker. The README states that everything is licensed under the Pimcore Open Core License, shown as 'Other' on GitHub, so read it to see what the free core and extensions include.

Pimcore is self-hosted on your own infrastructure, with commercial support and cloud services available from the vendor. It suits mid-sized and larger organizations that need a single source of truth for product and content data across channels.

Squidex is an open-source headless CMS and content management hub. Unlike a traditional CMS, it provides an API-first back end and leaves the user interface to you, whether that is a website, a native app, or another server. It is built with ASP.NET Core and CQRS, tested on Windows and Linux, and released under the MIT license.

Its API supports OData filters and publishes Swagger definitions, making it easy to integrate with other tools. For storage it works with MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, or SQL Server. The project documents its roadmap on Trello and uses a community forum for feature requests, help, and bug reports.

Development requires Visual Studio Code or Visual Studio 2022, Node.js, and one of the supported databases. Squidex suits teams that need structured content with workflows and APIs to feed multiple channels, especially developers in the .NET ecosystem. A hosted version is offered on squidex.io.

Oqtane is an open-source content management system and application framework for building web, mobile, and desktop applications on modern .NET. Its motto is to build applications instead of infrastructure, so teams can concentrate on their own business problems. It is written in C# and released under the MIT license.

The framework is described as rocket fuel for Blazor: it supplies scalable services and a composable UI that can be hosted as static Blazor, Blazor Server, Blazor WebAssembly, or Blazor Hybrid through .NET MAUI. The topics highlight modular architecture and multi-tenancy, which make it suitable for SaaS products and sites with many tenants.

Oqtane acts both as a ready CMS and as a foundation for custom applications, with modules and themes that extend it. It suits .NET developers and agencies who want to deliver content-driven sites or business applications with a consistent Blazor-based stack.

DNN, formerly known as DotNetNuke, is an open-source web content management platform built for the Microsoft ecosystem. It is used to build commercial websites, social intranets, community portals and partner extranets, and handles dynamic content of many types with sites that are straightforward to deploy and update.

Built-in features include a single installation with multi-site capability, file and folder management, localization with six languages out of the box, customizable site templates and themes, Azure compatibility, many REST APIs for site and content management, a drag-and-drop interface with an in-place rich-text editor, and administration tools such as security roles, protected content, SEO, a scheduler, SSL support and taxonomy. It is extensible through custom modules, with third-party extensions and skins available in the DNN Store.

DNN is written in C# and licensed under MIT, and runs on your own Windows and .NET hosting. The project has a community website, forums, documentation and a contribution process with a versioning policy and release schedule. It suits organizations and developers who already work in the Microsoft stack and want a mature open-source CMS.

dotCMS is an enterprise content management system that combines headless delivery with visual page editing. Content teams can edit pages in a visual editor, while developers consume the same content through REST and GraphQL APIs from any front-end stack, including single-page apps and server-rendered sites.

The platform supports multi-tenancy, so one instance can host many sites in many languages, such as microsites, brand sites or intranets. Content and assets are indexed in Elasticsearch for real-time and faceted search, and can also be vectorized for semantic search in AI applications. Marketing features include personalization, rules and A/B testing, plus custom workflows, roles and permissions, push and static publishing, and an OSGi-based plugin architecture.

dotCMS ships as a Docker image for self-hosting and also as dotCMS Cloud, a managed product. The code is public under the Business Source License 1.1, and the README says it is free for organizations with total finances under $5,000,000 USD; larger organizations should read the license terms.

Piranha CMS is a decoupled, cross-platform content management system for .NET built on ASP.NET Core and Entity Framework Core. It targets developers who want a friendly editing experience for content teams, and it can be used either as an integrated CMS inside a web app or as a headless API.

Its architecture is modular and extensible, and it supports many hosting and deployment scenarios. Developers can start from project templates installed with the dotnet new command, for example a Razor Pages web project, or clone the source and run the example MVC web app. A manager interface at the /manager URL provides the editing UI, with default admin credentials that should be changed before going to production.

Piranha is written in C# for .NET 8, is distributed through NuGet packages and uses Crowdin for localization. It is released under the MIT license, and because it runs on your own ASP.NET Core hosting, you control where the site and its data live.