What is Beacon used for?

Beacon is an open-source CMS built with Phoenix LiveView in Elixir, aimed at fast rendering and good SEO performance for content-heavy pages. It is a good fit for adding CMS pages to an Elixir application, building fast content-heavy marketing sites, and managing layouts and pages through a LiveView admin.

Is Beacon open source?

Yes. Beacon is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at BeaconCMS/beacon and is written mainly in Elixir.

Yes. Beacon is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Beacon?

Yes. Beacon can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.

What are some alternatives to Beacon?

Similar open-source tools in the CMS category include Strapi, Wagtail and Umbraco CMS. SaaS products in the same category include Adobe Experience Manager, Blogsitefy and Contentful.

Is Beacon actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Beacon was on 28 September 2026, and the latest release is v0.5.1, published on 1 April 2025. The project has 1.3k stars on GitHub.

Beacon: open-source CMS

About Beacon

Beacon is a content management system built with Phoenix LiveView, the real-time web framework for Elixir. Its pitch is to bring the rendering speed of Phoenix to content-heavy pages, which can help SEO performance, while giving teams a CMS that lives inside a regular Phoenix project.

You can create a new Phoenix project with Beacon or add it to an existing Phoenix LiveView application using installers and Igniter, then generate a site and manage it through the Beacon LiveAdmin interface for layouts, pages and other content. A demo application is available, and guides and recipes explain the first steps.

Beacon is written in Elixir and licensed under MIT. The README is clear about its status: it is pre-1.0, so incomplete features and breaking changes are to be expected. It runs on your own infrastructure alongside your Phoenix app, and it suits Elixir developers who want to add CMS functionality to their applications.

Key features

CMS built on Phoenix LiveView
Installable in new or existing Phoenix projects
LiveAdmin interface for layouts and pages
Fast server-side rendering for SEO
Guides and recipes for first sites
Demo application available

Good fit for

→Adding CMS pages to an Elixir application
→Building fast content-heavy marketing sites
→Managing layouts and pages through a LiveView admin

Built with: Elixir
Tags: cms; elixir; phoenix; liveview; seo; content-management; self-hosted; pre-1-0

Beacon: questions and answers

What is Beacon used for?: Beacon is an open-source CMS built with Phoenix LiveView in Elixir, aimed at fast rendering and good SEO performance for content-heavy pages. It is a good fit for adding CMS pages to an Elixir application, building fast content-heavy marketing sites, and managing layouts and pages through a LiveView admin.
Is Beacon open source?: Yes. Beacon is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at BeaconCMS/beacon and is written mainly in Elixir.
Is Beacon free?: Yes. Beacon is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Beacon?: Yes. Beacon can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.
What are some alternatives to Beacon?: Similar open-source tools in the CMS category include Strapi, Wagtail and Umbraco CMS. SaaS products in the same category include Adobe Experience Manager, Blogsitefy and Contentful.
Is Beacon actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Beacon was on 28 September 2026, and the latest release is v0.5.1, published on 1 April 2025. The project has 1.3k stars on GitHub.