What is Winter CMS used for?

Winter CMS is a free, self-hosted CMS platform built on the Laravel PHP framework, forked from October CMS in 2021 and aimed at developers and agencies. It is a good fit for building agency client websites on Laravel, rapid prototyping of content-driven sites and migrating from October CMS to a community fork.

Is Winter CMS open source?

Yes. Winter CMS is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at wintercms/winter and is written mainly in PHP.

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

Can I self-host Winter CMS?

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

What are some alternatives to Winter CMS?

Similar open-source tools in the CMS category include October CMS, Bludit and WordPress. SaaS products in the same category include Adobe Experience Manager, Contentful and Sitecore.

Is Winter CMS actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Winter CMS was on 30 September 2026, and the latest release is v1.2.14, published on 19 August 2026. The project has 1.5k stars on GitHub.

Winter CMS: open-source CMS

About Winter CMS

Winter is a free, open-source content management system built on the Laravel PHP framework. Developers and agencies use it for quick prototyping and development of websites of any size, and it presents itself as a codebase that is secure and focused on simplicity, with a development environment that suits both beginners and experienced developers.

It can be installed in several ways, including through Composer for advanced users, after which you generate an environment file, run database migrations and receive an automatically created administrator account with a generated password. Documentation and tutorials cover learning the system, and an active Discord community provides help. Plugins and themes extend the core.

Winter was forked from October CMS in March 2021 after a disagreement over how the project should be managed in the open. It is led by Luke Towers, with organizational backing from the Frostbyte Foundation. The code is written in PHP and licensed under MIT, and it runs on your own server, which makes it a fit for developers who like Laravel conventions in a CMS.

Key features

CMS built on the Laravel framework
Composer-based installation
Plugin and theme extensibility
Database migrations and admin setup via CLI
Extensive documentation and tutorials
Active community on Discord

Good fit for

→Building agency client websites on Laravel
→Rapid prototyping of content-driven sites
→Migrating from October CMS to a community fork

Built with: PHP; Laravel
Tags: cms; laravel; php; october-cms-fork; self-hosted; content-management; plugins; themes; agency

Winter CMS: questions and answers

What is Winter CMS used for?: Winter CMS is a free, self-hosted CMS platform built on the Laravel PHP framework, forked from October CMS in 2021 and aimed at developers and agencies. It is a good fit for building agency client websites on Laravel, rapid prototyping of content-driven sites and migrating from October CMS to a community fork.
Is Winter CMS open source?: Yes. Winter CMS is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at wintercms/winter and is written mainly in PHP.
Is Winter CMS free?: Yes. Winter CMS is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Winter CMS?: Yes. Winter CMS can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.
What are some alternatives to Winter CMS?: Similar open-source tools in the CMS category include October CMS, Bludit and WordPress. SaaS products in the same category include Adobe Experience Manager, Contentful and Sitecore.
Is Winter CMS actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Winter CMS was on 30 September 2026, and the latest release is v1.2.14, published on 19 August 2026. The project has 1.5k stars on GitHub.