Statamic

US-based company (founded by Jack McDade and Jason Varga) that develops and sells Statamic; the CMS itself is a Laravel package.

Statamic 1.0 launched in 2012 as a flat-file CMS; the current architecture (Statamic 3+, rebuilt on Laravel) dates to 2020.

Statamic is a PHP/Laravel package you install on your own server or hosting; Statamic, LLC does not sell managed hosting for it.

Statamic markets Core as "free and open source," but the license agreement is a custom, source-available license, not an OSI-approved open-source license: it prohibits redistributing, selling, or sublicensing the software, and Pro requires a paid per-site license. Marked false to reflect the license terms rather than the marketing language; this is a documented point of community disagreement (see GitHub statamic/cms discussion #10706).

No OSI-recognized license name (e.g., MIT, GPL) is used; source is visible on GitHub but redistribution, resale, and sublicensing are contractually prohibited.

Reflects Statamic's own positioning as a developer-friendly, Laravel-native CMS rather than a no-code builder; requires PHP/Laravel comfort to get real value.

Statamic Core is free and usable in production indefinitely, not just a trial.

The single-user cap makes Core impractical for any team-managed site; that's the main lever pushing sites to Pro.

This "free while building" model is standard across Statamic add-ons (e.g., SEO Pro, Cargo) as well as core Pro.

Statamic itself has no monthly fee (Pro is a one-time $349 purchase, see typical_total_cost_notes); this figure is a market-typical budget shared/VPS hosting cost sufficient to run a small Laravel/Statamic site with a custom domain, not a vendor price.

Not a recurring monthly fee: the Pro license is a one-time $349 USD per-site purchase, which is the tier most real (team-managed, multi-site-capable) Statamic sites need. Represented here as the one-time cost since Statamic has no monthly SaaS tier; ongoing updates after year one are $99/yr.

No monthly ecommerce plan exists. Cargo, the current first-party-listed ecommerce addon, is a one-time $199 license (then $85/yr for updates) plus whatever hosting/Statamic Pro costs already apply; no vendor-set recurring fee to report as a monthly figure.

White-label customization of the admin Control Panel itself (e.g., replacing the Statamic name/logo in the CP) is a Pro-tier feature, distinct from front-end branding.

Pro is $349 for the license plus one year of updates; continuing to receive updates after year one costs $99/yr. The initial purchase and the renewal are different amounts/mechanisms, though the site keeps working without renewing (you just stop getting updates).

14-day money-back guarantee on Pro license purchases.

Total cost of ownership is dominated by hosting and developer time, not license fees, similar to other self-hosted code-first CMSs.

The primary long-form content editor, Bard, is a block-based rich-text editor (built on TipTap/ProseMirror) supporting inline "sets" of arbitrary fieldtypes; page-level layout is otherwise driven by Blueprints (structured fields) and developer-built Antlers/Blade templates rather than a freeform visual canvas.

Drag-and-drop applies to navigation building, asset organization, and reordering Bard/Replicator blocks and fields in the Control Panel; it is not a drag-and-drop freeform page builder for visual layout.

Live Preview lets editors see content changes reflected on the actual front-end template as they type, without a separate publish/refresh step.

Revisions (Pro feature) provide full content history with review and rollback to prior versions; must be enabled per-site and per-collection.

Could not verify a specific continuous-autosave claim in official docs; the Control Panel emphasizes explicit save/publish actions plus Revisions for history, and field-level locking during Multi-User Collaboration, but no confirmed autosave-while-typing behavior.

No native iOS/Android app; the Control Panel is a responsive web interface usable on phones/tablets via a mobile browser.

Content (entries, fields, Bard blocks) is stored independently of any single template, but Antlers/Blade templates and front-end markup are hand-coded per theme; swapping templates typically requires developer rework to render existing structured content correctly, not a one-click safe switch.

Editorial judgment: for content editors alone, the Control Panel is well regarded and approachable once a site is built; but getting a site running at all requires PHP/Laravel/Composer server setup, and any template or field-structure work requires developer skill in Antlers or Blade. Rated steep overall because most real usage requires that developer layer, unlike no-code builders.

Statamic does not ship official pre-built visual "themes" the way hosted builders do; instead it offers Starter Kits (project scaffolds with example collections/templates, contributed by Statamic and the community) on the Marketplace. Because Starter Kit count fluctuates and mixes official/community entries without a clear official total, left null rather than guessed.

Fonts are handled in front-end template/CSS code, which the site owner/developer fully controls; no platform restriction on font sources.

Responsive behavior is implemented entirely in hand-written front-end CSS/templates (Antlers or Blade), giving full control rather than a constrained breakpoint editor UI, since Statamic ships no visual layout/breakpoint tool of its own.

Full custom CSS via templates/build pipeline; no plan gating.

Full custom JavaScript via templates/front-end build; no plan gating.

No native no-code animation/interaction authoring tool; any animation is implemented by the developer in custom CSS/JS within templates.

Globals (a native Statamic content type for site-wide values) plus theme-level CSS variables/design tokens defined by the developer provide global style control, though this is a code-driven mechanism rather than a visual design-token UI.

Editorial judgment: as code-first, self-hosted software with full template/CSS/JS access, Statamic places no ceiling on design; the tradeoff is that this flexibility is only accessible to someone who can write Antlers/Blade templates and CSS, not a non-technical end user.

Statamic, LLC does not sell hosting; you bring your own server or a Laravel-friendly host (e.g., Forge, fortrabbit, Laravel Cloud, generic shared/VPS hosting).

Self-hosting is the only mode Statamic runs in; there is no hosted SaaS alternative.

No CDN ships with Statamic itself; CDN delivery depends entirely on the chosen host or a third-party integration (e.g., the community Statamic Cloudflare addon).

Not provided by Statamic itself; SSL/TLS is a hosting-layer concern (most modern hosts, e.g. via Let's Encrypt, provide it, but that is independent of the CMS).

No platform-wide SLA exists since Statamic is not a hosted service.

No built-in bandwidth or storage cap in Statamic itself.

The official Static Site Generator (statamic/ssg) package crawls the site and exports fully static HTML (plus statically-rendered Glide images) suitable for deployment to static hosts like Netlify.

May 2026 CrUX data via HTTP Archive CWV Technology Report API (technology 'Statamic'): combined 72.6% (desktop 1,351/1,794 = 75.3%, mobile 1,460/2,077 = 70.3%, 3,871 origin-device samples). Small sample vs mainstream builders; read as directional.

Glide (bundled image manipulation tag/library) handles on-the-fly resizing, cropping, and format conversion; requires template configuration to use, so "automatic" in the sense of built-in tooling rather than a zero-config default on every image.

Could not verify that Statamic adds lazy-loading attributes to images by default; this appears to be left to the developer's template markup (e.g., manually adding loading="lazy") rather than an automatic platform behavior.

Native Static Caching with two strategies (Laravel application cache "half measure" or full static .html file generation), plus cache warming and configurable invalidation on content changes; substantial owner-facing cache control.

Title is a core entry field; meta description and full on-page SEO field control is standard practice via the official first-party SEO Pro addon (paid, $75/site), which maps existing fields to meta tags with cascading defaults.

URL slugs are natively editable per-entry in the Control Panel.

Flexibility is high but requires configuration by whoever builds the site.

Not in core; the official SEO Pro addon ($75/site) includes a redirect manager (301/302, wildcard support, auto-redirects on slug change, 404 tracking with one-click redirect creation).

Canonical URL control is included in the SEO Pro addon's meta tag mapping.

robots.txt is a standard editable file at the site's public root in any self-hosted Statamic install.

Not in core; XML sitemap generation (with a spreadsheet-style CP view) is provided by the official SEO Pro addon.

SEO Pro provides JSON-LD structured data support for common types (Organization, Person, Breadcrumbs) plus custom schema types, but it requires configuration/mapping rather than being fully automatic across arbitrary content, and is a paid add-on rather than core.

hreflang for multi-site/localized entries is provided by the official SEO Pro addon (which fixes/sanitizes multisite hreflang URLs in the sitemap); native multi-site itself (Pro-tier core) has no built-in hreflang output without SEO Pro.

SEO Pro automates Open Graph tags (og:type, og:title, og:description, og:url, og:image) and X/Twitter Card tags, with live social preview in the entry's SEO tab.

SEO Pro provides per-page robots directives (noindex, nofollow, max-snippet, etc.).

Alt text is a default field on every asset in Statamic's native Asset Manager, editable in the asset's metadata modal, with no addon required.

Blogging is achieved via a standard Collection (e.g., a "Blog" collection with an Article blueprint), a core, zero-addon capability; Statamic's own starter kits/marketing use this pattern.

Collections (content types) with fully custom Blueprints/fieldsets are a foundational, native core capability.

Taxonomies are defined at the collection level, native to core, with categories/tags accessible via template variables.

Entries can be given future publish dates and are automatically treated as unpublished/private until that date; a queue-based scheduler is needed for cache invalidation to reflect the change at the right time, but the scheduling mechanism itself is native.

Native Revisions (Pro) feature: publishing workflow with working copies, revision history, review, and rollback, enabled per site/collection.

Multi-author is a Pro feature: Core is capped at one admin user, and Pro removes the cap for unlimited user accounts and roles.

No native RSS/Atom feed generator ships with core; RSS feeds require a community addon (e.g., Feedamic) or custom template work, unlike platforms with a built-in feed.

The native Content REST API is explicitly read-only (GET only, no POST/PUT/PATCH/DELETE) for delivering entries, navigation, taxonomy terms, globals, forms, users, and assets to front-ends; it is disabled by default and must be opted into per-resource. GraphQL (Pro) is likewise a read-oriented query API. Writing content back requires the Control Panel or custom code, not the public API.

Ecommerce is not in core; Cargo (successor to the older Simple Commerce) is the current official-marketplace-listed ecommerce addon, sold separately.

Unlike SaaS ecommerce platforms, no plan-tiered product ceiling exists.

No platform cut, consistent with other self-hosted/code-first ecommerce addons.

Gateway set differs slightly between the current (Cargo) and legacy (Simple Commerce) ecommerce addons.

Digital/downloadable product sales with file delivery were a confirmed Simple Commerce capability; Cargo, as its comprehensive successor covering the same core ecommerce feature set, is understood to continue this, though not independently re-verified against Cargo's own docs page-by-page.

Could not verify subscription/recurring-billing support in official Cargo documentation; not confirmed present or absent from the pages checked.

Cargo supports selling in multiple currencies by leveraging Statamic's native multi-site feature (each site can represent a different market/currency).

No point-of-sale capability found in official Cargo or Simple Commerce documentation; both are online-checkout focused.

Cart Abandonment / abandoned cart recovery is documented as a native order-management feature of Simple Commerce; treated as continuing in Cargo as its direct successor covering the same feature set.

Modular, code-configurable rather than a single bundled checkout wizard.

Content is stored as flat files (Markdown/YAML) by default or in a database; either way, you control the server and can export everything directly (filesystem copy, DB dump, or the read-only REST/GraphQL APIs).

Because Statamic's default "Stache" storage is plain flat files under version control, raw content is human-readable and portable without any export step.

Templates (Antlers or Blade files) and all front-end CSS/JS are plain code fully owned by the site operator, portable to any Statamic instance or, with rework, another platform.

Domains are managed independently via standard DNS/registrar, as with any self-hosted software; Statamic imposes no domain lock-in.

Core design principle: Statamic runs on any PHP/Laravel-compatible server meeting requirements, and moving hosts is a standard code+content migration.

The native REST API is read-only; there is no native API for writing content back. Full read-write access requires building custom code against Statamic's PHP APIs directly on the server, not an external API a third-party app could use out of the box.

Editorial judgment: flat-file, version-controllable content storage and full code/server ownership give Statamic structurally low platform lock-in for content and design; the caveats are the paid Pro license (needed for any real team site) and the developer skill required to actually execute a migration or rebuild templates elsewhere.

Marketplace listing includes both free and paid community/first-party addons; not all are actively maintained.

Native Content REST API (read-only, opt-in per resource) and GraphQL API (Pro) ship with core.

No native outbound webhook system in core; webhooks require third-party addons (e.g., a Webhook addon for entries, Form Webhooks for form submissions, or a Zapier addon).

Full custom code (PHP addons, Antlers/Blade templates, JS, CSS) with no plan restriction, since Statamic is self-hosted software you control.

Being a Laravel package (not a fork) means it uses the standard Laravel ecosystem (Eloquent, queues, Artisan, etc.) directly.

Ships Artisan (Laravel's CLI) commands for Statamic-specific tasks, plus a Command Palette in the Control Panel UI for quick actions.

Achieved via a community Statamic Zapier addon (form integrations, multiple webhooks per form) and generic Make/Zapier webhook patterns using other webhook addons; not a first-party official Zapier app.

Reflects Statamic's build-your-own-stack, Laravel-ecosystem philosophy.

No native AI site-generation feature confirmed; all AI site/content tooling found (AI Assistant, AI Entries Assistant, alt-text generators) are third-party marketplace addons requiring the site owner's own AI provider API key, not a first-party bundled feature.

No native, first-party AI writing assistant ships in core or Pro. AI text generation/refactoring inside Bard fields exists only via third-party addons (e.g., Statamic AI Assistant, Bold Statamic AI Assistant), each requiring a bring-your-own API key.

No native AI image generation/editing. AI-assisted alt-text generation (accessibility-focused, not image creation) exists only via third-party addons (A.I.D.A, AI Alt Text, Auto Alt Text).

No native AI-driven SEO assistance found in official SEO Pro documentation; SEO Pro's features (live previews, grading, meta mapping) are rule-based tooling, not AI-generated suggestions.

Entirely bring-your-own-AI via addons; no bundled/metered vendor AI feature.

Roles (reusable permission sets) and User Groups are natively configurable in Pro, covering fine-grained abilities (create/edit/delete per content type, settings access, etc.); Core is capped at a single admin so this is effectively a Pro-tier capability.

Core Multi-User Collaboration provides field-level locking (a field locks when one user starts editing it, unlocks when idle/leaving) to prevent conflicts, which is not the same as true simultaneous multi-cursor real-time editing; real-time co-editing with presence indicators requires the separate Collaboration addon (Pro).

Revisions (Pro) provides a publishing workflow with working copies, review, and rollback; combined with Roles/Permissions this supports editorial approval patterns natively, without requiring a separate addon.

Live Preview (real-time template preview while editing) and shareable Review links for unpublished content/revisions (no login required for reviewers) are native; this is page/content-level preview rather than a full parallel staging environment of the whole site.

No native in-editor internal commenting/annotation feature for editorial staff found in official Control Panel documentation.

Audit Logging is explicitly listed as an Enterprise-tier-only feature, not available in Core or Pro.

No standard 24/7 support; Discord community helpers are explicitly described as volunteers. Enterprise tier offers negotiated "Priority SLA" support, but terms are custom/contact-based rather than a published 24/7 guarantee.

Editorial judgment: Statamic's documentation (statamic.dev) is consistently cited by developers as one of the platform's strongest assets, comprehensive and well-organized for a code-first CMS audience, even though it assumes PHP/Laravel familiarity.

Small relative to WordPress/Drupal-scale communities, consistent with Statamic's niche as a developer-focused Laravel CMS.

No SOC 2/ISO claim found for Statamic, LLC in official docs.

Not built into core; backup/restore is handled via community addons (e.g., Statamic Content Backup, Backup by Itiden with scheduling and external storage support) or at the hosting-platform level.

Accessibility tooling is addon-dependent, not a documented first-party WCAG conformance commitment like some competing CMSs.

Multi-Site (Pro feature) natively supports localized content across different domains, subdomains, or subdirectories, each with its own locale; requires a Pro license (not available in Core).

Fields can be individually marked "Localizable" so editors manage translated values per site/locale within the same entry structure; combined with Revisions this supports a translation review workflow.

Per-site/per-locale URLs (domain, subdomain, or subdirectory patterns) are native to Multi-Site; hreflang tag output for those localized URLs requires the paid SEO Pro addon (see seo.hreflang) rather than being automatic in core Multi-Site alone.

Could not find explicit official documentation confirming or denying built-in RTL (right-to-left) language rendering support for the Control Panel or front-end templates.