A ProcessWire alternative for publishing without maintaining a PHP implementation

This is the category ProcessWire exists for, and it wins it comfortably. Every field is custom, fields nest inside repeaters, content sits in a page tree of arbitrary depth rather than a fixed set of collection types, and one line of selector API reaches any of it. The project documents installs holding more than two million pages. Grigora has collections and directories, which is a much smaller idea and does not pretend otherwise.

Takeaway: If the shape of your content is the hard problem, ProcessWire offers a flexible custom-field and page-tree model.

A fresh ProcessWire install gives you an admin, a page tree and a blank front end. The markup is entirely yours, which is exactly the appeal to a developer and exactly the obstacle to everyone else. There is no drag-and-drop builder, no theme marketplace and no design system in the box. Grigora starts from a sentence about your business and hands back a drafted site you edit on the page.

Takeaway: Total markup control and a blank page are the same fact seen from two sides.

The module directory listed 704 modules when this page was written, which is a genuinely large catalogue for a project this size. It is a listing count, not a count of modules that are maintained or tested against current core, and community writing has criticised some long-standing SEO modules for falling behind. Grigora has no plugin ecosystem at all. What it has instead is the common set already inside the product.

Takeaway: ProcessWire offers far more parts. Grigora offers far fewer parts to put together.

The commercial side of ProcessWire is unusually fair and Grigora will not spin it. Pro modules are one-time purchases. The product key does not expire, the first year includes upgrades, VIP support and a private board, and the yearly renewal is optional: it buys more upgrades and support, not continued use. A Developer edition covers an unlimited number of sites built by one developer, so a single Form Builder licence can serve a whole client portfolio.

Takeaway: Spread across fifty client sites over several years, a Developer license can spread the module cost across many sites; hosting, maintenance and renewal choices still affect total cost.

Nothing in core sells anything. E-commerce comes from ProcessWire Commerce, the former commercial Padloper, which its author released free under MIT in June 2025. On paper it is capable: Stripe, PayPal and invoice payments, tax by location and product type, shipping zones, four discount types, inventory with back-orders, refunds and digital downloads. The caution is maintenance. Its own published known-bugs list still says the admin interface is broken in the new admin theme, meaning ProcessWire 3.0.248 or newer, and the repository's last commit is reported as February 2026.

Takeaway: PayPal support is a genuine point for ProcessWire Commerce. A published bug list naming the current admin theme is a genuine point against.

ProMailer, at $149 for the Developer edition, does the composing well. Lists with double opt-in, custom subscriber fields, CSV import and export, dynamic lists built from matching ProcessWire pages or users, campaigns written as pages or pulled from any URL, and throttled sending. The documentation then states plainly that it does not currently manage email analytics or tracking, and it ships no sending infrastructure at all. Deliverability is a job you inherit.

Takeaway: If reporting matters, verify ProMailer’s current tracking support and the reports offered by your sending service.

ProcessWire core ships no meta management, no OpenGraph, no sitemap, no redirect manager and no keyword tooling. You choose between SeoMaestro, the older MarkupSEO, or the newer SeoNeo, and a sitemap module is also bundled inside ProDevTools at $149. SeoMaestro in particular is good, with per-page meta, canonical, OpenGraph, structured data and a live preview. It is still a decision, an install and a thing to keep current.

Takeaway: Community writing has questioned whether the long-standing free SEO modules have kept pace with canonical and pagination handling, which is a risk you carry when the basics are bolted on.

ProcessWire does not appear to offer any first-party managed hosting, so the server is yours. The documented requirements are Apache with mod_rewrite and .htaccess support, PHP 7.1 or newer with 8.x recommended, MySQL 5.6 or a MariaDB equivalent, PDO, and GD2 or ImageMagick. Nginx is notably not listed among supported web servers. Security patching, core upgrades, backups and uptime stay with you permanently.

Takeaway: Free software plus a server you administer is a running cost measured in attention, not in invoices.

Ownership is real here and worth stating without hedging. The core is MPL 2.0, some files MIT, on your server and your database. You can read it, fork it, audit it, move hosts and keep running a given version for as long as you like. No plan can be withdrawn under a client site. Support is the community forum, a private product board for a year with each Pro module, and paid time with the lead developer listed on the store.

Takeaway: ProcessWire wins ownership outright, and its support is a forum plus paid time with the lead developer when he is available.