Hosted CMS or Open Source – What's the Difference?
First published in 2014, rewritten in 2026 so the advice holds today.
Anyone building or replatforming a website eventually hits the same question: do you go with an open source content management system or a hosted one? The terms get thrown around loosely, and the "right" answer depends far more on your team, budget and long-term plans than on which platform is currently fashionable.
What a content management system actually does
A CMS is the platform that lets one or more people access a library of content and control what gets published, where, and how it looks. Access can usually be granted at different levels for different users, which makes it practical for teams rather than just individuals. The whole point is to make building and running a website faster and less technical than writing code from scratch.
The split between open source and hosted is really about who controls the software, who pays for what, and how much technical responsibility sits with you rather than a provider.
Open source: free software, but not a free website
An open source CMS is software you can install and use without paying a licence fee. You (or your developer) usually need to arrange your own hosting, security updates and technical support separately, which is where the real cost of "free" software tends to show up.
- WordPress - started life as a blogging tool and is now used for everything from small business sites to large e-commerce stores via plugins such as WooCommerce. It remains the most widely used CMS in the world by a wide margin.
- Drupal - still used for complex, high-traffic or highly customised sites, particularly by organisations with in-house development resource. It demands more technical knowledge than WordPress and isn't a natural fit for teams without developer support.
- Joomla - was downloaded well over 35 million times in its heyday and is still maintained, but its market share has fallen a long way behind WordPress. Worth knowing if you inherit a site built on it, less often a sensible choice for a new build today.
- Alfresco - more accurately an enterprise content and document management platform than a website CMS in the WordPress or Drupal sense. It's used by larger organisations for managing internal content and records, not typically for building a public-facing e-commerce site.
The software itself costs nothing, but you'll still pay for hosting, a developer to build and maintain the site, security patching, and backups. Open source also gives you the flexibility to move hosts, customise code and integrate almost anything, which is why it remains the default choice for businesses with development budget and ambitious plans.
Hosted: software and hosting in one package
A hosted CMS bundles the platform with the hosting service, usually for a fixed monthly or annual fee. You get less flexibility in exchange for a much simpler setup and less to manage yourself.
Two of the platforms named in the original version of this piece, Vae and Webvanta, are no longer realistic options; both have effectively disappeared from the market. In their place, the hosted platforms UK businesses actually use today include:
- Shopify - the dominant hosted platform for e-commerce, with a large app ecosystem and hosting, security and PCI compliance handled for you.
- BigCommerce - a similar proposition to Shopify, often chosen for its built-in features and flexibility around checkout customisation.
- Squarespace - still a strong option for smaller business sites, portfolios and blogs where design and simplicity matter more than deep customisation.
- Wix - widely used for small business and marketing sites where speed of setup matters more than long-term scalability.
It's also worth knowing that "headless" CMS platforms such as Contentful and Sanity have become established since 2014. These separate the content management layer from the website's front end entirely, giving developers more flexibility to build custom experiences while still letting marketing teams manage content independently. This is a genuinely useful option for larger organisations, though overkill for most small and mid-sized sites.
Open source vs hosted: the practical comparison
| Factor | Open source | Hosted |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront software cost | Free | Included in subscription |
| Ongoing cost | Hosting, developer time, maintenance | Fixed monthly/annual fee |
| Technical control | High, full access to code | Limited to platform's features |
| Setup speed | Slower, needs development work | Fast, often self-service |
| Security and updates | Your responsibility | Handled by the provider |
Which one actually makes sense
Choosing between the two still comes down to what you're trying to achieve. A hosted platform gets you trading or publishing quickly with far less to manage, but you're working within someone else's constraints and paying an ongoing fee for the convenience. Open source gives you far more control and no licence cost, but that control only pays off if you have the development resource, budget or agency support to use it properly.
For most UK e-commerce businesses without an in-house development team, a hosted platform such as Shopify or BigCommerce is the sensible starting point. For businesses with specific technical requirements, complex integrations or ambitions that a hosted platform can't accommodate, open source software such as WordPress with WooCommerce, or Drupal for more complex builds, remains the stronger long-term choice.