SHSelfHostIndex

Joomla vs Squidex

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted content management systems options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
JO Joomla Versatile CMS balancing power and ease of use VS SQ Squidex Headless CMS, based on MongoDB, CQRS and Event Sourcing
FeatureJoomlaSquidex
CategoryContent Management SystemsContent Management Systems
LicenseGPL-2.0MIT
LanguagePHPC#
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM512 MB512 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metalbare-metal
GitHub stars★ 5,122★ 2,509
First released20052026
ReplacesWix, Squarespace—

Why pick each one

Choose Joomla if…

  • Good middle ground in flexibility
  • Multilingual without extra plugins
Joomla details

Choose Squidex if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • Active community (2.5k GitHub stars)
  • Written in C#
  • Lightweight — runs in 512 MB RAM
Squidex details

Frequently asked questions

Is Joomla or Squidex better?

Neither is universally better. Joomla has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are Joomla and Squidex free and open-source?

Yes. Joomla is licensed under GPL-2.0 and Squidex under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Joomla and Squidex with Docker?

Joomla: yes. Squidex: check the project docs for container support.

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