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Move fast on solid ground.

ApostropheCMS propels teams and their AI agents along a well-lit path through building, managing, and evolving modern content experiences. Start with a complete CMS foundation and built-in guidance that helps you maintain quality and control as the pace of work increases.
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The Hotel

Welcome to The Hotel

A place truly worth staying.

Rooms, suites, and villas designed for rest. Dining worth booking. A team that anticipates before you ask.

4.9 out of 5 — Booking.com

A trusted open source foundation for everything you build next

ApostropheCMS gives you the fundamentals a modern content platform should already have — editing, workflow, permissions, localization, media, APIs, and more — while leaving your team free to shape the architecture, integrations, and product experience around what makes you different.

  • 01 Extend

Flexible by design

Use Apostrophe as a traditional or headless CMS, pair it with Astro or built-in JSX templates, connect your own systems, and extend the platform without fighting the core.

Integrate live data from your own systems.

Render it in Astro or Standalone Apostrophe (no separate frontend required).

--- // frontend/src/widgets/ProductWidget.astro const { widget } = Astro.props; const res = await fetch( `https://shop.example.com/api/${widget.sku}` ); const product = await res.json(); --- <section class="product"> <h2>{product.name}</h2> <p>{product.price}</p> </section>

Extend the core

Apostrophe's checks run first, then your own rule

javascript
// backend/modules/product-widget/index.js const SHOP = 'https://shop.example.com/api/'; ​ export default { extend: '@apostrophecms/widget-type', fields: { add: { sku: { type: 'string', label: 'SKU' } } }, extendMethods(self) { return { async sanitize(_super, ...args) { const widget = await _super(...args); // Your rule, on top of the core's checks const res = await fetch(SHOP + widget.sku); if (!res.ok) { throw self.apos.error('invalid', 'Unknown SKU'); } return widget; } }; } };
  • 02 Edit

True in-context visual editing

Let editors work directly on the page, using intentional components and configurable guardrails that keep the experience consistent and on-brand.

  • 03 Govern

Built-in workflow and content governance

Control who can do what, keep pages within your design system, and track changes with permissions, workflow, localization, and version history built in.

Version control, AI editing changes, and permissions screenshots

Bring your own frontend framework.

ApostropheCMS works naturally with Astro, letting your team build with React, Vue, Svelte, Solid, or the frontend technologies that best fit the project. For simpler builds, Nunjucks and JSX templating are built in.

Astro and ApostropheCMS logos

Michelin runs on ApostropheCMS + Astro

Michelin relies on ApostropheCMS to build, update, and manage websites around the globe. Their adoption of Astro helped inspire the official Astro integration that's now maintained as part of ApostropheCMS.

350

High-traffic websites

8

Brands

9

Business lines

36

Languages

“ApostropheCMS’s visual editor continues to provide a user-friendly interface, enabling non-technical teams to manage content effectively without interfering with the headless architecture. Additionally, its structured content model enhances localization and facilitates efficient multi-brand content governance.”

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Clément Ravier

CTO, Consumer eXperience Factory

Read about Michelin's move to ApostropheCMS (opens in new tab)

Built to hold up in the real world.

Michelin Logo (Just Text that says Michelin)

Enterprise multisite without rebuilding the platform

Michelin uses ApostropheCMS to support modern web experiences with a platform that gives developers flexibility while providing editors with an intuitive publishing experience.

Read the case study
color bw logo

An Astro CMS with true in-context editing

Color paired Astro's static architecture with ApostropheCMS's true in-context editing, giving marketers an exceptional editing experience without sacrificing the performance and flexibility of static builds.

Learn more about Color
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Creative freedom within a developer-defined design system

Alt Studios used ApostropheCMS to help Toyota Racing editors create engaging content while maintaining a consistent brand experience through reusable components and developer-defined guardrails.

Read the case study
icims logo bw

Multitenant websites customers can manage themselves

iCIMS powers customer-managed career sites with ApostropheCMS, giving organizations control over their own content while managing a large-scale platform from a single application.

Read the case study

What a solid CMS foundation makes possible

"The implementation has dramatically reduced change implementation time from days or weeks to just minutes, significantly improving operational efficiency. Customers now have unprecedented control with real-time management capabilities for their career sites."

Matteo Hernandez

Senior Product Manager

Read the iCIMS case study (opens in new tab)

Common questions about ApostropheCMS

ApostropheCMS is an open source headless CMS for JavaScript teams. It pairs a code-first architecture with in-context visual editing. Teams get a flexible backend framework and an editing experience their editors will actually use, without choosing between the two.

Yes, ApostropheCMS is open source under the MIT license: no usage limits, no vendor lock-in, no surprise bills. You own your code and your data. For teams that want to go further, Apostrophe Pro includes advanced tools for permissions, SEO, AI translation and more.

And if you're delivering websites to your own customers (each with their own isolated site) Apostrophe Assembly scales the whole thing into a multitenant platform built for exactly that. Assembly

But the foundation is free and open source, and it always will be.

You'll run one command, follow the prompts, and you'll have a working local project in a few minutes. Our Astro starter kit is the fastest path to a production-ready site with visual editing built in.

ApostropheCMS is the only open source CMS that combines true in-context visual editing with Astro. Apostrophe and Astro connect through the official @apostrophecms/apostrophe-astro integration package. Apostrophe handles content management, URL routing, and content delivery. Astro handles page rendering using whatever frontend components you prefer. The result is true in-context, click-to-edit on the live site.

Editor happiness is a core product principle, and we think happiness often comes down to empowerment and expectations. ApostropheCMS's editing interface is visual and in-context: your editors work on the live page, not a separate dashboard. And we regularly release additional tools that give editors the power to create on their own. Our thought is the more they can do, the more time developers have to focus on extending the CMS as needed.

Yes. ApostropheCMS can be self-hosted on your own infrastructure, deployed to any Node.js-compatible hosting provider, or run on our managed cloud. You own your data and your deployment, no platform dependency required.

ApostropheCMS is built for JavaScript developers and teams who need a CMS that works for both developers and content editors. It's particularly well suited for teams building with Astro (optional), managing content across multiple sites or locales, building custom digital experiences where off-the-shelf CMS behavior just isn't enough, or delivering websites to their own customers at scale.