Joomla!

What Joomla! is

Joomla! is a content management system for publishing websites, blogs and online applications. Its own site calls it "the only major CMS that is built entirely by volunteers from all over the world." It suits founders, freelancers and small organizations who want a free site they own and can extend, and developers or agencies who build sites for clients. The project is run by the not-for-profit Open Source Matters, Inc..

The first version was released in 2005, and the site says hundreds of developers have been improving it since. The current generation on the homepage is Joomla! 6, with Joomla 6.1.4 and 5.4.9 listed as the latest security and bugfix releases and Joomla! 6.2 in beta.

What you build and how

Joomla! is aimed at blogs and general websites first, and the homepage lists the traits it sells: search engine friendly, mobile friendly, unlimited design, multilingual, flexible and fully extensible, and multi-user permission levels. Each of those maps to something a site owner does day to day.

Publishing a blog or website. The About page says you can "launch a totally free and fully functional website in seconds and start publishing your content online immediately." That route is a free site on launch.joomla.org, where nothing needs installing. The homepage also carries buttons for a free site, a domain and a Speed Up Joomla! guide. If you would rather host it yourself, Joomla! is free and open under the GPL license, and the project's downloads portal has the latest version. The About page says that if you need help, the official forums and user guide are the places to go. The page does not describe the editor, the menus or the admin screens, so this entry does not either.

Design. The homepage says Joomla! has thousands of free extensions and templates "allowing you to customize your site to fit your specific needs," and it lists "Unlimited Design" among its benefits. The project's copyright line covers the software and its default templates, which means a fresh install ships with templates you can start from.

Extending it. For clients with unusual needs, the About page points to the Joomla! Extensions Directory, where thousands of extensions are available, most for free under the GPL license. For developers, it says the Joomla! Framework lets you build inventory control systems, data reporting tools, application bridges, custom product catalogs, integrated e-commerce systems, complex business directories, reservation systems and communication tools. Because Joomla! is based on PHP and MySQL, the page describes it as an open platform anyone can use, share and support. Developer documentation lives on manual.joomla.org. So a site that starts as a blog can grow into a directory or a booking tool through extensions or custom development, which is the main reason to choose a CMS of this kind over a hosted blog tool.

Websites for clients. The About page speaks to agencies directly: clients who need specialized functionality get it from extensions, and the page notes that clients can run their own sites themselves. The multi-user permission levels in the benefits list are what make that handover workable, since several people can hold different access to one site.

Languages. Joomla! lists "Multilingual" as a core benefit, and the homepage counts 76 languages, linked to a page of language packs. An international blog or a company site in several markets is a normal use.

Hosting and publishing. You choose where it runs. There is the free launch.joomla.org site, or your own host with the downloaded software. The project's partners page names hosting.de, which provides the CI setup for pull request and quality testing of the Joomla core, but the pages do not say that any hosting company is a recommended or official place to run your own site.

Who builds it. Behind the software is a large volunteer organization. The project has 6 departments, each with a leadership team, and those teams form the Board of Directors. The Volunteers Portal is where people join in, and the homepage invites readers to volunteer. The partners page lists companies that support the work. These include GitHub, where the project's teams maintain core code, and hCaptcha, a privacy-focused online security service. For a site owner this matters because the software is not tied to one vendor's roadmap.

The evidence from the pages

Price and license. The About page states "Joomla! is free, open, and available to anyone under the GPL license." The project page adds that the software and default templates are copyright 2005-now Open Source Matters, Inc., and that you may use, copy, modify or distribute Joomla! under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The pages list no paid plans. Extensions are mostly free, but "most" is the page's word, so some are not, and the pages give no price for any of those.

Size claims. The homepage publishes a row of figures from the project: 155+ million downloads, 10+ thousand extensions and templates, 2+ million websites, 1500+ volunteers, 550+ thousand lines of code and 76 languages. These are the project's own numbers, each linked to its source on a Joomla! domain such as downloads.joomla.org, extensions.joomla.org and showcase.joomla.org. Treat them as the project's claims, not audited counts.

Release cadence. The homepage lists Joomla 6.1.4 and 5.4.9 as security and bugfix releases for the 5.x and 6.x series, and Joomla! 6.2 Beta 3, announced on 15 September 2026, "for testing." Two supported series running side by side is useful to know if you maintain a long-lived site.

Community. The homepage lists upcoming events, including Joomla! User Group meetings and a Joomla Unconference Netherlands 2026 on 25 September 2026. It also runs the J!Awards, with voting open across 8 categories until 11 October 2026. Governance is by the Board of Directors of Open Source Matters, Inc., which the project page says provides the foundation to receive donations, develop partnerships, retain copyrights and trademarks and protect individual contributors from legal exposure.

What the pages do not say. They publish no security or compliance certifications, no uptime promise, no paid support plan and no price list. They do not describe the editor or the admin interface. If any of those matter, ask the project or a consultant before you commit.

Who it suits and who it does not

Joomla! suits a founder or small organization that wants a free, GPL-licensed site and is comfortable running it. It suits agencies that build many sites for clients and want a large pool of extensions, and developers who want to build a directory, a reservation system or a catalog on PHP and MySQL. It also suits anyone who likes that the software belongs to a nonprofit and a volunteer community rather than a single vendor.

The caveats are real. There is no vendor support desk on the pages, only forums, a user guide, the manual and the community, so a regulated enterprise that needs service-level agreements or a named certification should look elsewhere or add a consultant. You also own the work of keeping a self-hosted install updated, and the release list shows security fixes arriving regularly. And if what you want is a drag-and-drop builder with no code at all, the pages describe a CMS with a framework for developers, not a visual app builder, so expect to learn it. The free launch.joomla.org site is the lowest-risk way to find out.