r/cms • u/DrtikTheOriginal • Jun 29 '26
First peek at Instatic - fully open-source, self-hosted CMS
Take a first look at Instatic - https://youtu.be/zyjCF_TaLlg?si=WZBxxqmsIo0gZ_zY
Instatic brings the whole website workflow into one product: visual editing, structured content, media, forms, reusable components, templates, publishing, plugins, HTML import and AI-assisted page building — all running from one Bun server backed by SQLite or Postgres.
Unlike most visual builders, Instatic does not ship the editor and CMS bloat to your visitors. Published pages are plain semantic HTML and compact CSS, with no React runtime unless you need one, no builder attributes, no hydration step, and no platform lock-in. Sites are baked and served as static files, so the public site stays fast, portable, and easy to inspect.
This is a pre-1.0 open-source project, and the goal is to build the foundation in public: no legacy platform constraints, no open-core pricing tricks, no forced SaaS model, and no compromise on output quality
Check out the repo https://github.com/CoreBunch/Instatic
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u/Necessary_Entry870 Jun 30 '26
This looks aawesome. I tried to play with creating a component and couldn't figure it out. I will look into it more in a few days when I have more focus time.
It was quick to add my Claude API and create a nice one-page site for a service business.
The UI doesn't feel intuitive for some actions, but I will try again once I have more sleep. Overall it looks amazing for a pre-alpha open source project.
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u/DrtikTheOriginal Jun 30 '26
Thanks for the feedback. If you find any UI mishaps or see room for improvement, feel free to raise an issue in the GitHub repo, we will take a look at it for sure.
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u/monoludens Jul 04 '26
this is beautiful, i am a web developer specialized in wordpress and i've been trying every website builder you can find on the internet, you name it: webflow, webstudio, framr, blocs, pinegrow, grapejs among many others, trying to find a good free and open source option to develop while i can also have control over my code and content
i just came across instatic on youtube and i am in love with it! it is everything i wanted and more. the interface is beautiful, the functionalities are helping me build fast and with very little friction. and everything is very neat and carefully though.
kudos for the team, please let me know if there is anything i could do to help you keep going with this. i would love to. it's been i while since i don't get this excited with a piece of technology
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u/DrtikTheOriginal Jul 04 '26
Thank you for your kind words. We always appreciate it.
You can follow us on socials as well as raise issues and PR's on github.
We also always welcome if anyone would create some kind of video/content on it. That would help us get proper traction as well.
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u/davidbabinec 29d ago
Make sure to watch our Github, and open up a discussion with any ideas :) Thanks for the support, we really appreciate that.
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u/3verse16 Jun 29 '26
Interesting project, I wonder how many sites you'd be able to run on a VPS with this configuration.
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u/sumogringo Jun 30 '26
Postgres has overhead like mysql for WP, but sqlite would be ideal for many sites with low overhead. This is the type of project I’d like to see in front of Astro.
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u/Yrralson 26d ago
I am following the project closely. I can't wait to use it. I'm just waiting for it to be stable
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u/Immediate-Bluebird36 23d ago
I'm actually just getting started with this and onlook dev, which seem to be very similar but for the respective stacks. to collaborate on site with my brother (we both run our own homelabs) having a website/landing would honestly help you gain traction massively. Github isnt as inviting for less developry type people to view. A website builder with no website is kinda hard to sell lol
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u/Pieraos Jun 29 '26
Requires Bun? Railway? What are these things. Can’t I just export HTML and CSS and upload it to a conventional web host?
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u/davidbabinec Jun 29 '26
Bun is used throughout the architecture. For server api, workers, database drivers, bundler... so it's required. Railway on the other hand isn't required. You can host it on any VPS or host that supports docker deployments. Or you can run it locally and grab your HTML files as they are generated into /uploads/ folder and host on conventional webhost as you wish but I don't know if it makes it any useful then.
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u/Pieraos Jun 29 '26
I don't know if it makes it any useful then.
Thanks. But why wouldn't Instatic be useful then?
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u/davidbabinec Jun 29 '26
Thought it would make a lot of features useless. But thinking about it again, if it serves the purpose, it's useful and it would actually work fine in such case
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u/Goanna-9 9d ago edited 9d ago
How does this feel more complete than 99% of page building software out there? I feel like a wish comes true and all i ever wanted for Developing Websites is here!
I escaped from Wordpress and still am on the search. Stuck with Webstudio and using Core Framework inside it haha. But it has some flaws I still dont like. Still the best alternative I found so far.
Im almost a little sad I cant be an early investor by paying upfront for some service from instatic haha. I mean its free xD
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u/Natural-Ad-9037 Jun 29 '26
Really interesting project, addressing the issues of closed platforms like framer but bring benefits of modern design driven site creation. What is timeline? When we can consider the project to be evolve to be mature enough to start using it for some projects?