What is Sveltia CMS?

Sveltia CMS is a free, open source, Git-based headless content management system (CMS) designed for modern web development using Jamstack. It aims to offer an excellent user experience (UX) for content editors and a great developer experience (DX) for web developers.

Sveltia CMS was specifically built as a successor to Netlify CMS (now Decap CMS), addressing its shortcomings and adding many new features, while maintaining compatibility with its configuration format, API and workflow. Migrating from Netlify/Decap CMS to Sveltia CMS is straightforward and requires minimal changes.

Try Sveltia CMS today and experience a fast, flexible, and user-friendly CMS that empowers you to manage your content with ease.

Highlights

While there are numerous CMS options available in the market, Sveltia CMS stands out due to its unique combination of features, architecture, performance, and user experience.

The unique selling points of Sveltia CMS include:

Git-Based

Content is stored in your Git repository, giving you full control, complete version history, and collaboration capabilities. No database is required. Every change is auditable.

Headless

Decoupled from the frontend, allowing you to use any static site generator (SSG) or frontend framework of your choice. Deploy anywhere. Perfect for Jamstack architecture.

Lightweight

It’s a single-page application (SPA) with less than 500 KB (minified + brotlied) for the entire CMS application, yet packed with many powerful features. A low-carbon footprint CMS.

High Performance

Built with the Svelte framework, Lexical editor, efficient GraphQL APIs, smart caching strategies, and lazy loading to ensure a fast and responsive user experience.

Maintenance-Free

The CMS is a small JavaScript bundle served via a content delivery network (CDN) and runs entirely in the browser. Always up-to-date. No build tools, servers, or maintenance required.

Not SaaS

It’s not a service but a client-side application, giving you full control over your data. Your content never leaves your Git repository. NPM package is available for self-hosting.

Modern UX

An intuitive, user-friendly, and accessible UI for content editors, including mobile and tablet support, dark mode, keyboard shortcuts, drag-and-drop uploads, and more.

Excellent DX

Developer experience is a top priority, with comprehensive documentation, JSON schema for configuration, TypeScript support, AI tools support, and local repository workflow.

Generic-Purpose

Designed to handle a wide range of content types and use cases, making it suitable for various projects — from blogs and portfolios to catalogs and knowledge bases.

No Vendor Lock-In

Supports multiple Git backends, and it’s framework-agnostic and platform-agnostic. Bring your favorite tech stack and hosting provider, or deploy to your own server.

First-Class I18n Support

Built-in support for multiple languages and locales, making it easy to create multilingual websites. Translate content with one-click using AI integrations.

Powerful Asset Management

A built-in digital asset management (DAM) system for uploading and managing media files. Integrates with external storage and stock photo providers.

Open Source

Available under the permissive MIT license, allowing modification and commercial use. Fully transparent development process on GitHub. Free of charge, forever.

Privacy Focused

We don’t collect any user data. All operations happen directly between your browser and your Git backend. API keys are stored only in the browser’s local storage.

Active Development

Regular updates and improvements, with a focus on addressing user feedback and issues. Bug fixes typically released within 24 hours, and new features added frequently.

Use Cases

Sveltia CMS is a generic-purpose content management system. It can be used in various scenarios, including:

• Community and organization sites
• Blogs and news sites
• Marketing sites
• Documentation sites
• Portfolios
• Product catalogs
• Event listings
• Member directories
• Knowledge bases
• Glossaries

Take a look at the Showcase page for real-world examples of websites using Sveltia CMS across different industries and purposes.

Scalability

There are no hard limits on the amount of content or number of users you can have with Sveltia CMS. However, performance may vary depending on the size of your Git repository and the capabilities of your Git service provider. Among the supported Git backends, GitHub generally offers the best performance and reliability due to its robust infrastructure and API rate limits.

Sveltia CMS (and Git-based CMSs in general) is best suited for small to medium-sized projects. For large projects that involve thousands of entries and assets, consider using a more robust CMS solution designed for enterprise use cases.

Framework Agnosticism

Sveltia CMS is typically used to generate data that is then consumed by a frontend framework to build websites or applications. It’s framework-agnostic, meaning it simply reads and writes data files without interacting with your chosen framework.

Its use cases extend beyond traditional web projects. For example, it can manage a JSON data catalog consumed by mobile apps or other software, where a framework isn’t needed. Similarly, simple websites can eliminate the need for frameworks by fetching a generated JSON file directly from a web page with JavaScript. Our Showcase includes examples of such no-framework implementations.

At its core, Sveltia CMS is a simple NoSQL database management system that uses Git repositories as its data store. This design makes it highly flexible and adaptable to various content management needs, whether you’re building with or without a frontend framework.

Target Audience

Git-based headless CMSs like Sveltia CMS are part of the larger Jamstack ecosystem. Setting up the CMS requires broad technical knowledge, such as familiarity with Git workflow, framework integration and CI/CD pipelines. Therefore, it’s primarily targeted at intermediate to senior web developers who have the necessary skills.

The CMS also serves small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), nonprofit organizations, and agencies that have access to engineering resources for initial setup and ongoing maintenance, and that need a cost-effective, flexible, and powerful CMS solution without vendor lock-in.

Once set up by developers, CMS end-users, such as content editors and marketers, don’t need any technical knowledge to use the application for content editing and management. The CMS hides all technical complexities behind a user-friendly interface.

Users require a Git service account

Currently, Sveltia CMS does not have a built-in user authentication system. Instead, it relies on the Git backend for user authentication and access control. This means that users need to have an account with the chosen Git service provider (e.g. GitHub) to access the CMS, though they don’t need to know Git itself or how to use the service. We plan to add better authentication methods in future releases to accommodate users without Git service accounts.

We don’t recommend Sveltia CMS for non-technical users or junior developers. It’s also not suitable for large enterprises that require advanced features, dedicated support, or compliance certifications, or for those who prefer fully managed SaaS solutions.

Why Choose Sveltia CMS?

If you’re specifically looking for a free, open source, Git-based headless CMS, your options are limited. Actively maintained, framework-agnostic offerings are especially rare, leaving Tina and Sveltia CMS as the primary choices.

Tina is a commercial entity that mainly caters to large-scale Next.js projects. In contrast, Sveltia CMS is a community-driven project that prioritizes excellent UX and DX for small to medium-sized projects using any framework.

It’s also a successor to Netlify CMS (now Decap CMS), which has been widely used in the Jamstack community for years. Trying Sveltia CMS is a no-brainer if you’re looking for a modern, powerful, and user-friendly alternative to Netlify/Decap CMS.

Need i18n support? Sveltia CMS is the only option that offers first-class multilingual content management capabilities right out of the box.

Who’s Using Sveltia CMS?

While there is no way to track all Sveltia CMS users due to its open source nature, we have seen a growing number of websites adopting Sveltia CMS since its launch. GitHub search suggests our product is already being used by hundreds of projects, including personal blogs, community sites, institutional sites, and small business sites.

See the Showcase page for some notable projects we have discovered so far. Many more are likely out there that we haven’t found yet!

Try It Online

A live demo site is planned for the 1.0 release in early 2026.

Project Goals

• Making Sveltia CMS a viable, definitive successor to Netlify CMS
• Empowering SMBs and individuals who need a free, yet powerful, high-quality CMS solution
• Emerging as the leading open source offering in the Git-based CMS market
• Extending its capabilities as digital asset management (DAM) software
• Showcasing the power of Svelte and UX engineering

Project Status

Sveltia CMS is currently in beta, with version 1.0 (GA) scheduled for release in early 2026. Check our release notes and follow us on Bluesky for updates. See also our roadmap.

This is currently a personal project maintained by a single developer. While we strive to provide timely support and updates, please understand that response times may vary.

About the Author

Sveltia CMS is created and maintained by Kohei Yoshino, a seasoned UX engineer based in Toronto, Canada. With over 20 years of experience in web development and open source, Kohei is passionate about building tools that improve people’s lives.

As a generalist who loves code, design, marketing, localization, documentation and everything in between, Kohei brings a unique perspective to software development. He is dedicated to creating high-quality, user-centric products that solve real-world problems.

Sveltia CMS is Kohei’s flagship open source project originally built for his own clients, and he is committed to its long-term success and growth. You’re in good hands — Expect constant improvements to the UX and DX across the platform.

Related Links

• Introducing Sveltia CMS: a short technical presentation by @kyoshino during the This Week in Svelte online meetup on March 31, 2023 — recording & slides

As seen on

• LogRocket Blog – 9 best Git-based CMS platforms for your next project
• Jamstack – Headless CMS
• Hugo – Front-end interfaces
• Made with Svelte

Acknowledgements

This project would not have been possible without the Netlify CMS open source project. We are grateful to the maintainers for their hard work over the years. We would also like to thank the Sveltia CMS user community for their valuable feedback and ongoing support, which has helped us to identify issues and improve the product.