Some modern CMSs listed below. Some are paid, some are open source. Mostly PHP but without the baggage of older CMSs like Drupal:

- CraftCMS (PHP): https://craftcms.com/

- Kirby (PHP): https://getkirby.com/

- Statamic (PHP): https://statamic.com/

- October (PHP, Open Source): https://octobercms.com/

- Bolt (PHP, Open Source): https://boltcms.io/

- Wagtail (Python, Open Source): https://wagtail.io/

I enjoy building with Wagtail, especially with some of the more recent updates have greatly improved the UX. You can build new components in React if you want and it’s incredibly extensible.

The main pain point that drives me nuts is the page tree structure. For Wordpress users, the custom post type capability is extremely valuable but it really does not fit well at all into Wagtail.

Craft cms is great and very actively developed. Clean, fast, powerful, a pleasure to work with.

I’m a big fan of Kirby. It’s not open licensed but the source code is available. Very easy to setup and run.

Never heard of it, thanks

Strapi has been OK. Love the idea but execution is not up to par IMO. I think it will continue to get better, but they just switched to a paid model, so meh (sorry Strapi). Contentful looks good albeit expensive.

I personally love the simplicity and stability of Jekyll + git + good organization.

You can’t go wrong with a Wordpress API sitting behind a whitelisted VPN with a single GraphQL resource exposed to plug into your clients. They’ve done a good job of modernizing their platform IMO, and you get the added benefit of almost every editor/writer/marketer already being familiar with the WP dashboard UX.

Wow strapi looks really good! And the pricing is totally fine

Nice glad it fits your case! It’s solid, we have been using it for a while with no issues on the eng side - only issues on the marketing side mainly around ecosystem and WSIWYG customization.

How did you handle the issues from your marketing people if i may ask?

Guess i'll have to give Wordpress another chance then, thanks

Who is your audience?

Having migrated from WP to Jekyll only to go back in the last ten years, I learned Wordpress (and Drupal, etc ) exist for a reason. They’re well understood by a large community of non technical marketing, PR, and other content professionals. So in the end if it’s more than for your own blog or a handful of devs, “modern tech stack” isn’t the main consideration.

Not to dissuade you—I’m curious myself if there are more modern WP competitors out there to help the non technical audience.

This is my main concern, for myself a bunch of markdown files in git is enough of a CMS. But having a modern CMS that is also usable by editors would be really nice.