What CMS do news sites use? Sourced examples from publishers

Choosing a CMS is easier when you know what comparable publishers run. The hard part is finding reliable evidence. Tools that guess a site’s technology from its page source are often wrong, and vendor logo walls rarely say what the logo is used for. This page takes a stricter route. Every example below comes from a page by the vendor or the publisher that names the CMS, and each row links to it.

Which publishers run which CMS?

All pages were opened on 2026-10-10. A listing can go out of date, so confirm on the publisher’s current site if it matters to your decision.

What does the list show?

Three patterns stand out, though the sample is small and chosen by vendors, so it says nothing about market share.

Large news brands and managed WordPress

Five of the examples come from one vendor’s case studies. WordPress VIP, the managed hosting and support service named in them, is built around WordPress, and the publishers listed range from a news magazine to a research organisation. Several of them describe migrations, not greenfield builds. For a large team, the pattern is a mainstream open-source CMS with a vendor handling hosting and scale. Our WordPress profile covers the product itself.

Digital-native media and a structured content platform

Morning Brew’s story describes a content platform built on Sanity that serves 13 brands and several internal tools. That is an example of the headless approach explained in What is a CMS?: content stored as structured data, with custom applications for editors, ad operations and partners. It also shows the cost. Building those tools takes engineers, and the story says six of them run the operation. See the Sanity profile.

Developer-friendly systems at newsrooms

Statamic’s showcase lists DER SPIEGEL and TV2 among sites built with it, with the builder credited as the publisher’s own technology team in each case. It is a reminder that some newsrooms prefer to build on a flexible system with in-house developers. See the Statamic profile.

Independent publications on Ghost

Ghost’s Explore page lists independent publications that run on it. The ones we picked are news and culture titles. See the Ghost profile.

How should you use examples like these?

Treat them as a way to build a shortlist and a list of questions.

1. Look at the publisher’s size and team. A system that works for a 100-person newsroom with an engineering department may not suit two editors.
2. Check the type. Managed WordPress, a headless platform and a hosted newsletter tool are different products with different costs.
3. Ask for the full picture. A case study is written to promote the product. It rarely mentions what went wrong or what the publisher pays.
4. Run your own trial. Follow our trial guide with your content and editors.
5. Read critically. How to read CMS reviews covers the questions to ask of vendor-written pages.

What did we leave out?

We left out publishers where the only evidence is a technology-detection tool, a logo wall without a statement of use, or a case study that does not say what the publisher runs. For example, vendor case studies for two other publishers sat on pages that discuss analytics, not the publishing platform, so we did not list them. The directory of CMS profiles has more on each product, and our comparison pages put them side by side.