halo-dev/halo

Halo is an open-source website-building tool that covers personal blogs, knowledge bases, company homepages, and online stores from one CMS. It suits people who want to own their site's content and deployment rather than rent a hosted blog platform.

What it does

Halo bundles content management with a theme-and-plugin ecosystem. The README states the community edition ships with more than 100 free themes and plugins, and the App Market lets developers publish and manage their own, so the site's look and features can be extended without forking the core. Content types beyond blog posts — knowledge-base and storefront scenarios are named — are presented as supported uses rather than separate products in the community edition.

How it works and how to try it

The project is a Java application distributed as a Docker image, and the maintainers point to an open-source Linux server panel, 1Panel, as the recommended way to handle reverse proxy, SSL certificates, upgrades, and backups. A documented one-line Docker command is explicitly labeled as an experience environment only, not the recommended production setup. An online demo (including an admin console) is provided with demo credentials for evaluation before installing anything Quick start and demo. Installation options and guidance are in the official docs installation guide.

Editions and licence

The repository is the free community edition under GPL-3.0, which matters if you plan to modify and redistribute it. A paid Professional edition adds a mobile app, AI-assisted site creation, phone-number login, fully private deployment, and paid themes/plugins; a Store edition layers on product, order, and payment handling with WeChat Pay and Alipay for Chinese merchants. The README links a separate comparison page for the editions edition comparison. Some capabilities people may associate with Halo — notably the mobile app and AI site generation — are documented only for the paid tiers, so check the comparison before assuming they are in the open-source build.

Constraints to weigh

Self-hosting means you own operations: the docs' recommended path assumes a Linux server and the 1Panel setup, and SSL, upgrades, and backups are part of that setup rather than built-in automation. The README does not describe migration or rollback behavior for upgrades, nor data formats for exporting content, so those should be confirmed in the documentation before committing. The README also does not state which Java versions or databases are supported; that belongs to the install docs.