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Orchard Core review

Open source, self-hosted

Reviewed by Eugene SuslovUpdated August 2026No affiliate links

Orchard Core is a modular application framework built on ASP.NET Core that ships a CMS on top of it. Multi-tenancy is a first-class feature, so one deployment can host many isolated sites, and a GraphQL API makes headless delivery straightforward.

It is BSD-3 licensed with no commercial edition, which makes it the most permissively licensed serious .NET option in this directory.

Who Orchard Core is for

.NET teams who want an open-source CMS with no licensing asterisk, especially where multi-tenancy matters.

Less suitable for marketing teams: the admin is developer-oriented.

Strengths and limits

What it does well

  • BSD-3 licensed with no commercial edition and no gated features.
  • Multi-tenancy is built in rather than bolted on, which is rare and genuinely useful for agencies.
  • Runs on SQL Server, Postgres, MySQL or SQLite, so it fits existing infrastructure.
  • It is a framework as much as a CMS, so it extends further than most.

Where it falls short

  • The admin interface is functional and developer-shaped rather than editorial.
  • Documentation is thorough but assumes .NET fluency.
  • Community is smaller than the JavaScript CMS ecosystems.
  • No hosted option at all.

Orchard Core pricing

Free under BSD-3 with no commercial edition, no hosted service and no feature gating. Costs are hosting and a database.

Verdict

The most permissively licensed serious .NET CMS here, and multi-tenancy makes it genuinely interesting for agencies on the Microsoft stack.

The editorial experience is the trade. Do not hand it to a marketing team and expect Storyblok.

Visit Orchard Core

Orchard Core FAQ

  • Is Orchard Core free?
    Yes, entirely. BSD-3 licensed with no commercial edition, no hosted service and no gated features. You pay only for hosting and a database.

This is an independent review. We have no affiliate relationship with Orchard Core, earn nothing if you sign up, and no vendor pays for placement in the directory. Prices were read from the vendor's own pages in August 2026 and change without notice.