Is Joomla Free?

We often get the following call:

Customer: “Hi”
We: “Hi there, how can we serve you?”
Customer: “I was told that Joomla is an excellent CMS and I want to use it, but I want to know first if it’s free or not”
We: “It’s free sir!”

Then the conversation goes on, and we are asked more questions, such as “Why is it free?”, and “What’s in it for those who developed Joomla”, etc…

So, to officially answer the main question of this post, and in layman terms, Joomla is free. However, in technical terms, Joomla is licensed to be used for free, so you do not own Joomla as a product, but you have a license to use Joomla for your website for free, since Joomla is released under the GNU General Public License. A GNU GPL grants you the permission to use/modify the Joomla software for free, but if you want to release the software to the public after modifying it, then you should release it under the same license, and you should also leave the credits in the source code at all time. Let us stress the point that the software is free and must remain free, and not your website, which means that even if you’re using Joomla, your website doesn’t necessarily have to be free (which means you can charge your visitors money for just visiting your website or reading your content if you want – it’s your website, after all).

Now, why is Joomla free?

Joomla is free because it was forked out of Mambo, which was also a free CMS. But why was Mambo a free CMS? Well, because the developers behind it believed in open source and its centric contribution to the information age (and so do current Joomla creators).

But what’s in it for those who created Joomla

As stated above, Joomla creators believe in open source, so there’s a sense of satisfaction because they are giving back to the community. However, the benefits for being part of this project are not only moral… Imagine that you’re someone who worked on Joomla, a CMS platform that powers over 1% of all the websites in the world, imagine the amount of consultancy work you will have… Also imagine the prestige and the industry recognition that will be bestowed upon you. So it’s really worth it for the Joomla creators.

Now if you want to know whether Joomla is free or not because you want to install it, and if you need help installing it, then you can contact us. We’re here to help 24/7/365 (well, 366 if it’s a leap year!).