WordPress may be the largest publishing platform and CMS out there, but it's not the only one. Even though more bloggers and companies prefer WordPress over any other platform or CMS, it can be helpful to know what the alternatives are. Here are some of the other choices out there competing with WordPress.
<h2>Ghost</h2>
<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-8028" src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Ghost.png" alt="Ghost" width="424" height="160" />

With WordPress going in a bit of a direction away from blogging as the core, some users felt it was necessary to create a blogging software. This is how <a href="https://ghost.org/">Ghost</a> came about. It's a NodeJS based software entirely focused on blogging.
<h2>Drupal</h2>
<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-8029" src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Drupal.png" alt="Drupal" width="329" height="267" />

A very popular CMS most know about is <a href="https://www.drupal.org/">Drupal</a>. It has a larger user base than many other alternatives with about 2.1% of the websites on the internet using it. These include The Economist, The White House and the State of Georgia.

Drupal provides modules and themes much like WordPress does, but the software is a bit different. It's supported by most web hosts and comes free with nearly all good web hosting packages.
<h2>CMS Made Simple</h2>
<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-8030" src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/CMSMadeSimple.png" alt="CMS Made Simple" width="476" height="281" />

This open source CMS provides similar features to both Drupal and WordPress. It even uses MySQL and is written in PHP. There is a free support community and the CMS provides modules and themes, as well.

<a href="//www.cmsmadesimple.org/">CMS Made Simple</a> doesn't have a huge user base, but they do provide plenty of built-in features. Users can also extend these features.
<h2>Joomla</h2>
<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-8031" src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Joomla.png" alt="Joomla" width="439" height="318" />

Another very popular and well-known choices for your CMS needs, <a href="http://www.joomla.org/">Joomla</a> provides a large community of developers and users. This CMS uses templates and extensions. It's readily available with many hosting packages and provides one of the easiest platforms to run on just about any web hosting package.
<h2>Medium</h2>
<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-8032" src="https://itxdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Medium.png" alt="Medium" width="726" height="311" />

A publishing platform gaining plenty of popularity, <a href="https://medium.com/">Medium</a> is different than WordPress in many ways. This is not a CMS, but instead a publishing platform with a focus on community and blogging. It's goal is to connect ideas, stories and people.

This platform provides a clutter-free area for writing posts and a clutter-free area for reading posts. It shows up well on all devices. However, there are no themes or plugins and instead of comments, there are in-line notes and responses.

Other alternatives to WordPress include:
<ul>
	<li><a href="http://jekyllrb.com/">Jekyll </a></li>
	<li><a href="https://www.tumblr.com/">Tumblr </a></li>
	<li><a href="http://www.squarespace.com/">SquareSpace </a></li>
	<li><a href="http://www.weebly.com/">Weebly </a></li>
	<li><a href="https://sites.google.com/"> Google Sites </a></li>
	<li><a href="http://www.shopify.com/">Shopify </a></li>
	<li><a href="http://statamic.com/">Statamic </a></li>
</ul>
Regardless of the alternatives, WordPress is still the most popular and widely used CMS or publishing platform in the world.