Liferay

Liferay offers both a free Community Edition under an open-source license and a paid Enterprise Edition called Liferay DXP, which includes additional features, technical support, and enterprise-grade capabilities. The Community Edition is available without licensing fees, making it accessible for smaller projects. Many organizations start with the Community Edition before upgrading to the paid subscription for production deployments requiring vendor support.

Liferay is built on Java and runs on the Java EE (now Jakarta EE) technology stack. It can be extended using portlets, themes, and custom modules developed in Java, and provides REST and GraphQL APIs for headless content delivery. This architecture allows integration with modern front-end frameworks such as React, Angular, or Vue for decoupled applications.

Yes, Liferay can be deployed as a headless CMS, serving content and data through REST and GraphQL APIs to front-end applications built with frameworks like React, Angular, or Vue. This allows developers to use Liferay's content management and portal capabilities on the back end while maintaining full control over the user interface. The headless approach is increasingly popular for multi-channel digital experiences.

Liferay is designed specifically for complex enterprise portals, intranets, and applications requiring deep integration with backend systems and user management at scale, whereas WordPress is more popular for content-driven websites and marketing pages. Liferay's Java foundation and portlet architecture make it more appropriate for large-scale, multi-site enterprise deployments. WordPress, built on PHP, is typically easier to deploy for simpler sites but lacks the native portal functionality that Liferay provides.