A small CMS for people who build lots of small websites.
Upload a ZIP, open a page, answer four questions. Fifteen minutes later you have a multilingual site that looks designed. No shell, no Composer, no build step.
What a visitor's browser gets
- 0
- cookies
- 0 ms
- blocking time
- 4
- small scripts, at most
- 100
- on PageSpeed on a computer, 99 on a phone
The handful of things a small site needs
No cookie banner
Boxlet CMS sets no cookies for visitors, so in the usual case there's nothing to ask consent for.
Fast without trying
Next to no JavaScript and a page cache. 100 on PageSpeed on a computer, 99 on a phone.
Languages, translated by AI
Each language gets its own addresses. Claude can translate a whole site into a new one, menus and forms included.
Statistics on your own server
Visits are counted by the site itself. No script on the page, nothing sent anywhere, and nobody followed from one day to the next.
An admin that's nice to be in
Light or dark, ⌘K to find anything, and an overview of what needs your attention. It never takes on the site's colours, so a bad colour can't lock you out.
Translate a whole site with AI
Tick the pages, choose a language, tick and translate with AI. Claude writes each page into its draft in that language: the words, the title and address, what search engines read, the pictures' descriptions, the forms and the language's own menu. You read it, then publish.
The demo's 14 pages went into Croatian this way with Claude Opus 5.5, menu, pictures and forms included, for about 30 cents.
Updates that can't break your site
Updating is one press in the admin, and it never touches what you made. Boxlet backs up the whole site first, checks the new version against the checksum GitHub publishes, and replaces only its own code: your pages, pictures, settings, designs and your own lines in .htaccess stay exactly as they are. While it runs, visitors see a short note in the site's language, and it goes in steps that suit cheap shared hosting.
If something is wrong afterwards, Roll back puts the previous version back, together with the site as it was before the update.
What it won't be
Not a blogging platform, not a shop, not a drag-anywhere page builder, and not a plugin marketplace. One administrator, no user accounts. It's boring where boring is good, and puts its effort into making sites look right.
Runs where your sites already live
Boxlet CMS is a self-hosted PHP CMS for ordinary shared hosting: PHP 8.1 or newer, MySQL, MariaDB or SQLite, and Apache or nginx. You don't need SSH, Composer, Node or a build step.
Upload one ZIP over FTP or your host's file manager and open install.php. The installer checks the server before it changes anything, sets up the database and writes its own settings. On cPanel the files go straight into public_html. How to install
Questions people ask first
Is Boxlet CMS free?
Yes. It's open source under the MIT licence. There's no paid edition and no account to sign up for.
Do I need SSH or Composer?
No. Everything Boxlet runs on is in the ZIP, its libraries included. FTP and a browser are enough.
Will it run on my hosting?
If the host has PHP 8.1 and MySQL, MariaDB or SQLite, almost certainly. The installer checks first and names anything that's missing.
How is it different from WordPress?
WordPress can be made into anything, with plugins. Boxlet does what a small site needs, built in: design, pages, pictures, languages, forms, statistics and SEO. Boxlet vs WordPress
Can AI translate my site?
Yes, with your own Anthropic API key: one page or the whole site, into drafts you read before they go live. Translating the demo's 14 pages into Croatian, with its menu, picture descriptions and forms, cost about 30 cents. How it works
What happens when I update?
Nothing you made is touched. Boxlet backs up the whole site, checks the release against the checksum GitHub publishes, puts its new code in place and makes its database changes. If anything is wrong afterwards, one press of Roll back puts it all back as it was. Updating
Does my site need a cookie banner?
Boxlet sets no cookies for visitors, so usually not. A website without a cookie banner
Can I move an existing site to Boxlet?
There's no importer: pages are written in Boxlet's editor. The old site's addresses can be sent to the new pages with redirects, each with a count of how often it's used.