The quiet passing of the Icelandic content management systems

Reflections on Content Management Systems, Part 1 of 2

For a quarter of a century, Icelandic websites have largely relied on bespoke, locally built content management systems. LiSA by Advania, launched in 1997, Eplica by Hugsmiðjan in 2001, and Moya by Stefna in 2003, along with several others, served hundreds of businesses and institutions for years. This era is now quietly drawing to a close, almost unnoticed. Yet this shift deserves a place in the public discourse, as the lessons learned touch everyone who operates a web presence in Iceland.

The End of an Era and the Evolving Focus of Digital Agencies

The numbers speak for themselves. Eplica’s website notes that new development and system updates have ceased at Hugsmiðjan, with operations for Eplica websites officially wrapping up in early 2025. The system, which once powered hundreds of local sites—including many of the country’s largest—came to an end. It is a similar story elsewhere: Stefna now champions the international Craft CMS for larger projects, letting Moya fade from the spotlight. Meanwhile, Hugsmiðjan’s own website now runs on Payload, an open-source global platform. The very agency that spent two decades developing its own CMS turned to an international solution when rebuilding its digital home.

Proprietary Fortresses and New Market Investments

Against this backdrop, the timing of Advania’s recent launch of VEVA, a new proprietary Icelandic CMS, is intriguing. Just as the country’s most seasoned digital agencies are thoughtfully stepping away from this model, Advania chooses to invest in it. While I won’t predict its trajectory, the business model behind proprietary platforms deserves consideration. Choosing a closed, local CMS ties a client to a single agency for development, support, and hosting for years—carrying long-term costs. For the vendor, this vendor lock-in is a defensive moat; for the client, it represents a path with limited exit strategies.

Global Competition and the Rise of Visual Development

Icelandic systems did not decline due to poor craft; Eplica, for instance, was remarkably forward-thinking in digital accessibility. They faded because the economics no longer added up. Sustaining a competitive CMS in 2026 means competing with global giants backed by hundreds of developers and millions in funding. WordPress powers roughly 43 percent of all websites globally, and Denmark’s Umbraco runs over 750,000 sites. Meanwhile, modern headless platforms like Sanity and Prismic are growing rapidly on a global scale, even if search data suggests Icelandic interest is still emerging.

The most significant evolution in recent years has occurred in visual canvas tools, led prominently by Framer—a trend clearly mirrored in the data. Framer is a visual CMS that behaves much like Figma, making it exceptionally intuitive and allowing digital teams to collaborate in real-time, placing feedback directly on the canvas. In our experience, building sites in Framer is roughly three times faster than in traditional systems. Semrush search data confirms this appetite, showing Framer as the fastest-growing international platform in Icelandic search interest. For transparency, I founded Flóra, the country's first certified Framer Partner agency, though we continue to work across a variety of CMS ecosystems.

How AI Displaces Vendor Lock-in

The most profound change in the coming years is that vendor lock-in—long the anchor of closed-system business models—is dissolving. The catalyst is AI. Migrating content from one platform to another, once a grueling multi-month manual effort, is becoming a task automated seamlessly and precisely by artificial intelligence. We have experimented with these migrations, and the results are incredibly promising. Within a few years, switching platforms will carry negligible costs. Platforms will have to win clients over with pure quality and service rather than high exit barriers. Digital agencies will similarly need to earn trust through exceptional value and open collaboration. This is a healthy, welcome shift for the entire community.

The Living Web and the New Mandate for Agencies

Looking ahead, websites will cease to be finished, static deliverables. Instead, they will become living ecosystems that measure their own performance, run continuous experiments, and organically evolve. This is the core philosophy behind Optise, a progressive AI startup I co-founded. We build websites that self-optimize week after week, a practice we believe will soon become the baseline expectation.

Hand in hand with this, a significant portion of search traffic will shift from traditional search engines to AI assistants. Websites must therefore be crafted for two distinct audiences: human visitors and the AI agents gathering information for them. This fundamentally reshapes the role of digital agencies. Instead of assembling templates on an assembly line, agencies will focus on highly bespoke design and richer, brand-defining storytelling through copy, imagery, and video. Our craft moves closer to core business operations—optimizing workflows, integrating systems, cleaning data, and refining accessibility, because AI only interprets structured, orderly information. Digital strategy will become far more deeply rooted in clean data and analytics.

Is It Time for a New Website?

For those considering a new website and selecting a modern CMS, my advice is simple: start with user needs, not technology. Think about who will manage the content daily, which internal systems require integration, and how many languages you need to support. This last point is vital in a society where nearly a quarter of the population does not speak Icelandic as a native language. I also advise partners to hold off on selecting a platform until the design phase is underway, as the visual architecture often reveals what the tech stack must actually support. Opt for systems backed by a thriving global community rather than a single local vendor, and ensure your content remains effortlessly portable. Finally, inviting an independent digital consultant to guide you can provide unbiased clarity, free from vested interests.

The Maturity of the Icelandic Digital Industry

The Icelandic web industry is not shrinking in this transition; it is growing up. The value of our digital agencies no longer lies in the proprietary software they hold hostage, but in the talent of the people who design, analyze, and build on top of the world’s finest tools. Our local systems served their time beautifully. But that chapter is complete.

In my next article, I will dive deeper into the data: which content management systems are truly leading the market in Iceland today, which are growing fastest, and the real-world pros and cons of the options available to Icelandic web owners.

The author is the founder and CEO of REVERA and co-founder of Optise.