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TOP 3 ALTERNATIVES — RANKED
Three you should evaluate first.
Filtered from 12 candidates by feature similarity, audit score, and review velocity. The hero treatment is editorial — these earned more space because the data did.
Disable Gutenberg
editor#1TOP PICK
5.00733 reviews
Not auditedAudit score
Pick if you want feature parity
Strongest fit on feature parity. The most direct functional swap. Shares editor feature signature and comparable workflows — switch costs are usually lowest here.
Preserved HTML Editor Markup
editor#2RUNNER-UP
5.0042 reviews
Not auditedAudit score
Pick if you're cost-sensitive
Wider scope, slightly different focus. Wider feature surface than the source app's focus area. Useful if you're shopping editor alongside adjacent capabilities you'd otherwise integrate separately.
CodeMirror Blocks
editor#3VALUE PICK
5.0041 reviews
Not auditedAudit score
Pick if you live in workflows
Established alternative with the review depth to evaluate. Established option with the rating + review depth to be vendor-evaluated. Best when running this category at scale and you can't afford early-stage product surprises.
SIDE-BY-SIDE COMPARISON
Compact MCE versus the top 3.
Five rows, all loaded above the fold. Wins are highlighted; nothing's hidden behind a tab.
RANKS #4 THROUGH #12
The next 9, denser.
Lower-ranked but legitimate. Click any row for the full profile — or compare side-by-side with Compact MCE.
How these alternatives are ranked
Scored daily. Three signals, weighted and blended. No vendor money changes anything.
45%Feature similarity
N-gram match against Compact MCE's feature signature, weighted by category overlap.
35%Audit + rating
Listing quality (0–100) blended with rolling 90-day rating average. Penalizes thin listings.
20%Review velocity
Reviews added in trailing 30 days, normalized by category baseline. Surfaces rising challengers.
Every WordPress alternative on this page is scraped, normalized, and re-scored every 24 hours. We don't accept paid placement, vendor-funded "best of" content, or sponsored ranking — and we publish the rules so you can audit them yourself. If a vendor disagrees with their position, that's between them and the data.
WHEN DOES IT MAKE SENSE TO SWITCH FROM COMPACT MCE?
Four reasons people leave.
Decision triggers, not marketing. If two or more apply, your shortlist starts with the apps named below each card.
Pricing has outgrown your usage
If your usage of Compact MCE has crossed a pricing-tier breakpoint, per-unit cost is usually where alternatives diverge most clearly. Some apps in the list above carry a free tier; others are paid from day one. Compare the published plans on each alternative's page against your current bill — the gap is the only number worth acting on, and it is specific to your usage.
Preserved HTML Editor Markup · Disable GutenbergYou need a feature outside the focus
Each WordPress category has a feature spectrum. The "Similar feature set" badge above marks alternatives whose feature signature most overlaps with Compact MCE. The "Category leader" badge marks apps that may approach the same category from a different feature angle — useful if you want to widen rather than narrow your toolset.
Disable GutenbergSupport response has slowed you down
Support quality is the hardest thing to read from a listing, and it is the most common reason a switch gets made. Read the most RECENT reviews on each alternative's profile rather than the lifetime average — recency is what tells you how the app is supported today, and trailing review velocity is the freshest signal AppRanks tracks.
FREQUENTLY ASKED
Answers built from the data.
Built from the same scores the ranking uses — so they won't contradict the table.
For most accounts under typical category usage, the answer depends on tier. Disable Gutenberg is in the unknown band (—), while Compact MCE is unknown (—). At parity scale, the cheaper option can save 30–60% — but feature-for-feature swaps usually narrow the gap above the second tier.
VERDICT · UPDATED TODAY
If you're moving from Compact MCE, the most common landing spots are Disable Gutenberg (unknown feature match, audit null/100) and Preserved HTML Editor Markup (pricing leverage + breadth). Skip Block Navigation unless your use case is unusual.
If feature parity matters most
→ Disable Gutenberg
Unknown feature parity. Audit null, 5.00★.
If pricing matters most
→ Preserved HTML Editor Markup
Best for cost-sensitive teams. 5.00★ across 42 reviews.
If you're scaling enterprise
→ CodeMirror Blocks
Strongest scale fit when category usage exceeds typical thresholds. Vendor-evaluate before committing.
Continue your research
Audit Compact MCE's listing
See where Compact MCE ranks 0–100 on listing completeness, screenshots, and description quality.
Open auditCompact MCE vs Disable Gutenberg
Side-by-side feature deltas, shared keywords, rating curves over the trailing 12 months.
Open compareWordPress category leaders
Highest-rated WordPress apps by intent. The category-by-category leaderboard.
Open best
