The article presents an overview of the main stages of development and formation of content management systems as a component of software, in conjunction with the material base. The need of a society in creation and development of systems is revealed. The main elements of the mentioned systems, their functionality, and user groups are described. The features of modern content management systems are presented. The change in approaches to the development of such systems from monolithic to distributed systems is outlined. Further formation of Web-content management systems is seen in the development of systems with open source code, using Web 3.0, refining tools analysis of the quality of content, support for business B2B and B2C, interface development, active use of headless CMS, support of a new level of SEO, implementation of artificial intelligence algorithms. Keywords: content management systems