Content Management System (CMS) platforms have grown over time, allowing you to manage your website, create content, blogs, and e-commerce sites. A CMS is meant to make it easy for non-technical users to create and manage content without worrying about coding. Thus, no HTML or CSS skills are required to create a site.
When choosing a CMS, you need to be aware of what each platform has to offer as this could either make or break your site. One CMS might work for other businesses but may not work as expected for your business. It is best to consider your business’s requirements and needs when in search of the ideal CMS. To help you out, we are going to compare some CMS options for you to choose from for corporate website design.
WordPress
WordPress is the most prominent and familiar CMS platform. When considering a CMS, most people highly consider WordPress as it powers around 35% of all websites on the internet. It offers flexibility and ease of creating an online site, even without any coding knowledge. It has thousands of free and paid themes, as well as plugins that enable you to add any extra features to your site.
One thing to note is that there is a difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com. While WordPress.org is a free open-source CMS for all sorts of websites and online stores, WordPress.com is a blog hosting platform. More importantly, WordPress is ideal for search engine optimization as it’s easy to create posts with SEO-friendly URLs, tags, categories, and utilize the SEO plugins available. As an open-source CMS, it has a vast support community to assist you with any problems you may encounter when using WordPress.
WordPress is suitable for both beginners and developers due to its extensibility. Their content is downloadable in XML format which you can quickly move to a different system. However, you are responsible for setting up your own hosting and domain name, as well as managing security and backups.
Silverstripe
Silverstripe is an up-and-coming open-source software. There is a fully managed cloud hosting platform option that is designed to host, protect, and support your website through their 24/7 New Zealand-based support lead by a team of SilverStripe CMS experts. If you choose not to use the cloud hosting solution, you can also host it your own web hosting account. Their software also includes a developer’s dashboard to let you confidently release any changes through deployment tools due to its highly customizable platform. And the features that come with this CMS ensure that you get what you need.
Unlike WordPress, SilverStripe has plugins that don’t rely on a third-party. It has an in-house template language that is easy to maintain and clean which makes a simple task of creating your site’s front end. The CMS also has an admin engine that separates widgets and themes, making it easy to use.
For disaster recovery, its distributed infrastructure allows for your website to continuously operate even during a disaster or traffic spike. You can also create backups of your site through snapshots that can be exported to another development environment. For security purposes, you can create and manage SSL certificates and assign granular user permissions and roles. Experts continuously monitor the infrastructure and apply security patches to protect your site from new and emerging threats.
Drupal
Drupal is an open-source CMS platform for a highly customized site that handles numerous data but needs a developer’s expertise. Similar to WordPress plugins, Drupal offers various modules to add to your site, making it almost effortless to add content. It also provides easy user management with its built-in system to create new roles and specify permissions.
Drupal focuses on social publishing, small and medium-sized community projects. One downside is that it is not suitable for beginners as it can be challenging to change your site’s appearance. Their websites showcase heavily customized themes, making them expensive since they are premade by developers. For hosting purposes, you may want to consider SiteGround as they offer free installation.
Joomla
Joomla is ideal for both beginners and advanced users but can be more challenging to use compared to other CMSs. It also comes with different extensions and templates to run an e-commerce store. Since it’s an open-source software, it has immense community support for any help you may need. Although it’s free to use, you will need web hosting and a domain name for your site prepared beforehand.
To create a more advanced site, you may need to hire a developer to work on the more complex side of things. It’s also challenging to extend the core functionality as it has fewer themes and plugins than WordPress. For hosting, it would be best to use SiteGround as it has lots of convenient features.
Typo3
Typo3 is an open-source CMS functioning as an enterprise management system that is always up to date. It is ideal for large corporate portals and e-commerce platforms due to its wide range of functions. Thus, it ensures professional rights management at the enterprise level while providing interfaces for classic business applications.
Additionally, it comprises a large community that can help beginners. But when using a developer, they can integrate even the most complex structures with multilingual content. Installation, configuration, and administration of Typo3 can be pricy as it requires developer expertise. Also, the large spectrum results in higher demands on hosting compared to other systems.
Neos CMS
Neos CMS is an open-source enterprise CMS suitable for editors and developers. Editors get to use the WYSIWYG editor, also known as inline editing. Similarly, developers get to access planned extensibility, atomic design, and living style guides. It can be used to link content with third-party systems such as ERP solutions. Moreover, it’s user-friendly and contains search engine-friendly URLs.
Notably, Neos CMS has no limits to expandability since it supports two-stack CMS architecture. This provides maximum scalability, resilience, and security even for large projects. It has a helpful community, and you don’t need PHP knowledge for problematic pages. Nevertheless, it can be challenging to set up smaller projects and it may take a while to get used to the platform. You may even require professional-level hosting for some of the Neos functions.
Contao
Contao is a CMS that is clear and user-friendly with a multilingual backend with an openly-structured administrative layer. Contao focuses on compatibility with web standards and provides barrier-free online content in HTML 5. It contains more than 1,900 extensions that flexibly adapts to your specific needs. It provides an integrated theme manager to enable you to configure the design and layout of your site to your preference.
Contao comes with high-security standards, with the LTS version including a four-year guarantee. Other developing versions come with bug fixes and security updates for half a year along with other new features. It’s ideal for websites of all sizes ranging from e-commerce platforms, intranet solutions, and microsites to corporate portals. But in the primary system, you cannot incorporate multi-level workflows.
Umbraco
Umbraco is one of the open-source CMS that offers flexibility from large and complex applications to small brochure sites. Its customizability and functionality offer a wide range of functions for your site. Umbraco is great and easy to use for building custom web apps since it’s built with ASP.NET and offers a variety of templates and design options for you to choose from.
A well-built Umbraco site performs faster since it contains built-in caching for your content. For extra performance, you can also integrate with content delivery networks. Alternatively, you can configure it to run on auto-scaled cloud services like Azure App Service. In terms of security, Umbraco sources from the .Net framework, Windows servers, and Microsoft stack, but you can build it up even further. However, it can be challenging for new users or developers without the necessary Umbraco experience.
Over to You
Different CMS software have different benefits and drawbacks depending on their functionality. Some are ideal for small projects, while others work perfectly for large corporates. Hence, you need first to evaluate your business’s current and future needs before deciding on the perfect CMS. Ideally, you should choose a CMS that your business can grow with as it advances in levels of success.
But before you invest your time and resources, consider reviewing matters such as ease of use, pricing, e-commerce functionality, hosting, security, and support. You will also need to consider whether you possess the necessary skills to personally create your site or require a developer.
