The CMS market started very small with FileNet back in the 1980s. In the last four decades, the market has grown very quickly, and now there are more than 64 million live websites that were built with CMS systems.
There are around 1000-2000 content management systems available. But selecting the best CMS platform for your website can still take time and effort.
To help you navigate this space, we’ve compiled a list of the top six CMS platforms for effective website development. This post provides a comprehensive overview of each platform’s features, functionalities, pros, and cons to help you decide which will be the best CMS for your website.
So, whether you’re a newbie website developer or an experienced developer, this article will provide valuable insights to help you find the best CMS platform for your website.
CMS Overview
A content management system or CMS is a software application that enables users to build and manage websites without coding knowledge. With a CMS, you can easily create, modify, manage, and publish content through a user-friendly interface. Instead of doing code, you can download or purchase themes and plug-ins to change your site’s look and functions.
However, the CMS consists of two primary components:
- Content Delivery Application (CDA) – the website’s back end, which turns your custom information into a functional website.
- Content Management Application (CMA) – the front end of a website that allows you to design, change, and remove content from your website.
In addition to essential website management, CMS platforms offer advanced features and capabilities. These include e-commerce functionality, customer relationship management, cart management, and analytics. Such features help businesses expand their online presence, reach new audiences, and enhance their branding and marketing efforts.
To summarize, the CMS aims to simplify website creation and management, thus becoming accessible to users with little to no coding knowledge. CMS platforms provide functionalities that help users create professional-looking websites, improve their online presence, and achieve their digital marketing objectives.
Benefits Of Using A CMS
Growing a business using CMS is a gem. Users can multitude their productivity with CMS’s website management system. But in the end, your mind is traversing with a question, what are the benefits of using a CMS?
Using a CMS is dedicated to buying you more time. Here are some benefits of using CMS so that you can know your needs.
Ease of use:
A significant advantage of using a CMS is that it enables users to create and manage websites easily. Users can create and modify content through a user-friendly interface without technical knowledge or coding skills.
Time and cost savings:
Utilizing a CMS can save time and money by avoiding the need for costly web developers or professionals to manage website content. Instead, users can manage the site’s content creation and management themselves, thus reducing the cost and time spent.
Customizability:
A CMS provides a broad range of templates and themes that users can customize to create professional-looking websites that align with their brand. Customization is usually achieved through a drag-and-drop interface, allowing for greater flexibility.
SEO friendliness:
CMS simplifies the optimization of a website for search engines, providing tools such as keywords, metadata, SEO-friendly URLs, and plug-ins that boost website rankings. While they should not replace your SEO efforts, these tools can help execute SEO strategies that would otherwise be time-consuming.
Easy integrations, plug-ins, and add-ons:
CMS systems provide hundreds of add-ons and plug-ins to expand system functionality. These plug-ins and add-ons offer SEO optimization, social media sharing, e-commerce, and site performance. Using plug-ins and add-ons ensures you can customize your CMS to meet your business needs.
Collaboration:
CMS platforms provide a collaborative environment where multiple users can create, publish and modify website content and digital assets. This shared workspace helps businesses and teams work more efficiently and improves productivity.
How to Choose the Best CMS?
Choosing a suitable CMS can be daunting, especially with today’s vast options. However, here are some key factors you should consider when picking a suitable CMS.
Know Your Website:
The first consideration when selecting a CMS is to define your website needs. This means considering the type and complexity of the website, whether it is a blog, e-commerce, or a corporate site.
Technical Skill Level:
In today’s technology-driven era, you don’t need coding skills to create and manage website content. Several beginner-friendly CMS systems are available today; even novices can create and maintain web pages easily.
However, maximum CMS systems and website builders are best for people who are just starting out. These will be the simplest to deal with. Open-source software is what most advanced users and writers choose because it gives them the most freedom.
Customization:
While website builders might be easy to use, limitations will always exist. For the vast majority of people, that won’t be a problem. However, those looking for true customization options and more control over their website’s design and functionality will need to use an open-source CMS platform.
The good news is that only some open-source CMS platforms require advanced technical skills. You can access added functionalities through plug-ins or add-ons. If you need more advanced technical skills, ensuring your CMS platform provides an extensive plug-in marketplace is essential. This means you can easily access a wide range of third-party add-ons without developing solutions independently or hiring a developer to create them.
Support:
Most CMS has a strong community and reliable technical support to assist when required. Also, they have up-to-date documentation and tutorials to help users to get started.
Price:
CMS platforms always remain entirely free. Sometimes they charge a monthly or annual fee. Even if you use a free CMS platform, you may need to pay for plug-ins, themes, or web hosting services from a third party.
Before you choose a CMS, try to find out as much as you can about the prices so you don’t get any unpleasant shocks.
The Top 6 Best Content Management Systems
WordPress
If you seek a high-quality, well-supported, and secure website for blogging, product showcasing, or e-commerce purposes, then the WordPress CMS platform may be the perfect choice.
However, the WordPress content management system has two versions: WordPress.com, which is proprietary, and WordPress.org, an open-source software. WordPress.com is ideal for those who are not technically inclined and has a reasonable monthly fee, whereas WordPress.org is a free option, but one must arrange their web hosting. Both versions are excellent content management systems that provide extensive customization options.
Additionally, WordPress is an ideal solution for other uses, such as corporate websites, business, and non-profit websites, etc. It is a highly customizable platform, with over two million themes and templates available to download from its official website.
Around 810 million websites use WordPress, making it one of the most popular content management systems globally. Its popularity continuously increases and shows no signs of slowing down, indicating a bright future for WordPress.
Key Features
- Over 59,000 available free and paid plugins.
- Easily manageable ai website builder
- SEO-friendly CMS
- Paste URL to Make Links in Visual Editor
- Accessibility Mode for Widgets
- Support for custom WordPress theme development
- Customizable back-end dashboard
- Multiple user profiles
Pros of WordPress
- Highly customizable
- Versatile and scalable
- Block editor capabilities
- Beginner-friendly with the right plugins
- The most extensive collection of plug-ins and themes
- E-commerce functionality
- Huge and supportive community
- Flexible and minimal costing
Cons of WordPress
- The learning curve for beginner
- Plugin and site maintenance can be time-consuming
- Limited customer support options
- Cannot easily share content outside of a website format
- Limitations for enterprise sites requiring custom functionality
- Hackable due to their popularity
- Restricted stability and performance capability (high traffic)
Shopify
After WordPress, Shopify satisfies millions of users worldwide. From small business to enterprise, Shopify was a king in second.
As a SaaS (software-as-a-service) product Shopify, you can craft your brand as a frontline online store with vast and elegant customization of themes and templates. On the other hand, Shopify has 600+ apps to decorate your website uniquely.
Lastly, if you’re looking to build a more complex e-commerce website, Shopify is a great option. It’s easy to use and allows you to quickly customize your website without being a coding expert.
Key Features
- Mobile commerce ready
- Editable HTML and CSS
- 100 payment gateways
- Free SSL certificate
- Built-in payment processing system
- Email templates
- Coupled CMS structure
- Intuitive check out options
- Embeddable “buy buttons” that work on any website
Pros of Shopify
- Ideal for online store beginners
- Setup requires little technological skills.
- Many functioning plugins Security, hosting, and support are all included in all packages
- Shopify’s checkout is easy for consumers.
- Unlimited bandwidth and traffic
- Secure payments with end-to-end encryption
- It can come with a free domain, or you can add a custom, branded one
Cons of Shopify
- Poor SEO performance
- Less control over the appearance and functionality of your store
- A limited selection of themes and apps
- The blogging module leaves a lot to be desired
- Limited customization options
- No free plan and plans are pretty high pricing
Joomla!
Joomla is a popular free and open-source CMS platform introduced in 2005. Its popularity has grown significantly since then, with millions of websites, including large organizations and brands, running on the platform.
Based on the most recent report, Joomla powers many websites worldwide. This report indicates that 1,882,636 live websites currently use the platform, and if you include historical sites, this number jumps to 4,125,158. As of February 2023, Joomla accounts for approximately 1.8% of all websites globally, with a CMS market share of 2.7%.
Joomla is highly versatile, making it an ideal solution for various website types, from simple blogs to complex e-commerce websites. Joomla offers a wide range of features and functionalities out-of-the-box, and it also has extensions that provide additional features and capabilities to meet specific requirements. Joomla’s flexibility allows developers to create custom designs and functionalities, making it a highly flexible content management solution.
In conclusion, Joomla is an excellent platform for creating and managing websites of various types. It offers flexibility, user management, access control, multilingual support, SEO optimization, and additional features and extensions that other CMS platforms cannot provide.
Key Features
- Powerful Extensibility
- Coupled CMS setup
- Robust SEO metadata and site mapping
- Supports over 70 languages
- Frontend Editing
- Multiple user profiles
- Cache management to boost site speed
Pros of Joomla!
- Robust functionality
- Responsive templates
- Very customizable
- Wide pool of extensions and designs
- Community support
Cons of Joomla!
- Most open-source CMS vulnerabilities
- Scheduling updates impairs functionalities
- No included hosting for sites with custom domains
- Superior extensions can be pricey
- Extensions require manual implementation
- Limited customer support
- Lack of compatibility between different modules, extensions, and plugins
CMS Hub
We love using HubSpot CMS Hub because it seamlessly integrates a business’s marketing needs with its website. Even better, this program is AI detector-free, making it perfect for those who want to maintain a high level of privacy.
With the HubSpot CMS Hub, users can easily create and handle website pages and blog posts, optimize content for search engines, store and edit online content, and effectively communicate with marketing and sales. Even beginners can quickly become adept at tasks like social media management, lead creation, SEO, email marketing, and more.
Overall, HubSpot CMS Hub is incredibly user-friendly and easy to handle, with a high user rate of 70% and a vast client base. If you want to make your website stand out and be admired, there’s no better option than CMS Hub, which is also great for those who seek to maintain their privacy with its AI detector-free feature.
Key Features
- Fully integrated CRM
- List Segmentation
- Social Media and Gmail/outlook Integration
- Paid Ad Tracking
- Adaptive testing
- Built-in SEO and marketing attribution tools
- Built-In Service Requests
- Chatbot builder
Pros of CMS Hub
- Intuitive for non-technical users
- Marketing automations are available with CRM integration
- Multiple user permission levels
- Innovative content features to personalize the website
- Built-in security capabilities
- Integrates with WordPress and WooCommerce
Cons of CMS Hub
- No free version but they do offer a free trial
- Not ideal for eCommerce and enterprise websites
- Only integrates with 32 third-party apps
- Not customizable as WordPress or Joomla!
- Single-channel content management
- Limited gallery for plugins and themes
- No direct technical support
Contentful
Contentful – a headless content management system (CMS) and content platform that is both cloud-native and highly extensible. The “headless” CMS means that the content is not tied to a specific web page, and this CMS approach focuses on providing eCommerce capabilities rather than a solution for eCommerce.
However, Contentful benefits users by allowing them to create, publish, and manage content, including text, images, and rich media, in a structured, optimized way for each digital channel. It provides developers with a well-documented, flexible API, which allows them to integrate Contentful with other systems and technologies efficiently.
Overall, Contentful is a reliable and cutting-edge CMS solution that empowers businesses to easily create, manage, and publish digital content across all platforms while giving them the flexibility and customizability they need to tailor their content display to their brand’s unique requirements.
Key Features
- Global marketing and localization
- Agile eCommerce
- Headless CMS tools to create
- Security features from Amazon Web Services
- User Management and content modeling
- Centralized knowledge base
Pros of Contentful
- Enterprise-level cloud CMS
- Robust security features
- Flexible with different types of content.
- Rich text editor suitable for marketers to use
- Can integrate with any tech stack via API
- Send pushes/notifications to mobile devices
- A massive community of expert-level developers
Cons of Contentful
- Steep learning curve
- The entry-level plan is limited
- Requires developers and advanced technical knowledge
- API knowledge is necessary to display content across all channels
- Boring search functionality
- Burdensome for smaller businesses to integrate
- Multilevel user accounts cause delay
PrestaShop
The most lucrative and open-source CMS is PrestaShop. This CMS comes with e-commerce excellence also. Many templates, themes, and modules are prepared to make you fly.
As an open-source platform, you have numerous customization options to access. You can host and finance your site. PrestaShop also has a generous e-learning platform to make users happy. Their live courses are definitely up to the mark in the industry.
Overall, PrestaShop simplifies its support 24/7. Their help center contains guides, documentation, and essentials, and consulting teams are always ready for critical solutions. If you are generous about your website creation, give it a shot, you won’t regret it.
Key Features
- Unlimited inventory and listings
- Advanced SEO, CSV data export/import.
- Advanced SEO capabilities
- Large selection of payment options
- Advanced navigation and search
- Multi-store management,
- Multi-language set of 75 countries
- Compatibility with a large number of add-ons and third-party integrations.
Pros of PrestaShop
- User-friendly eCommerce features
- Themes and modules customization
- Large PrestaShop community
- Affordable pricing
Cons of PrestaShop
- Steep learning curve
- Lack of scalability to grow into a bigger eCommerce store.
- Dependent on expensive plugins and add-ons.
Wrap Up
Among our six best picks, there are countless options to use. But this article is dedicated to serving you with the best options.
From WordPress to Prestashop, these platforms provide rich features that can assist users in creating lucrative websites. If you’re a beginner seeking an all-in-one website builder or a tech-savvy user looking for advanced customization options, you can find the perfect CMS that suits your requirements in this post.
Don’t hesitate to try these great tools for your website development needs today. With their comprehensive features and functionalities, you can begin building your dream website easily.
