Looking for the best CMS platform to use for your website?
What is CMS?
A CMS, short for Content Management System, is an application platform that allows users to easily build and manage a website without coding or know how to code at all (at least for most of them). There are multiple CMS choices online, which means it is a struggle to decide the best CMS platform for your requirements.
With a content management system, users can create, manage, edit, and publish content easily without the help of developers or coders. Therefore, they can easily customize the design and functionality of the site with templates and add-ons installed.
4 Best CMS Platforms
Let’s unpack the five best CMS platforms that might fit your website needs.
WordPress – Free
WordPress (or WordPress.org) is one of the number one choices for the best CMS platform. WordPress.org is free and open-source software written in PHP and MySQL or MariaDB database that can be used to create a beautiful website, blog, or eCommerce. As a result, It is considered as the top CMS software globally which powers around 35% of all websites on the web.
Pros:
- WordPress offers the flexibility and option to build any kind of website (Blog, Portfolio, Membership Site, Online Store, Booking Site, etc).
- With WordPress, building a website is easy even without technical skills or coding knowledge.
- WordPress is compatible with search engine optimization (SEO). So, it is easy to create SEO-friendly URLs for your posts. Moreover, you can install SEO plugins to optimize your website and improve performance.
Cons:
- You’ll need to have your hosting and domain name, and you’ll be responsible for managing the backups and security.
- You’ll need to install WordPress manually to your server or hosting. So, you need technical knowledge to do so.
- It is vulnerable to malware attacks since it is an open-source platform.
Squarespace – with Free trial
Squarespace is a hosted all-in-one CMS platform solution for building websites. It is not an open-source platform so there’s no free subscription, however, they offer a free 14-day trial (no credit card needed). This platform allows users to use pre-built website templates and drag-and-drop elements to build and modify website pages.
Pros:
- Everything all in one place: website, blog, Photogallery, contact forms, eCommerce, hosting, analytics, all accessed through a single login.
- The reassurance of having one company for hosting and CMS, with a support team behind it
- Squarespace is a ‘cloud’ service, so you don’t need to download or install any software, and you don’t require to purchase separate web hosting.
Cons:
- The pricing is expensive.
- It only has basic features in marketing tools for SEO which includes social media share buttons and URL redirection
There’s no support for 3rd party addons or extensions.
Drupal – Free
Drupal is another flexible, free and open-source web content management system. It has more than thousands of modules and third-party integrations in which developers can immediately add to their sites. The Drupal core contains the PHP scripts which are required to run the basic CMS functionality.
Pros:
- Adding content in Drupal is straightforward. The custom content types are manageable and have plenty of options.
- Similar to WordPress, many different modules can be used for building a website
- Drupal is highly reliable and scalable. There are various small or large enterprises, governments, and NGO’s websites are powered by Drupal.
Cons:
- It is not a beginner-friendly CMS like WordPress. Learning Drupal is very complicated.
- Managing Drupal is challenging without the assistance of a web programmer or developer.
- There are only a few commercial/premium themes available.
Joomla – Free
Joomla is another free and open-source cms platform for building websites. Similar to WordPress it is free to use, but you will need hosting and a domain name. It is built on an MVC web application framework that allows developers to build online applications.
Pros:
- Joomla has lots of flexibility and loads of options. It’s a great choice for building complicated or bespoke websites or applications.
- Like WordPress, Joomla is open source means there are many community support available online.
- Compare to Drupal, the learning curve of Joomla is relatively low, allowing a non-developer to understand the website quickly.
Cons:
- There is only a few additional extensions available compare to WordPress.
- Lack of free quality templates.
- Some of the extensions can have some frustrating compatibility issues.
Which is the Best CMS Platform?
In conclusion, we believe that WordPress is the best CMS platform in the world. There are over 35% of all websites on the web are powered by WordPress, and there’s a good reason for that. It has the flexibility and option to construct any kind of website not limited to blogs, portfolios, online shopping sites, etc. It is easy to get started, and many web hosting services offer a 1-click install process and can extend the functionality of your website using plugins.