How Do I Choose the Best CMS?

by Angela Shaffield | Last Updated: Apr 1, 2023

Writing content that speaks to your target audience is the foundation of any marketing campaign. Imagine writing a solid piece of content that is perfect for your website, then when the time comes to add it to the website, you can’t find it. Having to duplicate content you have already written is a frustrating task. This is why you should be using a content management system (CMS).

What Is a CMS Platform?

CMS is an acronym for content management system. CMS platforms help marketers store, edit, and publish their content in a centralized location. Having all your digital assets in a centralized location saves time and energy when it comes to finding the right content for your digital experiences. A content management system is often advertised for its specialized functionality and capabilities. Any good content management system will have core functions that identify it as a CMS. Explore the functionality behind a content management system:

Content Creation and Editing - Many CMS allows teams to edit the content stored within the platform.
Workflow Management - Related to ease of use is workflow management. A CMS is designed for every individual on a marketing team to easily use the platform depending on their tasks.
Search Functionality - Who doesn’t love search functionality? Though a CMS has the ability to create various folders and other ways to organize content, sometimes individuals just want to search for a specific piece of content. That’s exactly what the best CMS platforms enable their users to do.
Third-Party Integrations - The best content management system enables their customers to integrate to third-party systems that enable teams to pull in additional assets to use alongside their content.
User Management - Admins of a CMS can create different user permission that allows individuals to have varying control over the assets. For instance, an organization may choose to have only a handful of CMS admins that have the highest level of control over editing, reviewing, and managing content.

The best content management system for your business will have features and functionalities that support your business goals.

What Is the Most Widely Used CMS?

Most popular content management systems fall into two types of content management systems. These two types of content management systems are open-source and non open-source. Each type has benefits and drawbacks depending on what your goals are regarding content management. An open-source CMS is a content management system that is maintained by a group of developers. One of the primary benefits of an open-source CMS is cost. Most open source CMS solutions are often free to use or have an extremely minimal cost. This type of pricing model is extremely attractive to small businesses. It also includes some risk that often makes it unattractive long-term to midsize and enterprise companies due to scalability, security, and support issues. This is why WordPress is the most popular open source CMS and is heavily used by small businesses. In addition to the minimal fees that may exist for an open-source CMS, there are some additional fees:

Hosting
Domain
Development Costs

Non open-source content management systems are the opposite of an open-source content management system. This means that no one (other than internal developers for the CMS) have access to the source code and there is often an annual fee for utilizing the CMS. There are also different types of non open-source CMS solutions ranging from cloud-based to headless CMS. For example, Sitecore and Adobe Experience Manager are both cloud-based CMS offerings while Craft is a headless CMS. Lumavate is a unique offering since it offers a full digital experience platform (DXP) along with a CMS and allows you to use its CMS or a third-party CMS in digital experiences built using Lumavate. The headless CMS market size was 71 percent in 2021 making it one of the most popular types of content management systems. A headless CMS is a back end-only web content management system that acts primarily as a content repository. They are often paired with a digital experience platform or custom development to build the front-end.

What Is the Most Popular Headless CMS?

The most popular headless CMS right now is Contentstack. Since they are a headless CMS they do not offer font-end support. They offer three plans for different types of companies but require you to contact them in order to get pricing of the plan. The three plans they offer are:

Start - For teams managing single property sites

Grow - For teams single property sites, apps, and loT

Scale - For organizational wide use and teams working on multiple digital properties

How Do I Choose The Best CMS?

When choosing a CMS platform, you need to consider which CMS features and benefits are right for your business goals. This is critical because some CMS features are designed to meet the needs of the enterprise while other features may be designed to accommodate the needs of a small business. That’s why it's important to evaluate your business needs before starting the evaluation process for a new CMS, otherwise, you could get overwhelmed by all the features and benefits a CMS can offer and go over budget. A good practice when deciding on different features is to rank which features are most important to least important. You can rank CMS features in a list like this:

Must-have - Essential features the department can’t work without.
Should-have - Features that are generally as important as must-haves but are not as time critical
Could-have - Features that are desirable but not critical for the department’s functioning.
Would-have - Features that are least critical, lowest payback or not appropriate at this time.

You could even organize these features in a table if your team has differing opinions. The columns would feature importance and the rows would be the department or team member using the content management system. Once you have listed which functionalities and features are important to your team you can start comparing different CMS providers. A good option to think about is to use a digital experience platform that includes a CMS like Lumavate. Using a tool like Lumavate allows you to create digital experiences that are tied to a CMS, so when you update your content in the CMS the content in your digital experiences automatically update as well. Plus you are getting two tools for the price of one which can be a big money saver. Want to increase your marketing team’s efficiencies and stop wasting time trying to find your digital assets? Schedule a demo to see Lumavate’s Content Management System or take a tour to explore the functionality for yourself.

Meet with one of our experts to see how easy it is to centralize your product data, manage digital assets, and create digital product experiences. Trust us…you’re going to be wowed.

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