A Guide To Choosing The Best Content Management System For Your Business’ Website
When brands launch their website or blog, they often get stuck between deciding on their content management systems. Their goals are often cemented when it comes to growing their customer base, but they may have limited budgets, experience and time in the run-up to their site going live.
As you evaluate your plans leading up to your website launch or rebrand, you should try and learn some of the differences between open source systems and proprietary software, along with your opinions and reservations for them. This will make sure that you are making the best decision for your company and this will keep your development team happy.
Before you decide, you should know the differences between the two. Marketers typically decide whether or not they want to use an open source system or not and they then start to research their options so that they can choose the best company for their content management systems.
The biggest difference between the two is that open source systems are usually maintained and developed by a large group of people. An example of this is WordPress. Whilst the developers and key founders keep the main system running, there are hundreds of programmers working to improve the code and developing compatible plugins and widgets. This is one of the biggest benefits of open source software, if you need something, then someone has probably already developed it.
WordPress
One of the most widely known and highly developed open source systems, WordPress receives more than 50 million monthly visits. It has over 1,300 themes and an impressive 15,000 plugins. Around 15% of all websites are hosted on WordPress, including Krispy Kreme, Time and The Wall Street Journal. On average, the monthly cost of hosting and maintaining a WordPress site is around $250. Thanks to its ease of use and popularity, it’s relatively easy to find an entry-level developer willing to help and improve your site.
Joomla
Another of the largest CMS platforms is Joomla. With monthly traffic reaching over 60,000 and around 7,000 plug-ins available, this system costs around $500 per month to maintain. Sites such as Porsche and the United Nations use Joomla as their content management system.
Drupal
In comparison to WordPress’ average 50 million monthly views, Drupal attracts on average 56,000 monthly visitors. With around 900 themes to choose from and 8,000 plugins available, this is still a substantial amount, especially if you are a basic user. However, Drupal’s monthly maintenance is the highest at around $1,500 and you will need to find an advanced developer who knows what they are doing, as it is also the most complex open source platform.
Most companies tend to choose WordPress for their content management systems, but if your business needs something specific or WordPress doesn’t have something that you need, consider trying Drupal or Joomla. A lot of companies, especially those that do a lot of localised creative work like branding agencies, Manchester, will tend to choose systems that are compatible with the work that they produce.
It’s important to decide what system is right for your company’s needs. Every company is different, so that means that there is no one-for-all solution when it comes to development strategies. Choose one that is easy to use, fits your budget and has a variety of features which work with your companies goals and aims.
