Best and Most Popular CMS Platforms to Build a Website
Content Management Software:
Ten Best CMS for Website Development
Proper content management is indispensable for effective e-commerce or any online activity. You can do this work yourself if you are good at it, or outsource the task to a professional software company. However, there are so many of them on the internet these days that trying to pick the best content management system for your website can be quite overwhelming.
On this page, we will first introduce the concept of a content management system, distinguishing it from website building, and explain why you should seriously consider using a CMS for website development. Next, we will tell you how to choose a good CMS, describe the top ten CMS platforms to date, and answer some of the most frequently asked questions on the subject.
CMS for Web Development
In simple terms, a content management system is the software you use to create and modify your online content. The latter may be of two types, namely:
1. Business content, such as:
- Record tracking
- Digital assets
- Documentation
- Blog posts
- Audio and video files
- Display program codes
In other words, a CMS helps you develop your own site. Content management systems can be classified according to a variety of scales and criteria, but these considerations fall outside the scope of our article.
The main thing to understand is that it is not enough to construct a site and have it hosted somewhere; you need to actually fill it with relevant, user-friendly, and competitive content, which requires knowledge, skills, and experience. This is what you often need CMS platforms for.
Content Management vs. Website Building
The two terms are often confused, although they do refer to slightly different aspects of web development, as their names suggest. Technically, website building refers strictly to the actual construction of a site, whereas a CMS fills it with relevant content and codes it according to the specified requirements.
In other words, website building is often part of content management: the former deals with website construction, the latter - with website design. For this reason, many CMS platforms offer both types of web development services, whereas website building companies usually focus on that aspect alone.
Benefits of Using CMS Services
CMS platforms provide numerous advantages over the do-it-yourself approach, but most of them boil down to one general principle: unless you know what you are doing, it is always more constructive, efficient, and cost-effective to let knowledgeable and reliable experts do the job for you.
More specifically, a good CMS will:
- Structure, manage and modify your digital content to increase its chances on the online market
- Save you from the necessity to acquire coding skills and learn programming languages
- Create the most diverse types of content, from blog pages to marketing data charts
- Allow you to concentrate on other aspects of your online activity
- Help you save considerable amounts of money
- Help you generate leads, build backlinks, enhance your SEO rating and boost your sales
- Considerably expand your social media presence and improve your public image
Criteria for Selecting an Optimal CMS
You will find plenty of professional and reliable content management systems on the internet, but there are just as many fraudulent or simply inconvenient ones as well. In this section, we will tell you what you should look at before you choose the best CMS for your personal website.
Applicability
The first thing you should check is how suitable a platform is for your personal business purposes. To do that, you will need to have a clear idea of what you expect from a CMS, and what you would like it to help you with.
Once you know that, you can browse its features and options to assess its applicability in your particular case. In addition to that, different CMS platforms are optimal for different types of enterprises, such as blogging, online store, or service site, to name a few.
Moreover, as your business progresses, your needs will probably change as well, so you might prefer a different CMS after some time. This is why you should not think of one company to choose from forever. Instead, you can stay alert to new developments on the market in order to use the best content management system for your current purposes.
User-Friendliness
You should also look at how convenient it is to use a particular CMS. After all, you need it to make your business operation easier, so its user-friendliness is one of the most important factors to consider. Ideally, a platform should:
- Offer a long list of diverse features and functions
- Be easy to navigate
- Allow you to drag and drop
- Provide for convenient content creation and editing
- Have a reasonable learning curve
Another aspect of its convenience that deserves special attention in our mobile day and age is whether the CMS provides mobile applications and whether its apps are available for all types of operating systems and mobile devices, have easy-to-use interfaces, and give access to all functions and features as well.
Design Templates
A professional CMS will also give you a good choice of design options for your website, and its templates should be quite flexible too. Moreover, their application would not require you to have any special coding skills, and it should not depend on any back-end operations either.
Customization and Integration
In addition, the best CMS for your website will be easy for you to personalize and integrate with the other applications and tools you use in your business operations. And it must be available through several channels as well. This will make your enterprise a lot more hassle-free, efficient, and, ultimately, cost-effective too.For example, high integration and customization can save you from having to enter data each time and track information separately. It will enable you to access multiple files and process the data automatically instead.
Besides, all your staff members will be able to use such a CMS concurrently and easily. This will greatly facilitate business transactions across the departments in your commercial enterprise.
Data Protection
Any online enterprise is highly vulnerable to potential digital crimes, such as hacking and data leakage, and all reliable content management software providers take this issue very seriously. Typically, they will use advanced SSL encryption technologies and all sorts of verification procedures to ensure a sufficiently high level of protection for all your personal and financial information.
Alternatively, you can take care of the security issue yourself in order to economize on data protection services, but letting professionals do this job for you will decrease your risks immensely, and it will save you a lot of time and effort for other aspects of your enterprise.
Note: you will actually have to invest in data protection separately in case you decide to use open-source content management systems as they are completely vulnerable to digital crime by their nature.Data Export
You also ought to keep in mind that you might need to use your content elsewhere or even decide to relocate to another hosting service in the future. Therefore, all your data should be easy to export and transfer to a different platform.
This is why a professional content management system operator will provide various user-friendly built-in tools for convenient access to and transportation of your data. In other words, these tools are meant to facilitate the software's integration with other platforms.
Add-ons and Extensions
Simply put, these two terms refer to all sorts of external software applications that can be added to the main system in order to expand its functions and features, and replace them with new ones as well. The more add-ons, extensions, and plugins a content management system have, the better it is in terms of its ultimate convenience and applicability. Moreover, they will considerably enhance the overall functionality of your website.
Customer Support
In case you have any questions or experience technical difficulties, a good CMS platform will give you access to professional and responsive customer service 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Furthermore, the support you need should be available through diverse communication channels, such as:
- Telephone line (ideally, toll-free)
- Electronic mail
- Live chat
- Tickets
- FAQ pages
- Social media networks
Another way a CMS company can offer its customers the support and assistance they might need is by setting up a discussion forum on its official website or social media profile. This way, it allows users to help each other, decreasing the workload for its customer service department. But forums also allow you to exchange information with other customers, which may help you run your business more constructively too.
Note: one way to evaluate customer support before signing up with a platform is to ask them a few questions and see how responsive and professional they are.Cost-Effectiveness
Not all content management systems are free, but even if they are, you will still most likely need to pay something for all sorts of external services, such as outside web hosting, additional designs, and side extensions, to name a few. Obviously, you would like to make sure that the services are worth the fees you will have to pay.
This is why you need to browse the company's pricing packages so that you can select the optimal one for your business needs and budget. In addition, some CMS platforms offer free trials, which is a good sign, as it shows you that the company is interested in long-term and mutually beneficial cooperation.
Best Platforms to Create a Website
The table below shows the most popular and commercially successful content management systems to date:
Summary and Conclusion
Whether you are involved in e-commerce, offer online services or just want to post blogs, managing your content correctly is essential for the ultimate success of your enterprise. This requires considerable amounts of knowledge, skills, and experience, though. Plus, it takes a lot of time and effort, which could otherwise be invested in other business tasks.
Fortunately, there are plenty of very good CMS platforms that can develop your website and manage its content for you, facilitating your business activity and boosting your public image at the same time. In this article, we explained how to search for the best CMS and provided a list of top platforms for you to choose from.
Which content management system turns out to be most suitable for your website will depend on your particular needs and budget. We hope that the information here provided will help you find the optimal CMS software to enhance your online activity and increase your profits.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best CMS platform for electronic commerce?
WordPress and Shopify are probably the optimal e-commerce CMS platforms for beginners and advanced traders alike. You can read the corresponding sections of this article to decide which of the two best suits your preferences and business needs.
Which content management system is best for a small online enterprise?
From our list of software, WordPress seems most suitable for a small website, and it provides a kaleidoscopic variety of tools for business development and expansion as well.
Do I need hosting or a domain name to use a CMS?
Yes, you do. Actually, you need hosting for any website, in the first place. You can either get a domain name directly from your CMS platform or purchase it elsewhere. The best free content management systems will let you use their domains, although it will make your site look very amateur. Therefore, you will do well to register your own one instead.
Are the CMS good for blogging?
Yes, they are. Some content management systems even specialize in blogging, and they will certainly make the job a lot easier for you. If you are new to blogging, you should look for a platform that does not have a steep learning curve, is easy to set up, and does not expect you to be proficient in coding.
From our list of companies, WordPress is the best for this purpose. In fact, it has a separate platform, called WordPress.com, that provides blog hosting services free of charge for registered users. It offers thousands of free themes, features, and plugins that are SEO-friendly and has a drag-and-drop editor too.
What CMS should I use for my website if I am new to web development?
As a general rule, open-source CMS software is the easiest to use and requires minimal technical knowledge. From our list, it would be WordPress and Drupal. However, the so-called all-in-one systems, like Webflow, can also be used without having advanced coding skills, although they do not really provide for much customization or integration.