Many companies are turning to CMS platforms that offer greater marketing options these days. Custom website development is not rare, but it is fading as companies are finding marketing CMS platforms much easier for website development and management.
This push towards using CMS platforms comes as companies try to make the development process simpler. Both premium and open source CMS platforms are popular amongst developers, each for their unique advantages.
The problem for companies is often the choice they have to make between many top marketing CMS platforms. Even when one considers open-source CMS options only, the number of options makes it difficult to make a clear choice.
In this situation, companies need to understand the different benefits of each CMS. Whether it’s WordPress or Kentico CMS, companies must understand the advantages of using either of the two.
There are naturally some marketing CMS platforms that are more popular than others. However, popularity alone should not be a metric to decide a good CMS. If a company chooses Kentico CMS, it should know exactly why it is making this choice. The same is true if a company chooses WordPress or Drupal CMS.
It is impossible to cover all the great CMS platforms which a company can use to start a website. The best course of action is to narrow down the scope of discussion to a smaller number of CMS platforms that are also right from a marketing perspective.
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Five Marketing CMS Platforms You Should Know About
In this piece, we will cover some of the best marketing CMS platforms companies can use to develop and promote their websites. Furthermore, we will cover the advantage of using each CMS and the advantage of using each.
#1 WordPress – One of the Best Marketing CMS Platforms
Generally, many beginners tend to use CMS and WordPress interchangeably. This is indicative of the vast popularity of WordPress as a content management system. A third of the world’s websites use WordPress, a mind-boggling stat considering the number of websites in the world.
Individuals, companies, and organizations; anyone who needs a website seems to trust WordPress as one of the top marketing CMS platforms.
There are many reasons for the popularity of WordPress. Firstly, it is the default CMS choice in the market. Finding people who know how to use WordPress well is much easier compared to other options such as Sitecore or Drupal CMS.
Secondly, WordPress offers an entire library of plugins that extend its functionality to the level of any custom-made website.
Generally, companies that prefer custom web development tend to avoid WordPress because they fear they won’t have development options. The WordPress plugin library offers virtually endless possibilities. It includes any feature a modern company needs to make its website ideal for its target audience.
If the plugin library falls short, WordPress also allows developers a code editor to customize or develop any feature on a website. Thus, the possibilities with WordPress are literally endless.
Another advantage of using WordPress is the marketing possibilities it offers. Its vast plugin library allows companies to make their website ideal for marketing campaigns.
This is a big reason many people choose WordPress. The compression of development issues in WordPress allows companies to explore a range of marketing possibilities through content development and other practices. Regular updates also ensure WordPress is safe from garden variety cyber-attacks that often harm custom made websites.
#2 Magento
Magento is one of the most reliable and trusted marketing CMS platforms around. Generally, companies looking to get into online retail tend to go for Magento. This is because a lot of its features serve ecommerce companies. This is why it’s not wise to put WordPress and Magento on the same pedestal.
Many ecommerce websites you find online are likely to be using Magento. There are many reasons many online retail companies consider Magento a top choice as an ecommerce CMS. While WordPress can also be used for running an ecommerce website, Magento is the more authentic option. This is because its features specifically make it ideal for online retail.
What are the advantages of using Magento as the CMS for an ecommerce website?
There are many plus points. To start off, Magento allows for the smooth functioning of large ecommerce websites. ‘Large’ here refers to ecommerce websites with over half a million products. On a normal day, a Magento ecommerce website can handle more than 70k orders per hour. These numbers are much higher when put against other ecommerce CMS options such as WooCommerce.
Next, Magento websites are known to offer users the ideal shopping experience. In online retail, the role of ideal user experience cannot be understated. Magento offers incredible functionality to users without much effort on the development side. In many ways, it is a platform built for an ideal ecommerce experience.
Furthermore, the SEO benefits of Magento are also hard to ignore. It automatically creates sitemaps, optimizes landing pages and meta tags, all important parts of search optimization.
Since Magento is also open source and regularly updated, it becomes one of the best choices amongst CMS platforms.
#3 Drupal
Choosing Drupal has certain prerequisites that aren’t required for using WordPress.
Drupal is a popular example of one of the top CMS choices for marketing. It finds use in large corporations and well-staffed departments where collaboration and delegation are very common.
There are natural advantages to using Drupal, but there also exist a range of disadvantages. While the former outweigh the latter, the decision to use Drupal is still subjective and entirely up to the discretion of the company building the website.
Generally, Drupal is known for demanding programming knowledge as a prerequisite for any developer who uses the CMS. Unlike WordPress which doesn’t require developers to know any programming, Drupal is a CMS for developers who have some remedial knowledge in coding or using a CMS earlier.
There are many advantages websites using Drupal enjoy. Firstly, Drupal offers all levels of programming functions a developer might need. The diversity of content publishing options is also unique as Drupal allows the publication of blogs, videos, images, and all other mediums of content.
However, the biggest advantage of using Drupal is the availability of features to allow collaboration. Using Drupal, different users can contribute to the same content, just like a Google Doc or Sheet. This functionality is crucial within a large company where collaboration is essential for the completion of a project.
Then there is plugin support. Drupal allows developers to either create their own plugins or use existing ones. While the plugin library of Drupal isn’t as big as the one on WordPress, the availability of programming functions neutralizes this advantage of the latter.
The main disadvantage of Drupal is that it can only be used by those who know to program. While it’s great on the user side, developers need to know programming experience before working on Drupal.
#4 Kentico – One of old and reliable Marketing CMS Platforms
Kentico is an older CMS known for helping create many different types of websites such as blogs, ecommerce stores, intranet portals, and web 2.0 platforms.
Considered an old warhorse in the CMS arena, Kentico came around in 2004 and has slowly made its way into the mainstream. Its main USP is its open nature to marketing campaigns. As far as marketing CMS platforms go, Kentico always finds a way into the discussion.
Like all names on this list, Kentico CMS comes with its own set of upsides and drawbacks. In the end, the task of weighing the advantages and disadvantages falls on the company building the website. Generally, companies find that the benefits of using Kentico, especially on the marketing side, far outweigh the downsides.
What are the advantages of using Kentico?
To start with, Kentico offers a plethora of features that are ready to be deployed from the word go. Unlike most other marketing CMS platforms where developers have to setup various operations, all features are ready to perform with little change needed in the configuration.
This ensures the implementation of the websites using Kentico is much faster.
Secondly, Kentico is also an open platform that allows for a wide range of collaborations. This is important for companies involved in a large project where the input of different users is crucial. Other advantages of using Kentico is its seamless transition in offering marketing features such as email marketing, A/B testing, contact management, marketing automation, and so on.
Other features such as payment gateway integration for ecommerce users are also crucial. The ‘what you see is what you get’ editor only adds to the ease of use from the backend. Furthermore, a responsive web design helps enhance user experience too.
#4 Sitecore
While Sitecore is not as popular as the likes of WordPress or Magento, it is still a reliable CMS. It numbers amongst the top marketing CMS platforms and has some unique advantages.
Like Kentico, Sitecore comes from the old-school world of content management systems. With many modern features within the platform, especially those helping with marketing, Sitecore is an obvious choice for many companies whose main objective of building a website is effective marketing.
Generally, Sitecore finds use amongst corporate departments and companies which offer marketing as a service. In other words, Sitecore is the marketer’s CMS choice, something worth pointing out when discussing the top CMS options.
Sitecore CMS is fairly popular in the market as a reliable option. It comes with its own unique set of benefits. For one, Sitecore is the best possible CMS in case companies are looking for an option that prioritizes user experience. Developers have a ton of options to optimize user experience from the backend and make sure the overall interface is optimal.
Secondly, Sitecore CMS allows developers to run multilingual content. This is a major advantage and generally, the key reason corporates choose Sitecore over more popular alternatives such as WordPress. Global companies have to offer people across the world the option of viewing the content in their own native language. Sitecore offers this functionality.
A disadvantage of using Sitecore is customer service. Developers can only reach Sitecore executives through third-party channels, a major drawback.
#5 HubSpot
HubSpot is very popular as a platform offering key marketing tips to SEOs and content professionals. Thus, its existence as a CMS comes as a surprise to many marketers and developers.
The obvious advantage of using HubSpot is combining the basic operations of a website with the marketing side. There is a large demographic of companies out there that are looking for a CMS which is only geared towards marketing operations. HubSpot provides a solution to this demographic. Developers can take a HubSpot CMS demo to first judge whether it stands up to the requirements of a typical website.
Is HubSpot CMS free? No, HubSpot CMS pricing varies depending on the plan developers choose.
The CMS mobile version of websites using HubSpot works well when compared to many other new examples of marketing CMS platforms.
The advantages of using HubSpot are many. Firstly, it integrates all the modern marketing needs of a website on the platform. Like Sitecore and Kentico, HubSpot is ideal for companies that want to focus on marketing their content.
The main disadvantage of HubSpot CMS is that it’s still relatively new. Compared to the likes of WordPress or Sitecore, HubSpot is still very young and not the type of CMS developers use across the board. Furthermore, the HubSpot CMS cost also makes it a dicey prospect as there are other CMS options that are more popular and available for free.
In Conclusion – The Top Marketing CMS Platforms
In this piece, we covered some of the important marketing CMS platforms. Since there are many options available, we kept the discussion down to five CMS options.
Each CMS platform on this list is very good for companies looking for CMS options that integrate various marketing operations seamlessly with a website.
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