11 February 2022

How do you choose a content management system (CMS) that suits your business?

Steven
️ Blog
7 min. reading time

In the wonderful world of the CMS, there are 1001 flavors: from an open-source solution, cool headless e-commerce solution, Digital Experience Platforms (DXP), Website Content Management (WCM) to a large SaaS solution. Precisely because there is so much choice, it is difficult to choose a CMS, while it is still one of the most essential building blocks of your website or webshop.

We often see that the digital agency is listened to, which can basically be a good choice. We do see that many digital agencies have a preference for one or two CMSs. This means that as a marketing manager or IT manager you do not always make the right choice immediately. That is why we have put together a checklist. This makes it a lot easier to make a choice between the different CMSs. Please note, in this article we do not compare CMSs, but we give you the space to do this yourself. 

Community 

An essential part of choosing a CMS is the underlying community. In the case of CMS selection, a community consists of the amount of users and developers. You could say that “the bigger the better” applies on both levels. 

When we look at the number of users or customers of a CMS, this often gives a good idea of ​​its capabilities and potential scalability. Of course, make sure that these users are comparable to you as a user, both in terms of industry and company size. For example, an ecommerce CMS like Bloomreach targets businesses other than Shopify. The wishes of a small webshop will probably fit best with Shopify, while a large webshop can be better served by Bloomreach. 

The point about the developers focuses on the amount of developers available to work on your project. We always recommend selecting a CMS in collaboration with an implementation partner, but check out the rest of the community. This way you can always migrate to another party if necessary. In addition, a large community gives a better chance to develop a development team yourself when necessary. 

(Monthly costs

The costs of a project are often the first pillar when renewing a website. It is true that there can be many different (hidden) costs when selecting a CMS, both for implementation and for the monthly maintenance costs. A statement we often hear is “open source is free after all, let's go for it.” Basically this is correct. You can start for free with an open-source CMS such as WordPress or Drupal. But if many different costs have to be incurred for the implementation of a CMS, a standardized SaaS CMS for a fixed amount per month can be quite interesting. In addition, the monthly costs are very different. With an open-source implementation, it is important to invest yourself monthly in the maintenance and management of the website. And if you want to do that right, it goes a little further than a simple “press the update button”. 

Content 

“Content is king'', and this is especially true when selecting a CMS. Both the quantity and the different content variants have a direct influence on the choice of a CMS. When a large (historical) amount of content is available, it is nice to work with a CMS that makes it easy to quickly migrate and manage content. If you sell one or two products or publish one blog per month, the content options of the CMS have less influence. 

Another aspect is the multilingualism of the content. This can lead to a lot of work with one CMS, while with another it is a piece of cake. In addition, the content management is part of the CMS consideration. For example, think of the amount of people who post, write and review content before it goes live. If you want to know more about writing good content, read our blog about that.

Steven Founder[email protected]06-20413957
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