Firstly, what is a CMS? A content management system is a backend system designed to help you create, manage and publish content on your website without having to know or rely on someone with coding experience. A CMS is somewhere where you can store your media, create articles and move content around pages.

With so many options available to choose from, where do you start when selecting the best option for your website? We delve into some of the available options and what might make them a good or bad choice for you.

Craft CMS

Craft CMS is usually our choice of CMS as it has a content creator first approach to the backend. Pixel and Tonic, the creators of Craft strive to make the backend as accessible as possible. They are striving to achieve AA conformance for WCAG 2.2 web standards, which is currently the highest level to achieve (WCAG 3 is in the works). You can read more about their progress on their website.

Because of Craft’s accessible structure, it is less likely to get content overload when trying to edit a page. It is easier to move content structure up and down the page and you can even copy whole blocks from one page to another, saving a lot of time recreating blocks. This will be a massive improvement to anyone who has ever used Custom fields in Wordpress.

With the flexibility for developers to make the backend as easy as possible to use, Craft allows you to colour code blocks, give blocks icons and group blocks into specific categories. This allows developers to segregate content types so content creators can easily find what they are looking for.

The scalability of Craft CMS is also great for clients looking to their future needs. Craft allows for complex integrations through plugins already created, or a simple modular code base for developing something like API connections or simply extending features. Craft comes with a large development community that have already created plugins for most third party systems. What sets these plugins apart is that they are tested and approved by Pixel and Tonic before they are added to the plugin store.

There have been many cases in which we’ve been asked to update multiple brands within one organisation. This is where Craft sets itself apart, as we can control multiple sites within one CMS, making it easier for clients to access all their content in one place.

With a Craft site, you are required to self host it, so this requires paying for a hosting plan and maintaining that, this is something we can help with. The pricing of Craft goes from a free single user plan to a pro plan which is a one off cost of $399. Hosting your own system is also beneficial in that you are not susceptible to any unwanted changes made like a SaSS platform might do.

Hubspot

Hubspot CMS is designed to fit in directly with the rest of the Hubspot eco-system. An all in one marketing platform that allows you to have all your data in one place without complex integrations. 

If you are already using Hubspot tools to keep track of your users, adding Hubspot CMS is the obvious choice. You would then have visibility to user traffic, where users enter and exit your site and this allows you to make decisions on how to improve your website. All this is in one place, rather than having to incorporate multiple tools like Google Analytics.

The backend of Hubspot uses a drag and drop block editor which makes it easy for content creators to add blocks of content. The page editor also shows you changes in real time, making it easier to maintain structure in the design.

With Hubspot's development system: HubL, developers can create new blocks to add to the drag and drop block editor. This allows your CMS to be specific to your needs and to make sure it scales when you do.

The cost to operate a Hubspot site is similar to a SaSS platform in that they host your site for you and you pay a subscription fee. There is also a free plan available but this comes with Hubspot branding. The cost per month is also very similar to other SaSS platforms, but it also comes loaded with all the CRM features of Hubspot.

As mentioned in the SaSS platforms, Hubspot has a tiered system on its CMS plans, so the more content you need and the more features you need, the more it will cost you per month.

SaSS Platforms

Webflow, Squarespace and WIX

The quickest way to get a site up and running is to use a SaaS platform or more commonly known, a website builder. These systems are built to be simple to use and for rapid development. This has its advantages but this can also be a problem further down the line. 

These platforms make it easy to create pages and add content with rich text fields and drag and drop components. Although most  SaaS platforms require a higher level of subscription to add many pages. If your site has a lot of complex content, SaaS platforms can feel a bit clunky at times when trying to reorder or manipulate content in a specific way.

If you are already thinking of expanding your website or you want to add some complex features, SaSS platforms may not be the best choice for you. These systems are made to be simple, so adding in third party integrations requires just chucking some code into a “custom code” field and hoping it works for you.

SaSS platforms operate on a subscription model, so you pay a monthly fee for everything. This includes hosting, system updates and all the server level fees required for developing a website.

The subscription model can also be costly, the more complex and more information required, can lead to paying for higher subscriptions. An example of this could be Webflow’s ecommerce subscription. The more items you want to sell the higher the costs become. So if you just go with Webflow because it starts off cheaper you’ve committed to it as it becomes more difficult to change further down the line when you’re selling many products.

One of my biggest issues with SaSS platforms is the influx of AI generated templates being used. They all share the same AI bias and make your brand look like a software company or Crypto currency trading site.

Wordpress

The number one option for many, Wordpress is the most used “CMS” in the world. Starting its life as a blogging platform, Wordpress has transformed itself into a platform with the ability to handle a wide range of project requirements.

The main selling point for Wordpress is the fact that it is a free to use system. Although it is free, to actually build something isn’t free. There is a requirement to add third party plugins to make the system more user friendly. The most popular plugin added to sites is “Advanced Custom Fields” which allows the developer to make the content creation side easier.

Because Wordpress started as a blogging system, the requirements where different in terms of getting content on a page. A single rich text field was enough to write a one page article about a topic, but website pages require more than this. Being able to adjust page content blocks has become a standard requirement. Wordpress has been trying to improve on is the content creation system, in which I still think it is severely lacking. With a new content block system, mimicking the drag and drop functionality of a Sass platform, it is making strides in the finding of blocks but the page builder is still very clunky and hard to find what you are looking for. In the classic Wordpress way of allowing anything in their system, there is a lot of paid additions to this which is a minefield to navigate what is built well and what is surface level designs.

With a built in live preview, Wordpress allows you to view changes made to a page and share with stakeholders. There are limitations with the Wordpress implementation of this though, in that if you are editing a live/published page, you can’t save the changes and maintain the changes, so your updates are removed after a period of inactivity.

There are 3rd party plugins that have also tried to solve these issues, the main ones being Elementor and Beaver Builder. The problem with these plugins, is that they become difficult to make the changes you want as they are a very optimised for simplicity. Another issue with these plugins are that they tend to make it more difficult to make your website accessible for everyone, such as adding ARIA tags to elements or simply changing colours to be what you want them to be.

As it is the most used CMS in the world, it is also the most targeted system in the world. Wordpress has a lot of vulnerabilities because of its open market for plugins, so you have to be careful what is added to your website.

Headless CMS

Why would you ever use a headless CMS? Well the CMS is decoupled and can be used across various systems. An example of this would be if your main service was a client portal and this was handled by your CMS, but you also wanted to have access to user profiles to sign into your Intranet. This could be handled all within the same system.

Most CMS options will allow a headless version using a RESTful API or using GraphQL, but Common Headless options include Strapi, Contentful and Craft CMS. Using queries like this can lead to improved performance and allows the developer to be more creative in the displaying of the data received, such as infinite scrolling and page transitions.

This would not be recommended to someone who was looking to create an easy or plug and play website. These types of systems require a lot of development experience. Another reason you wouldn't use a headless CMS would be when the time required to implement is short as again it requires a lot of development time to create RESTful or GraphQL queries for everything.

In Summary

There are many options available to you and it can feel like a mine field to decide what is the best way forward for your company. The best way to choose your CMS is to find the one that best aligns with your digital strategy and will align with your business as it grows, we have a Digital team in house that can help you create a strategy.

If you are looking to do something quickly then SaSS platforms will get you there, where as if you want to be more strategic and create pages that convert, then CMS platforms such as Craft CMS and Hubspot will align with your business much better.