Content Management Systems (CMS) allow you to quickly and easily create a custom website, manage your content and site elements to provide a seamless experience for your visitors, without having to learn a programming language. Having the right content management system (CMS) is essential to effectively manage a website.

There are many content management systems on the market, each with its own advantages and disadvantages and catering to people with different levels of technical skills and business goals. Finding the best content management systems for your unique needs can seem overwhelming. Some of these tools are aimed almost exclusively at helping you launch a website, while others are more focused on managing your content.

In this article, we’ll review the top 20   most popular content management systems platforms, along with their features and benefits and the criteria you can use to choose a CMS platform for your business, regardless of your level of technical skill or experience with website creation.

What Is a Content Management System (CMS)?

A content management system (CMS) platform is software for creating websites and managing and publishing content on the web. Without a content management system, you would have to code to create a website in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS programming languages and publish content online.

   Content management systems platforms solve this problem by allowing users to create a website without writing code or learning programming and manage the site’s content in an easy-to-use editor without writing code. But if you already know how to code, you can look for a developer-friendly CMS.

A good CMS platform can help you manage as many types of content as you want, such as blog posts, static pages, e-commerce products, forum posts, memberships, etc.

What Is the Difference Between a Website Builder and A CMS?

A website builder is another popular type of software that can help you create websites without coding, but it differs from a CMS.  The main differences between a website builder and a CMS are:

Hosting

Website builders tend to provide hosting services with their product, while CMS software is usually self-hosted. This means that you can choose to host services separately depending on your needs.

 Scalability

 Website builders are generally more limited in terms of site scalability. On the other hand, most CMS platforms, especially those that are open source, offer a variety of extensions and plugins to scale a site.

TOP 20 Most Popular Content Management Systems (CMS) 

1. WordPress

WordPress is a free, open-source CMS known for its flexibility and scalability for beginners who don’t have coding skills to build a site as well as for experienced users. Over 42% of all websites use WordPress, making it the most popular Content Management Systems platform.

This makes it the most popular content management system in the world. WordPress has all the tools you need to create, edit, manage and cater to any type of website (online store, auction site, membership site, etc).

In addition, with thousands of themes and plugins, WordPress helps you create any type of website, customize the design of your site, and add unlimited and user-friendly features to fit your growing business. It is one of the complete Content Management Systems that you can use to create any type of website, from e-commerce stores to membership sites, forums, etc.

WordPress also offers an open-source e-commerce plugin called WooCommerce which is one of the most popular ways to set up an online store without any technical complexity. Its interface and website themes are quite simple to use, its intuitive dashboard allows you to tweak the look of your site, install a plugin, change permalink settings, add blog posts, etc.

There are actually two different versions of WordPress: WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

WordPress.com is a hosted version of WordPress, which means you can create a website for free using a WordPress subdomain. After that, you’ll have a site at your disposal to customize, add content and publish your posts immediately.

Managing a blog on this platform is free, but if you need advanced features and options, you can choose one of the paid plans. This is a highly customizable CMS that keeps things simple and clear. There are many themes and plugins to choose from.

WordPress.com has a built-in analytics system, which means you can see statistics on how many people visit your site in your dashboard. WordPress.com is best for those who are only interested in blogging and want to get familiar with the platform, but it is not suitable for businesses.

WordPress.org

This is an open-source, self-hosted version of WordPress which means that you will need to get your web hosting service elsewhere, but this process is very simple. It’s a perfect choice for content-intensive websites like blogs.

WordPress is really well designed for search engine optimization (SEO). It’s easy to create SEO-friendly URLs, categories, and tags for your posts. You can also choose from many SEO plugins to help you do more.

Key Features:

– User management 

WordPress allows you to assign roles and access to different types of users: administrators, editors, authors, contributors, and subscribers.

– Media management :

you can include alt text and captions when inserting images to improve SEO. 

– Integrated comments:

you can allow visitors to comment on pages and articles.

Pros:

– It is easy to use and suitable for beginners without coding knowledge.

– The largest collection of plugins and specialized themes to create virtually any type of site

– User-friendly dashboard for content management

– Full control over your site

– access to over 55,000 free plugins

– adapts to any type of site: online store, paid membership, forum etc.

– Fully customizable designs

– Mobile-friendly content

– Easy SEO

– Powerful media management tools

– Great community, which provides great support

Cons:

– Not all WordPress plugins and themes are reliable or high quality.

– customer support relies mainly on forums, tutorials, and documentation and there is no personal customer support,

– full control means learning a lot

– May have security issues and is vulnerable to attacks without additional security measures.

Best for:

WordPress can work for all levels of users, from those looking to start a simple blog to those creating a complex site. While there is certainly a slight learning curve, it remains extremely flexible for beginners and professionals alike. Advanced users will appreciate the ability to modify and customize the code.

Pricing: Free

As open-source software, WordPress can be downloaded for free. However, you must pay for a domain name, hosting, and any plugins or premium themes you wish to install.

2. Drupal

Drupal is one of the highly flexible, free, open-source content management systems (CMS) for a wide range of developers, marketers, and agencies. Drupal is intended for marketers with basic experience creating a site from a template, or for developers to create a site that wants to deliver a high-level customer experience with large amounts of content and across multiple channels.

Key Features:

Drupal has over 46,000 modules available in its directory and thousands of free themes in its theme repository. Drupal also has a built-in user access system that gives you full control over what registered users can do in the CMS.

– Advanced customizations

Drupal’s modules and themes are highly configurable which means that if you have the required coding skills, you can use these resources to create a site that does exactly what you want.

This makes Drupal particularly suitable if you want to create a highly customized site that needs to handle a lot of data. With Drupal, you can create a personalized customer experience using data from geolocation, browser history, device type, and behavioral taxonomies.

– Multilingual

 Machine translation supports over 100 languages. 

– Marketing Automation

Create automated marketing campaigns to increase reach. There are over 6,000 add-ons available for Drupal, making it easy to extend Drupal’s functionality to do just about anything you want.

– Robust Security

Drupal has the best security reputation among open-source content management systems platforms. To ensure platform security, Drupal takes advantage of database encryption, user access control, DoS attack prevention, automatic updates and kernel validation, GitHub partnership, security report sharing, and malicious data entry prevention.

This makes it a content management system (CMS) of choice for banks, government organizations, healthcare facilities, and other websites requiring robust security and scalability. However, since these updates are not automatic, site owners must remember to make them and adhere to other best practices.

– A very active community

Drupal has a very active community that generates documentation that is constantly updated and improved, forums and even face-to-face events.

Pros:

– Less vulnerable to security threats among open-source platforms.

– Large selection of modules (over 6,000 modules) and highly configurable themes

– Strong community support, with face-to-face channels and meetings.

-Easy user management with an integrated system where you can create new roles and specify their permissions.

Cons:

– Since Drupal was designed for developers, you need knowledge of PHP, CSS, and HTML coding to take advantage of its full power.

– Managing the platform, such as upgrading to a new version, can be time-consuming.

Best for:

Drupal is a good CMS platform for advanced users with great coding skills to create large-scale, complex sites or for people who are able to hire a developer. There is definitely a learning curve, and it’s not for beginners.

Drupal is commonly used in various sectors such as fintech, entertainment, education, healthcare, e-commerce, tourism, media and publishing, and NGOs, online forums, or user-generated content websites.

Pricing: Free

Like WordPress, Drupal is open-source software that can be downloaded for free.  However, having been designed for developers the costs associated with creating and managing a Drupal site are much higher than WordPress, especially for non-technical users.

3. Joomla

Joomla is another popular free and open-source CMS platform that comes with many different templates and extensions, but it is more difficult to learn than WordPress. With Joomla, you can create powerful online applications and user-friendly websites with multilingual search engine features and multi-user permission levels.

With its built-in features, you can manage hundreds of users, build pages in multiple languages, and create custom post types that use different templates or themes. You can also configure many of your site’s settings for multi-level user permissions, edit your posts, banners, menus, media, redirects, and SEO settings.

Users with some experience in web development, on the other hand, can use Joomla’s built-in flexibility to create more complex sites right out of the box. However, the initial setup can be difficult for non-technical users.

Key Features:

Joomla has become the preferred software of leading website builders because of its outstanding features. Joomla has excellent tools for user management, which makes it a popular choice for membership-based sites.

Another important feature of Joomla is the ability to use multiple themes and templates for different pages and content types simultaneously.

Ease of use

Joomla has more out-of-the-box functionality than most open-source content management systems. There are also tons of plugins and add-ons for Joomla so extending Joomla’s functionality doesn’t necessarily require custom coding.

Customization

With over 6,000 extensions available in the official directory you can get additional functionality and control over your site. However, you will have to do this on the backend of your site. That’s why Joomla has a steep learning curve for beginners. And their installation and management are more difficult on Joomla than on WordPress.

Security

Joomla regularly releases security patches, but the lack of built-in functionality to schedule automatic updates gives attackers more opportunities to target known vulnerabilities.

– Banner Management Tool

Banner management tool allows you to create advertising campaigns to monetize your website.

– Multilingual

Over 70 languages are available for websites using the platform’s core software.

Content Management

Joomla Content Management includes Document Indexing, Full-Text Search, Text Editor, Version Control, Web Site Management.

– Search

Help visitors find the right information on a site by using a built-in search tool or a smart search function.

A very active developer community

Joomla has a very active developer community with over 200,000 users and contributors who provide information and tutorials.

Pros:

– Joomla has more out-of-the-box functionality (Over 7000 extensions) than most open-source content management systems.

– User authentication can be done with OpenID, Google, and LDAP, among others.

– Very active user community and tons of documentation available.

Cons:

It doesn’t have as many extensions or add-ons as WordPress.

– Extensions are more difficult to install and manage.

– Lack of built-in functionality for scheduling automatic updates makes sites vulnerable.

– Lack of high-quality themes compared to some other content management systems.

– Can be excessive for simple sites

Best for:

Joomla is packed with features however, it is an ideal content management system platform for experienced developers and website builders, so it is not a good option for beginners. If your content strategy involves a mix of various content it might be a better option for you.

Pricing: Free

It is free to use, but you will have to pay for domain registration, hosting, themes and maintenance to create and operate a Joomla site. Costs associated with hosting and site design tend to be higher for Joomla sites than for WordPress sites. Average cost: $700 to $6,500 for creation and maintenance.

4. Wix

Wix is one of the simplest website builders available on the market. Its simple and intuitive drag-and-drop building tool makes it a popular choice for non-technical users who want to create a website from scratch. So you can add elements to your site and manage your content without writing a single line of code.

All you have to do is answer a few questions about yourself, your business, and your goals, and Wix ADI will create a high-quality site on the spot. You can use Wix to publish a blog, run an e-commerce site, and basically publish any type of content you want on the web. Wix lets you know how many people are viewing your site and which content is performing the best.

Key Features:

One of its best features is its ability to automatically optimize your site for mobile. Wix’s drag-and-drop interface makes it very easy to create pages that look like what you want. You can select any part of your page and start editing it. Wix offers many pre-designed and fully responsive templates on mobile and desktop.

Pros:

– Over 500 free templates

– The dashboard is very easy to navigate.

– Optimized for SEO and mobile

– Create password-protected membership pages

– Contact management tools for membership lists

– Booking and calendar management

– Blog management tools with multiple editors and contributors

– Photo, video, and media management tools

– Free hosting and free SSL certificate

– E-commerce functionality with product pages, payment acceptance, and store management.

We have full instructions on how to move your Wix site to WordPress.

Cons:

– with a free account, you have very limited capabilities

– limited number of free applications and e-commerce features

– inability to modify a template once it has been chosen without losing all data.

– Additional costs can add up quickly

– it has many disadvantages from an SEO perspective.

Best for:

Wix is a popular CMS platform for bloggers who don’t have design or coding skills and those who don’t want to limit themselves to the blog option but extend it to any other type of website.

It is specifically designed for online stores, restaurants, e-commerce, and portfolios, thanks to its ease of use and scalable build approach.

Pricing:

Like WordPress, you can create a Wix website for free. The platform is free to use with a Wix subdomain. The free plan requires you to use an assigned Wix subdomain and display ads on the front end of your site.

This means that you cannot run an online store on Wix, you will need to upgrade to a paid plan to remove the Wix branding and get the most out of your website.

There are several paid plans available:

– Combo – $13 per month

– Unlimited – $17 per month

– Pro – $22 per month

– VIP – $39 per month

If you wish to accept online payments, you will need to pay $23/month or more (again, annual upfront payment).

5. Squarespace

Squarespace is another hosted website builder that offers features including domain registration, hosting, responsive themes and templates, and expert assistance is perfect for beginners or anyone who doesn’t want to code from scratch. Squarespace acts provide you with all the essential ingredients of a website, such as domain name, web hosting, SSL certificate, extensions, etc.

One of the main attractions of Squarespace is beautiful designs, with a multitude of professional themes and templates that can be fully customized to create a stylish and professional-looking website.

Key Features:

Although this content management system is not open source, it offers its users the ability to make some modifications to the HTML/CSS and Java code. Squarespace comes with a built-in repository of mobile-friendly themes that you can modify using CSS.

 You can also use the style editor to customize fonts, colors, and other theme settings.  Squarespace offers basic image manipulation features to allow for on-the-fly image editing. You can designate multiple contributors and assign different access rights to keep site management from becoming complicated.

With built-in e-commerce, blogging, SEO, and analytics tools, you can create and optimize your site to attract more visitors and grow your business.

Pros:

– Custom domain and hosting are included

– Free domain for the first year

– Intuitive and easy to use interface, even for beginners

– Integrated SSL encryption

– E-commerce tools

– Free logo creation tool

– E-commerce and blogging features

– Third-party extensions to extend the functionality

– Integrated marketing tools

– SEO tools and mobile optimization

– 24/7 customer support

Cons:

– You can only use the features of the platform

– Few integrations are available

– It offers few extensions to enhance the functionality of your site.

Best for:

This CMS platform is known for its beautiful designs, which makes it a top choice for those who do not code gurus but want to build a beautiful and secure site. Squarespace also has tools for creating blogs. That said if a blog is the main function of your site this CMS is not necessarily that platform for you.

Squarespace is definitely more suited to managing visual content than text-rich pages. Squarespace can meet the needs of sites including restaurants, online stores, professional services, etc.

Pricing:

Here’s a quick overview of plans and pricing for Squarespace CMS:

– Personal – $12 per month

– Business – $18 per month

– Basic Commerce – $26 per month

– Advanced Commerce – $40 per month

The above pricing is all based on an annual contract. Monthly plans are available at a higher starting price.

6. Shopify

Shopify is the best all-in-one hosted content management systems platform for e-commerce websites to set up and manage an entire store. Shopify after WooCommerce is the second most popular way to create an e-commerce store. It is an all-in-one website builder and content management system with integrated payment processing for online sales.

Key Features:

Ease of use

Shopify thanks to a range of features, security, and support to help you manage your site makes running an e-commerce store very simple. In addition to its CMS, Shopify has other tools for building a brand, selling on social media, selling through online marketplaces, and handling in-person sales with Shopify POS.

Shopify allows you to easily manage all aspects of your products such as setting variants, allowing inventory tracking, adjusting prices, adding weights, changing the order of your products, and much more. You can use Shopify’s built-in blogging tools, customer reviews, out-of-the-box payment options for customers, abandoned cart recovery, and web traffic and product analytics, among others, to get your store up and running quickly.

Shopify also takes care of software updates and other aspects of the day-to-day management of your site.

Customization

Because Shopify is a proprietary platform, you can’t change its code, but you can change the look and feel of your site by choosing from over 70 themes and about 5,700 free and paid applications in the official Shopify store.

Security

Shopify also handles security issues, manually backs up your website, and makes sure the software is up to date for you. Shopify has more features and extensions to help your eCommerce business grow. You can use Shopify Payments to process credit card payments on your site and avoid transaction fees, Multi-Currency to allow customers to pay with their local currency, and Shopify Pay to allow customers to save their payment details for faster checkout.

Pros:

– It has a simple drag-and-drop interface.

– Ideal for new store owners

– Limited selection of themes and applications

– Handles backups and software updates for you

– As a hosted tool, you don’t have to worry about the security or maintenance of your store.

– Manage your products and sell them from your site, social media, and online marketplaces.

– Integrated marketing tools

– Simple dashboard to manage products, orders, payments, and shipping.

– Over 4,100 apps to add features and functionality to your site.

– Free SSL Certificate

– Unlimited products

– 24/7 support

Cons:

– You won’t have full access to the underlying source code of your store.

– Costs can be quite high, especially if you want to add many third-party apps to your store.

Shopify apps are more limited than WordPress plugins

Best for:

The e-commerce and point-of-sale features make this CMS perfect for independent entrepreneurs starting or growing their businesses. 

Pricing:

Shopify is a proprietary platform that offers three paid plans.

– Basic – $29 per month

– Shopify – $79 per month

– Advanced – $299 per month

7. Magento

Magento is one of the best open-source e-commerce content management systems platforms on the market created by the huge software company Adobe. Magento offers two versions, the free software called Magento Open Source that you can download and install on your own web hosting account, and Magento Commerce, which comes with full support and is hosted for you, but it is very expensive.

This CMS software is flexible and offers strong security, SEO, and customization to optimize all types of e-commerce sites.  But Magento is also not very accessible to non-technical users. You will definitely need technical knowledge to configure it or hire someone who has that knowledge. Since it is aimed at larger online stores, the platform is powerful enough to showcase a large number of products and orders.

Key features:

– Checkout. Secure payment gateway using Worldpay and Cybersource.

– User-friendly features. The Back-end administration dashboard is touch-sensitive, making it easy to make changes.

– Catalog management. Showcase your products virtually using inventory management, including instant product creation and dynamic pricing.

Ease of use

Magento Open Source is a very flexible platform that you can use to build a site that does exactly what you want. However, it will take you some time to understand and explore all the out-of-the-box features and extensions of the platform, even if you have experience in website development.

Customization

There are more than 3,800 add-ons and applications available on the Magento extensions marketplace that you can install or integrate with your site.

Security

Magento regularly rolls out security patches and updates and has a free Security Scan tool that you can use to receive notifications directly in your dashboard when updates are released so you can perform them as quickly as possible. However, patches and updates must be installed manually and the process can be difficult.

Pros:

– Manage multiple stores in various locations, using different languages and currencies.

– Content management is mobile-friendly.

– Many third-party extensions are available that you can use to add additional functionality.

– The ability to manage multiple products and customers.

– Some payment gateways like PayPal, cash on delivery, and bank transfer, are already integrated with Magento.

Cons:

– Learning the platform and its features takes time, especially for beginners.

– Security patches and updates must be installed manually.

– The average cost of creating a Magento store is thousands of dollars.

Best for:

This CMS is not for beginners. It is mostly used by medium and large-scale e-commerce stores and B2B organizations that need full customization on a large scale.

Pricing:

Magento pricing is not available online. You will need to contact the sales team to get a quote and request a free demo. The Magento Open Source platform is free to download and use but requires a hosting provider and a custom domain.

For the premium Magento Commerce and Magento Commerce Cloud editions, customers should contact the sales team for pricing. The total cost of creating and managing a Magento store varies due to these variables, but a basic Magento store starts at $20,000. Magento Commerce, the fully hosted premium version designed for businesses, starts at $22,000 per year.

8. Contentful

Contentful is a headless (meaning content is not attached to a web page) cloud-based CMS for enterprises that provides tools to create, edit and manage content and an application programming interface (API) to present content as data in one place, and deliver it to any digital channel. For this reason, the platform has a steep learning curve for non-technical users.

Key Features:

Ease of use

Contentful is designed to combine the content management features marketers expect with the flexibility developers need. This API-first platform is a huge advantage for companies looking to deliver out-of-the-box digital experiences, but it can make Contentful difficult to integrate and adopt for smaller companies.

Customization

Contentful allows you to not only customize the look and feel of your web project but also customize the Contentful web application itself. To define a unique content template tailored to the exact design and functionality needs of your project developers and designers will need to create a content template that tells Contentful’s APIs what type of content to send to your final application.

Security

Contentful has top-notch security features, such as encryption of data at rest and in transit, stateful firewall, and threat detection. Contentful also has additional security measures such as application web firewall, DDoS protection, rate limits and captchas, 2FA, etc.

Pros:

– Adaptable to all digital platforms, from web browsers to mobile applications.

– Flexible with different types of content.

– Allows you to create a unique content template for your web project.

– Security features provided by Amazon Web Services and integrated with Contentful.

Cons:

– Focus on the back-end without adjusting the actual layout.

– Creating content on different platforms requires technical knowledge.

– Headless CMS at the enterprise level

-there is a steep learning curve.

Ideal for:

Contentful is great for businesses or individuals creating a custom website that integrates other digital platforms.

Pricing:

Contentful offers three price points:

– For free users (for those who already have a domain name and hosting provider)

– For teams starting at $489 per month and one for enterprises.

– For the level undertaken, you will need to contact the provider to get an accurate quote.

Average cost: $0 to $489 per month

9. Progress Sitefinity

Progress Sitefinity is an excellent CMS platform for digital marketing that allows marketers and developers to easily deliver compelling multi-channel user experiences. What makes this platform unique is that businesses can engage and retain visitors with ease.

In addition, the platform aims to help marketers deliver optimized and personalized content by providing insights to learn more about your customers to create a personalized journey for visitors.  You can also use Progress Sitefinity as a headless CMS to deliver content anywhere and everything is hosted in the Microsoft Azure cloud for reliability and scalability.

– Key Features:

Progress Sitefinity has a wide range of tools to help you build and maintain your company’s website such as customizable templates, document indexing, e-forms, full-text search, SEO management, text editor, version control, video content, website management.

Pros:

– Provides information to optimize the visitor journey.

– A drag-and-drop interface to efficiently create and manage design and content.

– Image management tools and taxonomies to organize digital assets.

– Machine learning (ML) analytics for persistent customizations on your website.

– Connectors for .NET Core and Google Data Studio.

Cons:

– Limited third-party integrations.

– No automatic updates.

Ideal for:

Progress Sitefinity’s multi-channel experience is ideal for large, high-traffic websites that operate in a fast-paced environment.

Pricing:

Progress Sitefinity offers a license and subscription, which is its primary cost, but it is customizable to individual needs. In addition, there is a 30-day trial to test the platform.

10. Kentico

Kentico is another cloud-based headless CMS that helps you manage your content and deliver it to different digital platforms via an API. With Kentico, you can create state-of-the-art websites for your online marketing business or e-commerce organizations.

Kentico offers two different content management systems products:

– Kontent is a free but limited cloud-based headless CMS and you will also need some technical knowledge to create the front-end of your website.

– Xperience is an on-premise or cloud-based platform that combines CMS and digital marketing tools into one product.

Moreover, its excellent marketing tools allow for multiple user management, Google integrations, customer management, to reach more audiences and engage with visitors.  

Key Features:

Kentico’s features include:

– Scheduling. Allows you to regularly schedule tasks, including running summary reports and synchronizing data.

– Built-in spell check to detect typos on all websites.

– Lead scoring to better understand visitor journey and behavior.

And other features like customizable templates, document indexing, e-forms, full-text search, SEO management, text editor, version control, website management.

Pros:

– Easy content management, e-commerce, and online marketing tools.

– Implementation of latest security protocols and data backup features.

Cons:

– Requires technical knowledge to develop a site.

– Cost is higher than other content management systems platforms.

Ideal for:

Often preferred by digital marketers and IT savvy managers, especially and businesses building a large site requiring multi-functionality.

Pricing:

Kentico’s headless CMS pricing plans come with a number of supports and tools:

– Business Plan for $1,249/month.

– Premium Plan for $2,499/month.

11. Magnolia

Magnolia is a headless open-source CMS designed to provide users with tools that support Omnichannel experiences. Magnolia’s platform is flexible, feature-rich, and uses the Java language, making it enterprise-grade software with excellent reliability and stability and a popular choice for marketers.

With Magnolia, you can use AI to instantly find your content from any connected application. This CMS learns your behavior to provide real-time suggestions.

Key Features:

Magnolia supports traditional web pages, interactive apps, digital signage, web-to-print, and any digital touchpoint for content management.  This MCS also includes campaign management, DX architecture, and personalization capabilities.

Users benefit from integration plans, out-of-the-box connectors, and the ability to switch products at any time. Magnolia content management includes Audio content, customizable templates, document indexing, e-forms, full-text search, image editor, SEO management, text editor, version control, video content, website management.

Pros:

– Great scalability to develop a site. 

– Easy to modify pages and customize content.

– Dynamic content pools

– Global content search by AI

– Intelligent tagging for centralized taxonomy

– Automated assembly

– Content planning tools

– Omnichannel delivery

Cons:

– Requires Java language experience to use some features.

– Lacks support and community.

Best for:

This CMS is ideal for technology products and large-scale businesses that can invest more time to create various platforms.

Pricing:

There is no pricing plan with Magnolia, as users need to contact their sales representatives to get a quote. However, a 30-day free trial for developers is available.

12. Hubspot CMS

HubSpot CMS is one of the best content management systems options to create a website equipped with a fully integrated premium content management system that is specifically designed for marketers and business owners. It is also perfect for beginners, as the user-friendly tools of this platform can help publish a website without technical knowledge.

HubSpot CMS has built-in integration with the free HubSpot CRM. Its excellent integrated sales and marketing tools not only increase reach and engagement and add leads directly to your CRM but also customize your website based on each visitor, which can help you convert them into customers.

Developers can dig into the code to customize the site, while non-technical users can build pages using a drag and drop editor.

Key Features:

Ease of use

CMS Hub, allows you to manage, optimize and track the performance of your content with the same platform you used to create it. Since CMS Hub integrates HubSpot’s marketing, sales, and service tools, you can also capture leads, perform A/B testing, create email campaigns and track contact information directly in your dashboard.

 CMS Hub Professional comes with HubSpot’s integrated CRM, allowing you to use intelligent content to create multiple versions of your website pages, landing pages, emails, and forms based on specific criteria you have stored about your contacts. To help you get up to speed with this platform as quickly as possible, CMS Hub includes pop-ups and suggested tooltips to guide you step-by-step through creating pages, optimizing your content for search engines, adding a live chat to your site, and more.

Customization

CMS Hub is a powerful platform that allows users with little or no technical knowledge to create a customized site. While CMS Hub offers a wide range of out-of-the-box functionality, you may still want to integrate your favorite applications from your technology stack like Gmail, Facebook Ads, and Twitter.

Integrating these tools from HubSpot Marketplace means you can access all your data in one central location. You can also view a live example and read customer reviews for each app to ensure you select the right app for your business needs.

In addition, you can also choose from over 3,500 free and paid templates in the HubSpot Asset Marketplace to change the look and feel of your site. Each template is optimized for mobile and natively supports drag-and-drop modules, allowing you to easily add and arrange text blocks, images, CTAs, etc. on your templates.

You can also access the theme settings to make global changes to keep your website consistent and unique on every page.

Security

To enhance security and performance, CMS Hub has a global CDN, Web Application Firewall, SSL encryption, and a dedicated security team to help IT professionals keep their site safe from DDoS attacks, hackers, and other anomalies. Such an all-in-one connected platform is ideal for all types of businesses, from small to large.

Other notable features include:

CMS Hub has an impressive list of features to cater to all these use cases. Here are the main ones:

– Smart Content. Customize content and calls to action on the site using visitor information.

– Design management tool. An easy-to-use drag-and-drop tool for easy customization.

– Built-in A/B testing to optimize your content.

– SEO recommendations to show up in Google search results.

– Contact attribution to analyze where your leads and sales are coming from

– Serverless features to give developers maximum flexibility

– Custom CDN configurations in the enterprise version.

– Multilingual support (the site is available in English, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, French and Chinese).

– 24/7 security monitoring

– 24/7 support if you need help

Pros:

– Easy to use, even if you have little or no technical skills. Its drag-and-drop editor, built-in SEO tools and contact attribution make it easy to create and optimize your web content.

– Integrates with HubSpot’s marketing, sales, service and CRM tools.

– Increases engagement using email and social media tools.

– A dedicated team monitors the platform 24/7 for attacks and performs regular virus scans.

– Smart content to customize your website page for specific visitors or larger segments.

Cons:

– There is no free version, but a free trial version is offered.

– Limited gallery for plugins and themes.

– No direct technical support.

– It is quite expensive.

– HubSpot CMS is not as well suited for e-commerce sites (but integrates easily with WordPress and WooCommerce).

Best for:

HubSpot CMS is a top choice for marketers and basic websites. Hub CMS based on HubSpot’s CRM platform includes all sorts of marketing, sales, service, and operations automation tools, is an ideal solution for growing businesses as well as large enterprises looking for an all-in-one system to manage their website.

Pricing:

CMS Hub is available in three tiers: Starter, Professional, and Enterprise.

– The Starter plan is $25/month and has all the features you need to build a fully functional website.

– The Professional plan, costing $300/month, with a 10% discount if paid annually.

– The Enterprise Plan, costing $900/month. This plan allows you to set up two branded domains, a custom CDN configuration, serverless features, and more.

13. Typo3

TYPO3 is another free and open-source platform designed for creating corporate websites that include over 9000 features right out of the box. TYPO3’s equally robust features allow you to create a complex multi-site setup, but it won’t be easy to install or configure. Even developers and advanced users will have to invest a lot of time and effort in studying the platform.

Customization

There are also a number of extensions available for TYPO3 that offer additional functionality. Despite its incredible built-in features, TYPO3 lacks some standard functions, such as modules to embed videos and add image galleries to your site. To fill these gaps, you can integrate one of the 6,000 third-party tools and services available in the TYPO3 extensions repository.

Security

To help you secure your site, TYPO3 provides built-in security features, compliance tools, and regular updates. What makes it unique is that it separates the web front-end from the administration interface. As a result, it is more difficult for hackers to disrupt website properties. 

TYPO3’s security team publishes these updates regularly and notifies site owners via email, but ultimately, updates and other maintenance tasks are up to individual users.

Pros:

– 6,000 extensions are available in the TYPO3 repository that you can add to your TYPO3 site to include new features.

– Excellent flexibility and scalability to create a website for small and large companies.

– Automatically solves security issues.

– Easy to set up on your existing infrastructure

– Fully scalable multi-site management

– Multilingual installations

– High speed and performance

– Easy to modify access rights for different individuals and groups working on your site.

Cons:

– Difficult platform to learn, for non-technical users, as well as even for advanced users. This means that you will need a high degree of technical expertise to get TYPO3 up and running and to maintain it.

– Updates and maintenance tasks are the responsibility of site owners.

– expensive for freelancers and partner agencies

-There aren’t many themes available, so you’ll probably have to hire someone to create one for you.

Best for:

Typo3 is a great choice for enterprise-level sites and international organizations with complex content management needs.

Pricing:

Typo3 is free, but users must purchase web hosting services and a custom domain. TYPO3 site hosting ranges from $6 to $69 per month.

 The average cost of TYPO3 premium templates and extensions is $49. The biggest cost of creating and managing a TYPO3 site is hiring a developer or agency to help you with the process, which can range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on the length and scope of the web project.

14. BigCommerce

BigCommerce[13] is another well-known fully hosted CMS platform for e-commerce stores. With BigCommerce you can manage thousands of products and your e-commerce content with ease and without any development experience.

BigCommerce can be used as a headless CMS which is worth saying that you can build and customize your website in the backend in BigCommerce, then distribute and display your content on hundreds of channels including Google, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.

Key Features:

One of the most notable features of BigCommerce is its multi-channel approach to selling. You can sell through your own hosted store, Amazon, eBay, etc. You can even leverage some of the other content management systems options on this list. For example, you can combine BigCommerce with WordPress to get the best of both worlds.

BigCommerce also allows you to localize your site’s content, currency, payment experience, and more to meet the needs and expectations of international customers.

-You can use a free domain name from BigCommerce, or you can pay for a custom domain name.

– There are many different ways to make payments through BigCommerce. Customers can use digital wallets like PayPal, Apple Pay, and Amazon Pay, or they can pay with credit or debit cards.

BigCommerce offers support options that you can access directly from your dashboard, 24/7. These include live chat, email, phone support, community support, and more.

Pros:

– Good security management and backups

– The ability to use BigCommerce with WordPress to get the best of both content management systems platforms.

Cons:

– Themes and integrations are limited, which may prevent you from using a third-party service to grow your business.

– You have to pay a monthly subscription fee to use BigCommerce, which means it’s not as cost-effective as other solutions.

– When your sales reach a certain threshold per year, you automatically upgrade to the next level of the pricing plan. This could be difficult for you if you have a lot of expenses.

Best for:

BigCommerce offers solutions specifically for wholesale, cross-channel and international sales and growing e-commerce stores.

Pricing:

Here’s an overview of BigCommerce plans and pricing:

– Standard – $29.95 per month for sales up to $50,000/year.

– Plus – $79.95 per month

– Pro – $299.95 per month which will cover you up to $400,000 in sales. After that, you’ll need to sign up for a custom Enterprise plan.

– Enterprise – Custom Pricing

You can save 10% on the Plus and Pro plans with an annual subscription.

There is a trial plan, so you can test BigCommerce before committing.

15. Concrete5

Concrete5 is an open-source CMS designed for users with minimal technical knowledge but can also be used as a framework for web application development. With Concrete5 you can choose a theme, then modify the styles without touching the code for site design.

You can also code your own themes with HTML and CSS. If you are comfortable with PHP, you can use custom templates that can change the appearance of any block.

Main Features:

 It offers drag-and-drop content blocks that simplify content management and customization.

– Responsive design. All Concrete5 websites work the same way on different devices.

– Marketing tools. Add social media profiles, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn, to build a brand.

Ease of use

concrete5 allows you to start building a website in seconds and make changes easily with its simple interface. The in-context editing of concrete5 acts like the functionality of a word processor, while making it simple to edit pages while you view them.

This makes it very user-friendly for non-technical users to manage site content. With concrete5’s block editor, you can easily add text, videos, image sliders, interactive forms, and surveys to your site. Simply drag and drop the module anywhere on the page – no coding required.

concrete5 also provides developers with a flexible and robust framework for creating sophisticated web applications, including extranets, portals, and online communities.

Customization

This CMS comes with many of the essential elements for building a site, including responsive templates, custom form fields, and an integrated commenting system. In addition, you can install add-ons from the concrete5 marketplace directly into your dashboard to customize your site.

Security

Secure user management also makes concrete5 an excellent CMS for websites with multiple developers.  concrete5 offers several features to help you secure your site, including one-click software version updates and automatic add-on update notifications, SSL, login history, content approval, captcha, audit trail, and email verification to protect your site.

Active developer community

The community and support surrounding concrete5 make it a very attractive CMS for beginner and intermediate users. You can find how-to guides for designers, add-ons, and themes with real support, and even support tickets if you run into a problem that can’t be solved in the forums.

Pros:

– User-friendly interface with a flexible style editor.

– Built-in software and add-on update functionality helps keep sites secure.

– Easy conversion of a basic HTML site in minutes.

– Built-in SEO tools, such as adding meta descriptions and creating sitemaps.

– Active and growing developer community

– Business-class hosting package that includes support.

Cons:

– Small collection of add-ons compared to other open-source solutions.

– The choice of themes is also relatively small, with just over 100 available.

– Many useful and basic plugins are quite expensive.

– Almost all the best themes are paid

– Paid support is expensive if you’re not hosted at Concrete5 ($125 and up).

– No automatic backup when making changes.

Best for:

This CMS platform is ideal for creating a complex website for medium to large businesses

Pricing:

Concrete5 itself is free. you only need to consider the cost of domain registration, hosting and premium modules and themes.

The company allows you to choose between two hosting plans offered for additional tools and features:

– Concrete Business for $90/month.

– Concrete Enterprise from $500/month.

16. Umbraco

Umbraco is a user-friendly, open-source content management system (CMS) based on Microsoft’s .NET framework that you can host yourself or use Umbraco’s paid hosting service. You can add content using a simple editor, as well as useful features such as a built-in form editor.

If necessary, you can also extend the basic CMS with Umbraco applications. For more technical users, Umbraco also offers a headless CMS package called Umbraco Heartcore.

Key Features:

Umbraco presents you with information about your content, so you only see what you need.  It supports versioning, scheduled publishing, and previews.

An advantage of Umbraco over many other content management systems is that it works well with content created in Microsoft Word, which can be a huge advantage for users who are used to dealing with Office products.

With Umbraco, you can also freely add custom content or components in any configuration, create and manage multilingual content directly in the editor, track changes and view different versions of web content. Unlike other open-source platforms, Umbraco is backed by a team of experts who provide enterprise-level support.

Customization

Umbraco allows developers and designers to customize the back-end with custom applications through an open API. This opens up a ton of custom application options for developers.

Pros:

– Display content on many different digital platforms.

– Free and paid tutorials and support

– Powerful and flexible for both websites and intranets.

– An open API

– Ability to secure the system directly after a threat is identified

Cons:

– Many plugins are not available for extensive functionality.

– Major add-ons are not free

– No demo available to try before downloading

– Not really any pre-built themes available for the front end

Best for:

Umbraco CMS is suitable for businesses with different types of content.

Pricing:

For the open-source CMS, pricing is free however, you will need to get web hosting and a domain name.

The Umbraco Professional plan costs $7,100/year and provides licenses, support, and discounts on training.

17. Adobe Experience Manager Sites 

Adobe Experience Manager Sites is a flexible hybrid CMS that scales to different channels for organizations that combine a CMS with a digital asset management (DAM) solution. You can use Adobe Experience Manager Sites to create personalized web experiences for visitors across channels while using Adobe Experience Manager Assets to manage all of your brand’s digital assets from a central location.

This platform helps you deliver content with speed and scale, using a cloud-native foundation and artificial intelligence.

Key Features:

– By partnering with Adobe, you get the company’s expertise in analytics and customer targeting, not to mention its intelligently designed Experience Manager.

– If you’re looking to move to a fully integrated content management and marketing automation solution, Adobe Experience Cloud is there for you.

Pros:

– Web content management

– Tools for developers

– Multi-channel content management

– Personalized experiences

– Scalability through machine learning

– API delivery

Best for:

Adobe Experience Manager Sites is designed for businesses looking to create a highly responsive customer experience.

18. Ghost

Ghost is a headless CMS platform with a user-friendly interface specifically designed for blogging and publishing. You can choose between the self-hosted Ghost solution and the cloud-hosted Ghost Pro solution.

Ghost has also integrated some of the most important features that media bloggers need to monetize their sites as well as various widgets that display statistics in a very elegant way. With Ghost, you can create email signup forms and charge visitors for access to your content through monthly subscription fees.

Key Features:

Ghost has a content editor that uses cards that work much like WordPress blocks in the block editor. You can use Markdown (a method of formatting text that involves adding special characters around words to make them bold, italic, etc.) when writing in the Ghost editor.

 Ghost offers excellent SEO support so you don’t need to add plugins to achieve this. Ghost is well set up to charge for content, so if you want to run a magazine or online publication that people pay for, you can do so easily.

Pros:

– Social media and SEO capabilities are built-in

– Focus on blogging

– Simplified and intuitive interface

Cons:

– Hosting is not included, and the self-hosted version is difficult to set up.

– Limited configuration options and themes

– Customization is not that easy

Best for:

Ghost is one of the ideal content management systems platforms for small blogs and for bloggers who value simplicity and ingenuity by making it easy to achieve individual design variations and the ability to make global changes to the blog. However, Ghost is not a good option if you want a CMS that can go beyond blogging and publishing.

Pricing:

The Ghost software itself is free, but you will have to pay for a domain name and web hosting. You can get Ghost hosting from Ghost(Pro).

The basic plan is $36/month, but you’ll need to upgrade if you want additional users or subscribers, potentially paying up to $249/month.

19. dotCMS

dotCMS is an open-source headless content management system (CMS) with an API-based approach and a drag-and-drop user interface for modeling different types of content such as a blog post or an e-commerce product. You can use the API to deliver your content to any destination, such as a website or an application.

Key Features:

dotCMS runs on Java technology and comes with some of the best features that are flexible and efficient for both marketers and developers. dotCMS allows you to build and reuse older content to create an engaging and memorable digital production.

dotCMS with its customizable templates, document indexing, electronic forms, full-text search, image editor, SEO management, text editor, and version control, gives you all the possibilities of website management.

20. Weebly

Weebly is one of the most popular and easy-to-use website builders for business, professional or personal websites. You don’t need any coding experience and you can get your site online within hours. Moreover, it has a specific tool that helps users to create a multilingual site.

Key features

Ease of use:

Like most website builders, Weebly website builder takes advantage of an easy-to-use drag-and-drop feature, through which you can easily pick and mix your elements, carry them around in your workspace and display a fully functional site in no time.

 Whether you’re a novice with no knowledge of site creation or a site creation expert looking for the best elements for your site or a client’s site, you’ll find Weebly Site Builder a pleasure to use.

Customization:

 Weebly lets you edit your page using its drag-and-drop user interface to make slight changes to images and other visual elements of your layout.  Its Elements menu is even more appealing to novice site developers. Similarly, Weebly has its own fully functional blogging platform based on a content management system (CMS).

With the built-in application center, Weebly site builder offers users many ways to enhance their websites. For those with a solid knowledge of coding, the platform also offers its own custom code editor that allows for editing HTML and CSS codes of sites, as well as using the Embed Code command in certain areas.

Pros: 

-Easy to use site builder

-Large selection of internal and third-party applications

-Free site builder

Cons:

– Lack of flexibility for site customization 

– Full support options are only available for higher-level subscribers.

Pricing :

Weebly offers five plans, charged monthly: Free ($0), Starter ($4), Pro ($8), Business ($25), and Performance ($38).

How to Choose a Content Management System Platform?

To find the best content management systems for your business, in general, your ideal platform should offer the CMS features you need, enhance your team’s ability to manage content, and finally allow you to offer a desirable website experience to your visitors.

Ideally, you’ll choose a tool that can not only help you get started but also grow over time. Here are some key criteria to consider when selecting content management systems:

Ease of use

 You’ll always want to choose a tool that’s easy to use without development knowledge if you’re not a developer. In this case, you need a CMS with features that make it easy to perform daily tasks such as writing, creating, and editing content quickly, and if you have some coding skills, modules that allow you to add custom code quickly.

Pricing

When it comes to your CMS, you want a solution that meets your needs, your visitors’ expectations, and your budget.  Some content management systems are free and open-source, but you will have to pay to host them. Many platforms offer different levels of plans with resources increasing at each price point.

SEO

 It is important that the software you choose gives you the tools you need to rank in Google and other search engines. Such as XML sitemaps, meta descriptions, custom permalink structures, alt text, title tags, etc. In addition to these out-of-the-box SEO features, you should consider using CMS software that will allow you to add third-party plugins or extensions to better serve and enhance your SEO strategy.

Read More:12 Best Tips for Creating SEO-friendly Content

Customization

 Choosing a CMS that allows you to create personalized experiences for visitors can help you improve your marketing and conversion rates. When evaluating a CMS, look at what customization options are built right into the dashboard, how many extensions are available, and whether you can modify the source code.

If you’re looking for complete customization without restrictions, you’ll want to opt for an open-source CMS system. These platforms allow you to customize everything using the HTML code of your site.

This makes it a great choice for developers and tech-savvy users. If you’re not very tech-savvy, make sure the platform you’re using has an extensive marketplace for plugins. Otherwise, you’ll have to create solutions on your own or hire a developer to create them for you.

Security

 Security should always be a major concern when looking for content management systems software to keep your content, users and visitors safe. With some content management systems tools, you will be responsible for the security of your site, while others have built-in protections and security features to combat malicious attacks and hackers.

Support and customer experience

Find out what kind of technical support is provided by the CMS platform you use. If you’re using an open-source CMS, you’ll have to rely on tutorials, self-help articles, and forums. But if you’re using a site builder or a paid CMS, you can usually count on 24/7 support.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading this list of the top 20 content management systems platforms we have selected that meet the needs of different clients. These 20 content management systems platforms are all very popular and excellent for most content management scenarios.

In fact, regardless of your technical skill level and needs, you can find the best CMS software for your unique scenario using this list of the 20 best content management systems. Each content management system has its own advantages and limitations. By carefully comparing the pros and cons of these different content management systems, you can choose the one that best meets your business needs and those of your clients.