Often the first thing a business is thinking of when first conceptualizing their web presence is ease of use for their sales team.
No one wants convoluted or complicated implementations that you need knowledge of coding just to use. That's where a CMS comes in handy. It's a rare site these days to find a site that isn't built on some form of CMS system.
There are tons of options out there that could be suited for your business as well. When I first started web development, the options for ease of use and quick setup were slim to none.
Businesses lacked the options for updating content easily.
There were WYSWIG editors (Microsoft Frontpage, etc.) and pre-built single page scrolling sites with horizontal rules; the late 90's and early 2000's were fun, terrible looking, but fun.
Now in the days of easy to use content management, businesses and individuals are afforded many choices. It can get pretty overwhelming.
The king of the hill in business and other use-cases, with over 50% market share at this point and set to hit 60% sooner than later.
It's literally the Windows of CMS. I mean that in every sense of the comparison.
For better or worse, Wordpress has been around since the inception of the idea and term CMS.
It's easy to use, has what would amount to metric tons of 3rd party plug-ins, themes and use cases. If there's something you need done quick and easy, without a lot of coding, then this is the CMS for your business –– usually.
| Pros | vs. | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| Highly customizable | Â | Many 3rd party plug-ins not up to snuff |
| Many 3rd party extensions | Â | Legacy code |
| Many theme choices to suit business needs | Â | Need plug-ins for most business functionality |
| Easy setup | Â | |
| Well supported | Â |
As you can see, there are definitely more pro's than cons to Wordpress. While it may be one of the oldest, for the most part it is still the "wisest." One of the easiest business choices clients make generally are choosing Wordpress as their CMS.
These are the newer kids on the block. Built by developers seeking to make things easier with the latest and greatest web technologies and languages. Could these be the lightweight answer for your business?
OctoberCMS is built ontop of Laravel framework, while PulseCMS is built with vanilla-PHP. Both are setup fairly easily and seek to fill a niche for easy use and setup.
While most CMS can be developed for businesses quickly, I've not seen any go from design to live as quick as OctoberCMS.
A key difference for right off the bat for both options is that one is free (OctoberCMS) and open source like Wordpress, while the other is a paid system (Pulse).
If cost is a factor in your businesses choice for a CMS, then sticking to open source or freemium software is your best bet.
The second difference between the two would be that October uses the classic database system, while the other use simple file linking.
These being the two key differentiators for these two CMS' and all you need to know.
Like Wordpress, Drupal has been around for ages –– since 2000 in fact.
Drupal has gradually turned into a complete management system specifically geared toward businesses that need dynamic, yet similarly laid out content. Think sports teams, clubs at a school, universities split into separate schools, etc.
You can check out our top-down overview of Drupal in this post, and with more in-depth information, find out if Drupal is the choice for you.
Though this article gives a very brief introduction to some of the major and not-so major, CMS you can use for your business, there are a lot more choices out there. Our TopOut experts can give you guidance to whether your site needs dynamic content generation from a CMS or a responsive static site. Whichever choice you make for your business, TopOut will be there to develop it exactly how you envision it.
