When a business first plans its web presence, one of the first questions is how easy the site will be for the team to run. Nobody wants a setup that needs coding knowledge just to change a page. That is what a content management system (CMS) is for, and most sites today are built on one.
There are more options than ever, and the choice can feel overwhelming. When I started in web development, the options for easy updates were slim. Businesses relied on WYSIWYG editors like Microsoft FrontPage and single-page scrolling sites, which were fun and a bit terrible. Today the question is which of many good tools fits your business, your team and your budget.
WordPress for business sites
WordPress is the most widely used CMS, and it has been around since the early days of the category. It is easy to use and has an enormous ecosystem of plugins, themes and developers. With the block editor and modern page builders, it handles everything from a simple marketing site to a large publishing operation. With WooCommerce, it also runs online stores. If you need something flexible, quick to launch and easy to find help for, WordPress is usually where we start.
| Pros | vs. | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| Highly customizable | Plugin quality varies widely | |
| Huge plugin and theme ecosystem | Needs regular updates and security upkeep | |
| Themes and builders for most business needs | Too many plugins can slow the site down | |
| Easy setup and editing | ||
| Large developer community |
For most businesses the pros outweigh the cons, as long as the site is built carefully and kept up to date.
Shopify and other commerce platforms
If selling products is the main job of the site, a commerce platform may be a better start than a general CMS. Shopify is a hosted platform that takes care of hosting, checkout and security for you, which makes it quick to launch and low on maintenance. BigCommerce is a similar hosted option. WooCommerce gives you more control and keeps your store inside WordPress, in exchange for more upkeep. Which is right depends on your catalog, integrations and how much customization you need. Our post on optimizing a Shopify store for conversions shows how much can be done on the platform.
Drupal: built for complex content
Drupal is an open-source CMS built for sites with complex, structured content: universities split into separate schools, associations, government, and organizations running a family of related sites. It asks more of your developers than WordPress does, and it pays off when content volume, permissions and multi-site needs are high. If you are running Drupal 7, note that it reached end of life in January 2025 and needs a migration plan. Drupal 10 and 11 are the current versions. Our deeper look at Drupal covers who it suits and who should look elsewhere.
Laravel-based and custom builds
Some projects do not fit a standard CMS. Laravel is a PHP framework we use for custom applications, and CMS tools such as October CMS are built on it. A custom build gives you full control over features and data, at the cost of more development time. It makes sense when the site is really a web application, such as a portal, a custom catalog or a tool with logic that a plugin cannot handle.
Headless and static options
A headless CMS, such as Prismic, manages content but leaves the front end to a separate codebase, which can be a fast, modern framework. This helps when the same content feeds a website, an app and other channels, or when performance is critical. The tradeoff is cost and complexity, since you now maintain two pieces. A plain static site is another option for a few pages that rarely change, though most teams eventually want to edit content themselves. We wrote about that tension in why client flexibility wins.
How to choose
Start with the people who will use it. Who edits content, how often, and how much technical skill do they have? Then look at what the site needs to do: sell products, run several sites, connect to other systems, or serve content to more than one channel. Finally, consider who will maintain it and what that costs over several years, not just at launch. A simple site on WordPress or Shopify is the right answer more often than people expect, and sometimes the right answer is Drupal, a headless setup or a custom build.
This guide only covers the main options, and there are more. Our web development team works across WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, Laravel, BigCommerce, Drupal, Prismic and custom builds, and can tell you which one fits your project.
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