How to Choose A Content Management System for Your New Website or Blog
When choosing a content management system (CMS), how do you decide between them? If you’re working with a premier marketing agency that specializes in website development, the task is easy. But if you’re doing it all yourself, answering this question is much more difficult. Take, for example, four popular choices for startups and small businesses such as WordPress, Squarespace, Webflow, and Joomla. Each of these CMS platforms has useful features, and all four are good choices, so it comes down to your business’s unique needs and which one will fit those needs best.
But this decision is especially difficult when your business is new or small. Why? Because small businesses and startups don’t have the budget for many CMS platforms and also have few resources for managing them, making it especially important that they not “buy” more CMS platform that they can use or purchase one that will be so complex they’ll need a team of marketers and engineers to manage it. So while the four systems I compare in this post don’t offer the most functionality and may not be the most cost-effective, they are all really good choices for marketers and small business owners who are looking to build a website or blog and grow their website and blog with limited resources, budget, and skills.
But before we dig in, it’s probably prudent to define CMS. What exactly is a CMS platform? While there are many definitions, this one from Kinsta is a great place to start:
“A content management system, often abbreviated as CMS, is software that helps users create, manage, and modify content on a website without the need for specialized technical knowledge”
In plainer language, a content management system, by definition, manages all the different content on your website, from text, images, videos, music, or documents. The system organizes this content for easy retrieval, presenting it to your visitors quickly and responsively.
While all four systems I review here are capable of handling a variety of content and managing a variety of functions, there are distinctive differences (and advantages depending on your needs). Joomla! and WordPress are both free open-source software that requires hosting, while Squarespace and Webflow are website builders, which includes hosting and additional other features.
Open-source means there is a community behind the software, contributing to the development and growth, answering questions and providing documentation. Anyone with the interest and skills can participate, helping to improve the product and increase its capabilities.
When deciding on a platform, you’ll want to consider how much back-end work you want to do, if you are interested in coding (although neither Joomla! nor WordPress require a knowledge of HTML in order to work), what content you will primarily be featuring on your site, if you are willing to trade ease of use for fewer options.
While any of the four will do the job for you, it’s important to know the features so you can make an informed decision.
A closer look at each of them will give you a better understanding of how they differ.
WordPress
WordPress is the most user-friendly and popular choice, with over 60 million users and the platform for about a quarter of the websites on the internet. Almost half of the internet is powered by the WordPress platform. This free web software is open source, with a basic framework of functionality that can be expanded through the addition of plugins.
WordPress Free Installation
There are currently over 42,000 plugins, which make it possible to create a flexible website that the user can enhance to meet the needs of their company as it grows and changes. It also integrates with email services and payment gateways.
WordPress began as a platform primarily for blogging in 2003, but evolved into a complete content management system able to handle a wide variety of tasks, thanks to the variety of themes and plugins available. WordPress offers its own themes, plus there are a wide range of free and premium themes that can be downloaded from developers.
Themes can be layered using parent themes and child themes. The advantage of this functionality is that customization can be added to a child theme, then when the underlying parent theme, or the WordPress software, is updated, the changes remain untouched. This adds to the stability of the platform and your sanity, as it eliminates the need to redo your work every time there is an update.
Using the plugins and widgets to add functions means you don’t have to know code to enhance the features on your site, and you don’t have to hire a developer unless you want customization.
WordPress is easy to set up, and because of its popularity, there is a huge community that provides numerous tutorials, classes, and instructions you can refer to on how to use the system. The learning curve is minimal and with the addition of certain plugins, things like SEO becomes a simple checklist, and other features can be added for free or a reasonable cost. However, you cannot make structural changes without the aid of a developer or a designer. This makes it easy for newbies, but frustrating for those who want more latitude.
The user interface is also quite easy learn and navigate and is based on a left navbar, like Squarespace and Webflow as the primary way to update or edit your website or blog.
The drawback of having so many themes and plugins from which to choose is that not all are created with the same level of quality, and you have to be careful to select those that are reputable.
Support is offered on the site through documentation and user forums, created by a large community of users.
One unique feature is the ability to blog on the go using the mobile apps for iOS and android. Depending on how and what you want to blog about, the freedom to post from anywhere could be a significant benefit.
Where WordPress really shines are the massive number of blogging templates you can choose from that come pre-packaged with every feature or functionality you might need on a blog. It also includes wildly popular and effective on-page SEO plugin called Yoast, that automates on-page seach optimization of each blog post and makes ranking in Google SERPs a cinch.
Microsoft News Center, Sony Music, Target Pulse, and The Walt Disney Company are among those companies that use WordPress.
Recommendation
If you’re interested in building a powerhouse blog, WordPress is the way to go as none of the other CMS platforms in this review make it so easy to blog and optimize your posts for search while delivering results.
Squarespace
Squarespace is the simplest of the four choices. It’s different from the other three in that it’s a drag-and-drop, conventional website builder. Instead of paying for themes, plugins, or a designer there is one fee, which varies depending on the options you choose. The range for services starts as low as $12 a month to upto $40 a month for full ecommerce functionality. While there is no free option, there is a 14-day trial period to try it out and see if you like it. A domain name and hosting is included, and robust analytics and SEO are built in, which means it’s a one stop shop for setting up your businesses web presence. No need to purchase a domain name separately or to find a domain host or a website host. Squarespace will do it all for you making it easy to manage some of the more annoying aspects of website maintenance.
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Squarespace has a limited selection of templates, but there is some flexibility with those choices so they don’t look the same and you have the ability to add code injections to customize each template. While Squarespace may have a limited selection of templates, it hands down has the most well-designed, indeed beautiful, templates. If design and aesthetics are important to your business and brand, you are bound to find a Squarespace template that appeals to you.
Squarespace Templates
There is a reason so many artists and photographers prefer Squarespace over other website builders and CMS platforms.
The customizable settings inside Squarespace include fonts, page configurations, and colors. It’s simple to quickly customize the template and choose from a myriad of style options via the left navabar
Once you click into any item on this menu, it expands giving you a range of options as in the styles editor below, which can be changed simply by turning a button on or off.
Squarespace Style Editor
If you buy the ecommerce package, the analytics will enable you to see every aspect of your purchase funnel, including if someone clicked on your product, went to your shopping cart, or checked out. If you want a professional-looking website without having to do any technical work, Squarespace will give you that, however the trade-off is fewer creative options.
What you see as you build your site is the same as what your visitors will see, and if you have a visual product, like photography or design, Squarespace will showcase it. Additionally, you can have your new content posted automatically on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr upon publication, boosting your social media engagement.
If you need help, the 24/7 support team offers quick response, with emails usually answered within one hour.
In January 2020, Squarespace officially rolled out version 7.1, which is a massive change from 7.0. The change was so significant that any websites built on 7.0 or earlier version cannot be upgraded to 7.1 but have to be rebuilt from scratch. This new version offers many new feature upgrades, but the most important is that unlike previous versions, every Squarespace template built on 7.1 has identical functionality so you can be assured the template you choose will function exactly how you intend it to.
Some companies using Squarespace include Chub & Bug, Contently, Girlboss, Innovation Festival of Fast Company, and Tokyo Bike NYC. Oh and let’s not forget that the Verge Marketing Agency website and this very blog were created with Squarespace :)
Recommendation
Select Squarespace if you need to put up a well-functioning, responsive website quickly and/or beautiful design is something that is important to your brand and your audience.
Webflow
Webflow, like Squarespace, is a one-stop shop for getting your website up and running; it’s a responsive website builder, CMS, and hosting platform all in one. Webflow in some ways feels like a cross between a website builder and a pure CMS and many would argue has the best of both worlds in terms of functionality and design. However, I should caution readers that although Webflow claims to offer separate hosting services, once you buy into the hosting service you are stuck with them and they don’t allow you to install other CMSs in their hosting environment nor do they allow management of your site through FTP, which is a standard in the industry for website management. If you want to create a hybrid site that uses both Webflow and WordPress CMSs for example, that option will be off the table. For these reasons, be aware that you pay for extra for hosting services yet don’t receive full hosting services and functionality.
Webflow began in 2013 but has been gaining rapidly on the other 3 CMS platforms discussed in this post due in large part to the fact that it is a WYSWIG “no-code” editor that enables you to build webpages from scratch without having to learn to code. Indeed, the platform now has more than 47,000 users and powers almost 200k websites. Unlike other platforms, this means that Webflow gives those who use it unprecedented control and customization over their websites. That’s right, although there are a few anemic templates to get you started, in general Webflow is an environment for building customized websites. For these reasons, while Squarespace is a favorite amongst artists and photographers, we might say that Webflow is now a favorite amongst designers and web designers in general because it gives its users the power of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript in a one visual canvas.
Similar to WordPress and Squarespace, the user interface is centered around a left navbar where you can choose from various options, including pages, collections, ecommerce, and galleries. Obviously, you’ll spend most of your time navigating the pages and collections section. Collections is simply a group of pages and you need to buy the “extra” CMS capability to work with Collections in Webflow:
While the navigation system in Webflow is less streamlined than Squarespace, it is relatively user friendly and easy to understand within minutes of exploring the platform. For example, you can quickly click on “pages” in the navbar and secondary menu opens with a menu that allows you to access individual sections of the web page you’re developing.
Webflow Pages Editing Feature
Notice in this example that each area of the website is highlighted and labelled with a unique colored box to help you quickly edit and make changes. An added benefit of Webflow is that you have 3 views with which to update your site, including designer and editor views. The editor view enables non-technical people, consulants or agencies to easily update or add content without the need to go under the hood which can be a huge benefit as you start to seriously increase content on your site, either in pages or blog posts.
Unlike Squarespace, Webflow is free without a trial period, which means you can build two projects and publish them to weblow.io without ever paying a cent. Sounds almost too good to be true, but this freemium model is largely responsible for its rapid adoption. You can upgrade to a paying model of course as I’ve already suggested—a basic plan, CMS plan or a full ecommerce plan.
Webflow Website Plans Pricing
What’s more, Webflow unveiled a set of complete ecommerce tools in 2019, which makes it a viable solution for eCommerce small business and startups. So unlike the other CMS platforms we’re reviewing, Webflow actually has a second pricing structure for eCommere plans, some of which run as high as $200+ dollars a month.
Webflow Ecommerce Plans
In general, I think the pricing structure for ecommerce is way over priced for the actual functionality you receive and the cost goes up considerably depending upon how many transactions you’re running through their platform a month. Another problematic feature is the fact that you don’t get an actual CMS with the lower website pricing tier, which means the lower plans are simply not an option if you’re attempting to develop a fully functional business website. Thus, while it pretends to be a “free” platform, it’s ultimately quite expensive if you want to use it for anything serious.
While there is much to love about Weblow if you’re starting your business, one major weakness is just how new this CMS platform is, which means most of its features are still currently being built or are on a future product roadmap. Many of the most basic features you’d expect in a CMS are simply missing or are only half baked. So in some ways the control you’d expect from this platform is misleading since you can’t create if the functionality isn’t there in the first place.
In addition, if you’re planning on building a blog, search optimization functionality is limited to meta tags and descriptions and you cannot leverage SEO plugins like Yoast to transform your blog into a powerhouse. Webflow’s SEO capabilities are certainly better than many, but they aren’t the best and this limitations could negatively impact small businesses and startups who are trying to get their businesses off the ground.
Finally, if you want to get something up quickly with as little pain as possible, there is a considerable learning curve when using Webflow and both time and training are critical to get the most out of this platform.
Recommendation
Select Webflow if you are comfortable designing websites from scratch and have the time and motivation to learn how to develop a website without coding and more importantly desire more control over the look, feel, and functionality of your website.
Joomla!
Joomla! is a free open-source platform that is second in popularity behind WordPress, and also more complicated. It’s still accessible for non-developers, but can be challenging for those with no technical background. The steeper learning curve can make it too complicated for the casual user.
Joomla Free to Download and Install
The functionality can be augmented with the addition of extensions. There are five types of extensions: components, modules, plugins, templates, and languages. Some are free while others have an associated cost.
Finding extensions and templates can be difficult from inside the Joomla! administration area. Templates set the style, look, and feel of the site layout. Furthermore, the selection is not as vast as those for WordPress. Setting up an online store is less complicated than doing the same on WordPress and getting a social network up and running is quick and painless on Joomla!.
If you plan to set up a membership website, and want subscription access, this is a good choice.
Joomla! has over 66 languages, with the most recent being Basque, making it one of the broadest open source multilingual CMS platforms around. The languages extensions work as part of the core or as an extension. The control panel is either overly complicated or beautifully diverse, depending on who you ask. It can be intimidating to a beginner, though.
Although upgrades happen on a regular basis, they can break the extensions and cause grief for you if you need to reconstruct or migrate your website.
Support is provided in the form of documentation, user forums, and resources accessible on their website. According to Open Source Matters, there are more than 656,500 registered users who participate in the Official Joomla! forum site.
As open-source software, WordPress and Joomla! both are targets of hackers because they can figure out the system. It’s important to make good security a priority, and you can add security software to both platforms to strengthen them. If you are running a membership site, or have several people accessing the software, you need to be sure they understand the importance of secure passwords.
Companies using Joomla include ebay, Barnes and Noble, and Peugeot.
Recommendation
Select Joomla if you have the time and technical skill to build a robust website and manage frequent updates and don’t have a lot of budget to spend.
And the Winner Is . . .
You can’t go wrong with any of these four content management systems, as they all are reliable, popular solutions. However, each CMS platform has a strength in a different area and that should be considered when making your decision.
Squarespace is your best choice if you are interested in having everything in one package, and you want to do as little as possible to get a site up quickly yet still looks professional. You’ll get hosting, themes, updates, a domain name, and traffic stats. They also manage the security issues.
If you want a wide assortment of themes from which to choose, WordPress has the largest amount available. For some people, this could be overwhelming, while others delight in different styles, colors, and designs. WordPress is flexible, powerful, and can grow with your business. It is a good choice for beginners, small businesses, and bloggers.
Joomla! can accommodate specialized functionality through its thousands of mostly free extensions, but it requires a certain degree of technical knowledge to be effective. Joomla! would be best for social networking or e-commerce websites.
Another great option if you’re looking to develop a website on a budget and don’t have the time to review every CMS platform is to work with a marketing agency quickly who can help you quickly identify the right CMS platform for business and can also configure it and even manage your website. VERGE is a full-service marketing agency and we specialize in website development and content management systems. Learn more about how VERGE can help with your website development and optimization.