Creating a website: it’s one of the most critical steps for any business looking to take advantage of digital marketing. Whether you’ve  been in business for years or are launching your first site, it’s crucial to do it right.
You’ve likely seen ads for services like SquareSpace and Wix that claim to make building your website as easy as a click of the mouse, but is that what’s best for your business? You can employ all the greatest marketing tactics in the world but if your site is unusable, or no one can find it, then really you’ve just wasted your time and money.
Let’s take a look at key considerations before choosing the right CMS for your organization.
Choosing a CMS
A what? A CMS is a software application that is used to manage the digital content on your site. In other terms, a CMS helps you to create the pages and content on your site that your users will be consuming.
How do you know which CMS is right for your business?
CMS solutions are broken down into two major categories: managed solutions and self-hosted solutions.  They each have advantages and disadvantages — choosing between these two formats really comes down to the type of website that you’re planning on building. Â
Identifying Your Platform
Managed
If you’re building a blog, an information website, or a simple e-commerce store, managed CMS platforms work well. A managed solution can be easy to get rolling quickly — they tend to come with great out-of-the-box themes and functionality.
Most CMS solutions come with some basic editing capabilities and the ability to customize the look of the site.  However, there isn’t a lot of choice for customizing the functionality of the site. If unique business functionality is required for the site, a managed CMS could fall short. With managed solutions, you’re paying monthly to have a company deal with the development and maintenance of your website — new functionality is rolled out as the community or managed provider decides it’s necessary.
Self-Hosted
With a self-hosted approach, you install a CMS onto your own hosting and maintain and manage the code that makes the website work. This isn’t as daunting as it sounds with most modern solutions… but it is your company’s responsibility. With that responsibility, you ditch the monthly fee and attain much more flexibility over how your site works. If your team has the knowledge base, you’re able to customize for every last bit of your site so that it fits exactly what you need.
CMS Breakdown
Ready to take a deeper look into managed or self-hosted CMS solutions? Here’s a breakdown of top providers in both categories.
Managed Solutions
- SquareSpace
- Easy to use and has high levels of customization available for a hosted solution
- WordPress.com
- A hosted version of the most popular CMS on the market — think of this as WordPress light
Self-Hosted
- WordPress.org
- Runs 25 percent of the websites on the internet — very reliable and easy to work with
- Drupal
- Extremely flexible and customizable. Most likely requires the help of a developer.
- Magento
- Magento is the go to bulk e-commerce platform. If you have hundreds or thousands of products or manage thousands of orders, then Magento is the right platform for you.
Have any questions? We’re happy to help!
