How to choose a CMS platform

Many freelancers and businesses don't have the time to learn the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript required to code a website from scratch—and that's okay.

With the right tools, you can easily and quickly create a custom website that provides a seamless experience for your visitors on the front end and users on the back end.

These tools fall into two major categories: CMS Development Services platforms and website builders.

While both offer built-in features, pre-designed templates, and extensions to create a custom site without coding or knowledge of coding, they offer two very different approaches to building and managing a website.

Let's take a closer look at these two methods below so you can decide which tool is right for your site.

CMS vs Website Builder

If you are looking for website-building tools and web hosting in one place, go with Website Builder. You can buy a custom domain, customize the look of your site, and create rich multimedia pages with advanced elements like animations and scroll effects. While you focus on design and content, your hosting platform will take care of your site's maintenance, security, backups, and more.

In exchange for this ease of use, you have to give up some flexibility. Website builders lack the content management features, advanced functionality, and customization options you'll find in CMS platforms. For this reason, website builders are ideal for agencies, artists, restaurants and other user types looking to quickly create image-rich sites.

For more advanced features and customization options, go with a CMS. With a CMS, you can fully control the design of your site, add multimedia to your posts, organize your content by tags and categories, manage multiple users, manage your site's underlying Can edit code, and more. The process of setting up and launching your site will be long but, in the end, you will be able to build and manage a larger and more complex site that can grow over time.

If you've decided you want to build a site with a CMS, you can further narrow down your choices with the following criteria.

Criteria for choosing a CMS

The right CMS platform for your business matches your site's needs and goals. Some of the most important factors to consider are ease of use, compatibility, security, cost, and popularity in the market. What brands use them.

If a platform offers the same functionality you're looking for but is out of budget, it's not the best choice. On the other hand, a cheap platform that will require a lot of maintenance and extensions to meet your needs is also not ideal.

Let's take a closer look at each of these criteria below.

Easy to use

Ease of use is an important factor to consider when choosing a CMS because it greatly affects the rate of adoption and the workflow of your employees. An ideal platform will be easy to use for all stakeholders on your team.

Say everyone from content marketers to developers will be working in the backend of the CMS. In that case, you need CMS features that make it easier for each of these team members to complete their daily tasks. Look for a platform that offers a WYSIWYG editor for editorial members so developers can quickly create and edit content and modules to quickly add custom code.

compatibility

While you may prefer the ease of use over customization, you'll ideally want a solution that offers both. A CMS with lots of customization options and flexibility, like CMS Development Services Hub, will be able to scale as your business grows.

When evaluating a CMS, look at what customization options are built into the dashboard, how many extensions are available, and whether you can edit the source code. If you need to create a website with minimal development resources, most CMS platforms allow you to choose a pre-designed theme and customize it around your brand. However, if you hire a developer, many CMS platforms also allow coding options so you can add more advanced features to your site.

security

You need a platform that protects your content, your users, and the visitors you face. When evaluating different solutions, consider what role the platform plays and what role you have to play in protecting your site. Do you need to manually back up your site? Is there a software update? Install security add-ons? Want to buy an SSL certificate?

Here are some questions to ask when looking at different CMS systems. As a general rule, if you don't have the time or aren't familiar with the best practices for securing your site, you need a platform with strong security protocols, features, and teams to keep your site secure. are you

price

Budgeting plays an important role in almost every decision you make for your business. When it comes to your CMS, you want a solution that meets your needs, your audience's expectations, and your budget. Fortunately, many platforms offer different tiers of plans with resources that scale at every price point, such as HubSpot's free CMS. Like the customization options, these upgrade options mean that the CMS will be able to grow as your business grows.

Trends in the market

Another good way to narrow down CMS systems is to look at its current list of highly successful customers, such as a major brand or competitor. If trusted brands in industries similar to your own are using a particular CMS, it may mean that the platform's features are valuable and can expand with a growing company. Even if you already work with a CMS, you may feel that your current tool is not meeting your goals, or you may want to continue with the CMS strategies of other successful brands.

Additionally, looking at the CMS platforms and websites used by brands in your industry can give you inspiration for your own content strategy.

These criteria may rank differently in your selection process, but it is important to choose a CMS that can support and grow your business. To help you make this important decision, we're going to take an in-depth look at the ease of use, compatibility, security, and pricing of some of the best CMS Development Services systems on the market below.