As a technology buyer, the marketplace for content management systems might seem somewhat mature by now, but with requirements shifting and plenty of confusion, it is always good to attempt a fresh look.
Jonathan Phillips is a long-time member
of the Boye & Co community and past Boye
Aarhus conference speaker. He’s widely
known for his contributions to the digital
workplace community and one of the
smart minds behind Intranetizen. After
leaving Coca Cola European Partners, he has founded ClarityDW and taken some time in 2017 to try to untangle the marketplace for external facing websites as it looks today.
The below list is based on a conversation with Jonathan and intended as a quick look into the marketplace. Before making your decision, do consult peers!
4 broad categories for selection and their key vendors
#1. If you see your website as a shop window, a business necessity, a small number of published pages then go cheap:
Wordpress is just fine and the most widely used option. Alternatives include Shopify, Squarespace, Wix. All these platforms are simple, capable and cheap.
#2. If your risk compliance teams allow, open source can often allow for more functionality at lower costs.
Leading vendors here include Drupal, TYPO3 and Umbraco
#3. If you need more than a publishing platform and want to bring some customer experience features
Vendors: e-Spirit, Kentico, Progress, SDL
#4. If you need all the gear and you need to serve up a customer experience website, you need to invest in an experience platform.
Vendors: Adobe, EPiServer, Sitecore
Open source has won but not everywhere
Open source has been on a tremendous journey. Alain Veuve, in his post aptly titled open source has won, discusses the broad acceptance of open source by enterprises and he’s right according to Jonathan. These technologies are so main stream (think WordPress, Drupal and more) that we’ve almost forgotten their roots.
However, in some business sectors, there’s still considerable and understandable hesitancy. Some clients wishes to avoid open source because, simply, they want someone to be responsible for the code should there be an issue.
Learn more about how to navigate the CMS marketplace
You can meet peers in Boye groups around Europe and North America and CMS and other digital platforms come up regularly in meetings and in-between. Specifically you might want to consider our CMS Expert group.