Legacy platforms vs. cloud-hosted CMS

As we just mentioned, traditional CMS’ (also known as legacy platforms) and cloud-hosted CMS’ differ in that traditional CMS’ are installed on-premise, while cloud-hosted platforms are installed on third-party servers which stakeholders within the organization in question have access to.

But what, exactly, does that change?

Well…a lot, actually.

For one thing, cloud-based content management systems allow for much more flexibility in terms of customizations and integrations – without the risk of running into bugs or glitches in the future. While traditional CMS’ require coding tweaks and changes to be run inside the actual CMS’ code, cloud-based CMS’ allow users to integrate separately-housed pieces of code into the CMS via APIs.

Secondly, cloud-based CMS’ allow for more scalability than traditional CMS platforms. This is because users partner with third-party hosts, who typically will have a much greater bandwidth for traffic, than the organization in question. Going the traditional route, of course, means an organization will be responsible for upgrading its own infrastructure should it begin to scale up its operations.

Finally, cloud-based CMS’ require less of an initial monetary investment than do traditional CMS platforms. Again, this goes back to the fact that traditional CMS’ require more manpower to be invested in server maintenance, security, and other back-end issues that are the responsibility of the web host when using a cloud-based CMS. However, as we’ll discuss in a bit, the costs of using a cloud-based CMS can add up over time.