On-premise and hosted CMS comparisons
Most, if not all, CMSs that can be hosted on-premise can also be hosted on third-party servers. The CMS vendor may even host your website instance in-house, but without offering the SaaS features, services, and benefits associated with SaaS CMS solutions. Below are some examples of on-premise and hosted CMSs, compared.
1. WordPress
There’s no denying the popularity of WordPress. Powering over 32 percent of websites is a major feat. With its extensive directory of plugins and themes along with its easy-to-use front-end editor, WordPress has allowed many brands to set up a website, blog or app with little or no technical support.
However, the downside is that WordPress does suck up a lot of time in maintenance, and you’ll need technical knowledge to customize the design, functionality, and layout of your site.
Who it’s for: WordPress is suitable for setting up simple and straightforward blogs in travel, lifestyle and other recreational areas, news sites, and websites containing static content. Some businesses have used WordPress for eCommerce via the WooCommerce plugin.
2. Drupal
Originally developed as a student community solution, Drupal has gone on to become a fully-fledged open source social publishing CMS with a flexible and modular layout, making it highly customizable. Plus, with over 36,000 extension modules, Drupal can be extended to suit a company’s needs.
The downside though, is that the backend administration in Drupal is quite complicated and does require a lot of technical expertise. For example, to add a module, you need to install it via FTP, which is a complex process. Plus, updating extensions are also quite tedious, since some of the extensions are not always compatible with the backend.
Who it’s for: Drupal is suitable for small and medium-sized organizations who have access to technical expertise. It’s ideal for community platforms, sites with multiple users, and sites which require complex data organization.
3. Joomla
Joomla is the second biggest open source CMS offering in the market with over 2.5 million installations. Unlike WordPress, Joomla comes with more comprehensive out-of-the-box features, meaning you don’t need to install a load of extensions during the initial set up. This particular CMS is based on a stand-alone MVC framework, allowing Joomla users to create their own extensions and share it with the community.
But similar to Drupal, the extensions need to be installed via the backend. Also, the premium extensions can be quite pricey as well. And in terms of rights management and approval, this is often seen as inadequate.
Who it’s for: Despite being aimed at both beginners and advanced users, Joomla is more challenging than WordPress. It is suitable for smaller and medium-sized projects in e-commerce, community platforms, social publishing, and social networking.
4. Concrete5
Concrete5 is known for its ease-of-use. Its intuitive interface lets non-technical users create a basic website with relative ease. Users can make modifications to the core functionality without needing to go into the source code and they can also install add-ons without having to go to the backend.
Though the lack of market penetration in comparison to WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla means there are far fewer themes available, but this is improving with time.
Who it’s for: Ideal for non-technical marketers who want to set up a website for online magazines, newspapers, non-profit organizations, small businesses, and online communities.
5. Alfresco
Alfresco is an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) that supports open standards, open APIs and a range of deployment options including on-premise, cloud, and hybrid. The API-driven environment in Alfresco makes it highly integratable and extendable.
While Alfresco can be used to organize your documents in a systematic way and keep track of previous versions, many users have stated that the interface is quite “intimidating”. Also if you want to customize your Alfresco site, you need Java skills and full-time developers.
Who it’s for: Ideal for enterprises with access to technical expertise who want to manage and store their documents.