- Wix: Best overall
- WordPress.com: Best for tight budgets
- Drupal: Best for enterprises
- Shopify: Best for e-commerce businesses
- Joomla: Best for new developers
- TYPO3: Best for extension library
- WordPress.org: Best for customization
Many of the content management software (CMS) systems you know today started out as simple blogging platforms. Now, you’ll find the best CMS platforms double as website builders, web hosts and e-commerce platforms.
A CMS primarily needs to help you manage content and media for a website, but it should also provide added value in low monthly costs, search engine optimization (SEO) tools and customization options. We compared the top names in content management software to help you find the best system for your specific needs, whether you’re selling products online, providing services or information to customers or you want to promote a blog.
- The Best Content Management Software (CMS) Systems of 2024
- Why You Can Trust Forbes Advisor Small Business
- Forbes Advisor Ratings
- What Is Content Management Software?
- How To Choose the Best Content Management Software System
- How Much Does Content Management Software Cost?
- Methodology
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- Next Up In Business
The Best Content Management Software (CMS) Systems of 2024
Why You Can Trust Forbes Advisor Small Business
The Forbes Advisor Small Business team is committed to bringing you unbiased rankings and information with full editorial independence. We use product data, strategic methodologies and expert insights to inform all of our content to guide you in making the best decisions for your business journey.
To select the best content management systems, we analyzed more than 25 options based on cost, ease of use, features, storage and bandwidth allowances, user reviews and more. We then compiled a list of the seven best options so you can make the best choice for your unique needs and budget.
Learn more: How We Test Website Builders
Forbes Advisor Ratings
Company | Forbes Advisor Rating | Starting price | Number of templates | E-commerce capability | LEARN MORE | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Wix | 5.0 | $17 per month | 800-plus | Yes; starts at $27 per month | Learn More | On Wix's Website | |||
WordPress.com | 5.0 | $4 per month | 150-plus | Yes; starting at $45 per month | View More | ||||
Drupal | 4.9 | $0 | 3,000-plus | Yes; pricing varies | View More | ||||
Shopify | 4.8 | $39 per month (if billed annually) | 95-plus | Yes | Learn More | On Shopify's Website | |||
Joomla | 4.7 | $0 | 10,000-plus | Yes; pricing varies | View More | ||||
TYPO3 | 4.4 | $0 | 100-plus | Yes; pricing varies | View More | ||||
WordPress.org | 3.9 | $0 | 9,000-plus | Yes; pricing varies | Learn More | Read Forbes' Review |
What Is Content Management Software?
A content management system (CMS) is software that helps you create and modify digital content, including text, audio, video and infographics for a website, even without coding knowledge. CMS platforms make creating and uploading content easy thanks to their selection of themes and templates. The content management software handles all the technical processes for you. So, instead of spending much time creating web pages or storing images and videos, you have the time to focus on creating text content or even other activities that can help grow your business.
The best content management systems make it easy for multiple teams, such as content strategy, content writing, marketing and analytics teams, to work together on your website content. You can also integrate with other third-party software that your business uses, such as digital asset management, content marketing and analytics. That way, you can gain complete website management.
Types of CMS
As technology advances, several types of CMS emerge. Though sometimes similar, these content management systems differ in functionality, capability, how they’re run and even the types of users they serve. But these are the common ones.
All-in-One Website Builders
These are similar to turnkey systems that include all you need to get started and manage your site and content. The best website builders include intuitive CMS systems that anyone can use to manage SEO, a blog, files, the look and feel of your site and the backend functionality. These are ideal for new and small business owners who don’t require a ton of customization.
Open-source CMS Systems
An open-source CMS system gives you far more freedom and control over the look and feel and functionality of your site. The trade-off is that it’s much harder to learn and use. These are better suited to web developers or large businesses that need or want a custom solution and can afford the higher cost of development.
Cloud-based CMS
A third-party provider hosts a cloud-based CMS, and there are two types: full cloud and partial cloud. Cloud-based CMS types are for businesses that want another to manage their CMS infrastructure either fully or partially. Users cannot customize the full cloud CMS to their needs, but the partial cloud CMS located at each user’s cloud-based server allows alterations through source codes or specific modules. Cloud-based CMS generally requires ongoing support.
Enterprise CMS
Larger institutions often use an enterprise CMS, as it has advanced features and capabilities and supports volumes of content and users. It collects and manages an organization’s unstructured data, including emails and reports, and helps it deliver relevant content to target audiences.
Headless CMS
This type allows you to create and publish content without a front-end user interface. With it, you can manage your content seamlessly, delivering various categories and types of content to web platforms, mobile devices and the Internet of Things (IoT) products.
How To Choose the Best Content Management Software System
You can expect any CMS you choose to have specific content management features, including a content editor, the ability to schedule posts and security features to help protect both your backend operations and the front-end users. But that’s not all you should be looking for. For instance, their usability and customer support are essential, too.
Essential Features
To decide which content management system is the best for you, you need first to know the features of CMS tools. Here are the most important ones:
- Customizable pre-designed templates: Most content management systems provide suites of pre-designed templates you can easily use to customize your site appearance, whether you’re building a new website or redesigning one. They also allow users to add or update content when necessary.
- Digital asset management: A CMS software is a centralized content hub for organizing digital assets. You can use the created categories for different management operations, such as blogging, marketing campaigns and running your online store. CMS tools also store your assets in the cloud, making them easily accessible to your teams.
- Collaboration capability: Content management tools organize content to enhance workflows and productivity across teams. Relevant members including content creators, IT professionals, developers and marketers can collaborate on projects, accessing and sharing updated content as necessary within the tool. The best CMS also allows you to set permissions on specific actions to limit overriding activities by unspecified users.
- Smooth integration: Content management tools enable smooth integration with your other tools. You can integrate custom forms with email marketing tools for lead generation or integrate CMS with customer relationship management software to personalize your content.
- Blogging and scheduling functionality: A CMS software will provide you with built-in blogging tools or at least allow extensions that allow you to create and publish blog posts to drive traffic to your website, generate leads from the traffic, establish your authority and achieve other blogging benefits. CMS platforms also enable you to schedule blog posts, landing pages, emails and other content.
- SEO features and extensions: CMS software platforms provide built-in features and add-ons for search engine optimization. They make it easy for you to perform content operations, such as customizing page titles and meta descriptions, choosing uniform resource locator (URL) structures and optimizing load times, which improve your site ranking on search engines such as Google.
- Security features and extensions: The best CMS will also offer features and add-ons you can add to your site to secure it. Such security features include web application firewalls, SSL certifications, SSO memberships and a dedicated 24/7 security team.
Usability
The built-in functionality of a CMS is especially important for small business owners who don’t have development skills or don’t want to hire a developer to create a custom solution. Look for all-in-one solutions that include easy-to-use tools, automatic updates and backups and a dashboard and visual editor that are simple to use. Beyond the included features, consider the extensions or plugins available to extend the functionality of your CMS.
Security
All CMS systems have security features, but some require more attention from you or a manager to maintain. Frequent updates of core CMS systems are needed to keep them safe—can you stay on top of those updates yourself or can you set up automatic updates? Employing MFA can help keep your back-end operations safe, so look for CMS that offers authentication features that require users to log in with a password and code, for example. User group permissions are also important so you only give access to those who are authorized to view source code, for example.
Customer Support
Many CMS systems don’t have traditional customer support, as in live agents to answer questions and help troubleshoot issues. You’ll find that kind of support from platforms such as Wix, WordPress and Shopify, but not for Drupal or Joomla, for example. However, most CMS systems have robust support documentation and active user communities. Avoid a CMS that has a dead community because you’re unlikely to find the help you’d need.
SEO Tools
An SEO-friendly CMS should include features to make it easy for you to categorize content, run a blog and tag articles. You should be able to add a meta description, alt text on photos and customize your URLs and blog posts. Your menu navigation relates to SEO, as does mobile-responsiveness. Whether your site is responsive depends on your web developer or template. You may also want to have access to your sitemap and 301 redirects for dead pages.
How Much Does Content Management Software Cost?
The cost of a CMS varies, depending on the functionality and capability of each system. And that includes their general features and offerings, such as how high the data bandwidth per month is or the strength of monthly traffic allowed. There are affordable all-in-one CMS solutions that include website hosting, email marketing, an array of customizable templates and an app marketplace with paid-for plugins that enable you to extend their functionality. That means you can add functionality such as analytics or increase the number of sites and user licenses, adding to your monthly cost.
Content management software costs depend on your needs. For instance, the cost of an e-commerce site may be higher than a blogging site. An e-commerce site owner may subscribe to additional functionality such as a point-of-sale (POS) system, abandoned cart recovery, discount and promotion functionality and shipping assistants.
Many CMS platforms provide free versions and may cost as low as $4 per month. But remember that they often require you to pay for basic web hosting, domain names and premium themes or templates. In summary, CMS tools can range from free all the way up to hundreds of dollars per month.
Before choosing a CMS solution, consider their pricing plans and the costs of add-ons and integrating with necessary tools. If you budget appropriately, you can often get significant savings by paying for longer terms up-front rather than purchasing month-to-month plans.
Below are the starting prices of a few of the best CMS systems:
- Wix: $16 per month
- WordPress.com: $4 per month
- Drupal: $0 per month
- Shopify: $29 per month
- Joomla: $0 per month
- TYPO3: $0 per month
- WordPress.org: $0 per month
Methodology
To find the best content management software, Forbes Advisor looked at everything from the popularity of each CMS, pricing and built-in functionality. We also considered features specific to CMS systems, such as post scheduling, e-commerce possibilities, security and whether hosting is included.
There are less tangible criteria to consider too. For example, how easy is it to use an interface or are there so many options that a CMS is overwhelming? We also read through user reviews to understand real-world examples of the pros and cons of each CMS. We then compare multiple CMS systems to each other, applying a score to each factor and then average the ratings to come up with a ranking from one to five stars:
- Ease of use: For small business owners and individuals, ease of use is especially important. We gave more credit to CMS systems that are simple out of the box.
- Cost and fees: Most CMS systems on the market are open-source and, therefore, free to use, but all websites require hosting. So, we looked at the overall cost of using a website builder with a CMS versus choosing an open-source option with à la carte hosting and extensions.
- CMS features: It’s important to choose a CMS that includes the features you need to make digital asset management and content management easy. For example, post scheduling is critical, as are SEO tools and template availability.
- Functionality: All CMS systems are meant to make it easier for you to manage your content easily, but some include more built-in functionality, which we ranked higher. However, we also considered the official libraries of plugins that extend the functionality of a CMS.
- Security: Also important is the security of a CMS. This comes in the form of features, such as MFA, but also in the form of updates of the core CMS.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is the most widely used content management system?
WordPress is the most popular CMS system—it’s used by more than 40% of the websites on the internet.
What are the different types of CMS?
Free, open-source CMS is the most common type of CMS, such as WordPress and Joomla. There’s also proprietary CMS, such as Microsoft SharePoint and Sitecore. Finally, there’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) CMS that uses cloud storage for a low monthly fee, such as Dropbox and Google Drive.
Is Shopify a CMS?
Shopify is an e-commerce platform that includes a CMS. The content management aspect of Shopify includes product, order and content management, such as inventory and a blog.
Which CMS is best for beginning bloggers?
CMS sites that are best for beginning bloggers include those that offer an easy-to-use drag-and-drop website builder so that you can design a blog website without coding experience. These include blogging platforms, such as Wix and WordPress.org. Another option for beginners looking for a zero-learning-curve blogging site is Medium. Medium requires no design or coding experience. You can set up an account and profile as you would on a social media platform, then publish your blog posts.
What are the benefits of a content management system?
You need a CMS software to help you do many things. Here are its major benefits:
- Keeping your content organized
- Improving collaboration among your team members
- Enabling team members without the knowledge of HTML, CSS and the like to create, publish and update content easily
- Optimizing your website content to bring you more customers and revenue
- Giving your team members room to work on other tasks instead of dealing with coding jobs