Designing a perfect website is as crucial as a brick-and-mortar presence. If your website is customized, simplified, simple-to-use, and appealing, it becomes easier for your company to prosper in the years ahead.

Building a precise and dependable website is not a cakewalk; you need to pick the most acceptable CMS to generate and manage content, blogs, and websites.

What is Content Management System (CMS)?

A content management system (CMS) is a software program for creating, editing, collaborating, publishing, and storing digital information. CMSs are often used to manage enterprise content (ECM) and online content (WCM).

A CMS offers a graphical user interface with capabilities for creating, editing, and publishing online content without coding from scratch.

Why you need CMS for your small business

You may have a small business that is growing steadily. In such an instance, you may wonder if you need a CMS platform for your small business. The benefits are many, and among the top benefits include the following:

• Security & performance

A good CMS comes with extra security protection that secures your business or, rather, the website from hackers, bots, and other forms of vulnerabilities that could put your business at risk.

Another reason why a CMS is ideal for your small business is its excellent performance. The website loads at a faster speed, which benefits all the visitors. A fast-loading website means impressive SEO ranking, hence better business visibility and scalability.

• Flexibility

You might want to customize your website with changes in business requirements. For instance, when you need to adjust the colors, fonts, layouts, or add any other functionality, it becomes easy when you have a CMS.

• Simplicity

Not every small business owner has the tech skills and expertise required to perform some technical tasks, including simple ones. With the CMS platform, it becomes easy to create impressive landing pages even when you lack adequate tech skills.

• Accessibility and speed

With several CMS being web-based, it becomes easy to adjust content on your site from anytime and anywhere, thus giving you an easy time to always ensure your site is updated. Besides, you don’t need code deployments or FTP servers to execute such processes.

Best CMS Platforms 2024

Below are some of the finest CMS platforms to grow your company.

• WordPress

WordPress is one of the most popular content management blogging systems, frequently used for professional and personal blogs. It is one CMS virtually every internet company has heard about. Launched in 2003, WordPress enables you to install third-party and pre-made website design themes. It also supports custom domains and unlimited data and document storage.

Its user-friendly interface lets users construct a website and maintain web pages without sophisticated HTML expertise. It is also totally SEO-friendly and incredibly versatile. The most admirable aspect of WordPress is that it is an open-source platform that gives the flexibility to develop whatever the user wants.

Check: WordPress development outsourcing

• HubSpot

HubSpot is another excellent CMS system that enables you to construct a customized, optimized website that is effortlessly compatible with any device without any technological hitches. The HubSpot CMS tool helps you effortlessly bring ideas to life and construct an SEO-friendly website, keeping you in Google’s top searches. Once you enter HubSpot Development, you can manage all your content in one location and catapult your company.

Whether you are a rookie marketer or a hardcore developer, the HubSpot CMS tool makes it easy to simplify your marketing and website activities owing to its user-friendly interface, which requires no code to match your demands. Instead, you merely need to insert the material in the selected template and adjust your company requirements and client demands.

• Squarespace

Want to develop a website that reflects your business and generates more traffic? If so, you can utilize Squarespace. It is another famous CMS usually recognized as a blogging platform, website builder, and hosting provider.

To make a website on Squarespace, you do not need any web development skills since it gives loads of themes that enable you to construct a website according to your wishes. Moreover, it is a user-friendly interface, and remarkable capabilities let people construct attractive websites without spending serious money and tech expertise.

• Magento

Magento is another platform on top of the most acceptable CMS. It is one of the most trusted e-commerce systems built to assist you in managing all your website pages. WordPress is also an open-source CMS that enables you to power your website with new features and numerous functions.

With Magento, you can construct sites with up to 500,000 goods and online storefronts to help you create an exceptional customer experience. It also uses SEO skills from which most firms can quickly develop and advertise their website. Magneto also employs Zend PHP and MySQL databases to overload the website, making it the most pleasing customer experience.

So, if you want to use a platform that saves all the necessary material easily and is highly configurable, Magento is another excellent alternative.

• Drupal

Drupal is an open-source, scalable CMS that helps you build unique websites and develop your company. In addition, this platform offers ambitious site builders that desire a great user experience.

Easy and great functionality is one of Drupal’s most significant features. It gives capabilities for modifying the design that matches your website. You may also develop your visuals using Drupal to make your website unique and attractive.

An excellent choice is the vast API support for Drupal, such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, allowing small companies to depend on creating more leads and enhancing company revenues simply.

Check: outsource drupal development

• WIX 

If you search for a CMS to help you design beautiful, optimized sites, Wix should be on your radar. It is a cloud-based platform that incorporates a drag-and-drop mechanism, enabling you to add extra functionality by adding plugins.

It also allows you to eliminate ads, enhance bandwidth, and acquire your domain name in a premium bundle. Wix makes a wholly customizable and high-quality website simple for everyone.

Also, Wix is a design-driven platform that lets you construct a website that provides value to your company objectives. Therefore, if you want to develop HTML5 and a sturdy website without any problem, Wix is another popular way to design a website quickly.

•  Shopify

Shopify is a popular CMS for any small business, and more so for e-commerce businesses. With the simple setup steps and the simplified dashboards for easy customization and product addition, Shopify will become your ideal CMS platform for your upcoming e-commerce business.

In fact, Shopify has simplified the steps to follow when moving from one platform to another. What’s more, you can use the link provided when you want to move products from your previous store to Shopify, thus making the whole process simple and manageable.

• WooCommerce

WooCommerce will benefit you big time, especially if you have a WordPress website. It is a CMS that is best for selling products and services, more so on the WordPress website. In other words, it is a WordPress plugin that comes with extensions (both paid and free ones) to add more functionalities and features.

• Joomla

Joomla CMS platform for any given small business. Its features are the same as those of Drupal and WordPress, including its easy-to-use nature. If you are searching for a platform that will accelerate your small business growth while giving you an easy time, you ought to try Joomla.

• PrestaShop

Another ideal CMS for small ecommerce businesses that are still growing is PrestaShop. With extensive features and a reliable active community, it becomes a flexible platform to manage and grow your business.

You can easily customize modules and themes to align with your products and services with PrestaShop. Above all, you can easily create your online store with this platform even if you lack tech skills and expertise.

How to choose the best CMS for your business: Factors to consider

We have many CMS platforms anyone can use to scale and grow their small businesses. However, how do you determine the right CMS for your business? Below are core factors you must consider before choosing the ideal CMS for your small business:

• Usability

Different CMS platforms have diverse functionalities. That is why it is key to evaluate the capability of a specific CMS platform for your small business before you make the final decision. In fact, if you aren’t in a position to hire an expert developer and at the same time you lack tech expertise and skills, you must ensure you select an easy-to-use CMS platform for your business. Think of the built-in tools, features, plugins, and extensions required to use the CMS platform seamlessly. This way, you will always have an easy time with the CMS you choose.

• SEO Tools

SEO tools make it seamless for you to arrange your website content, run blogs, and article tagging.

For instance, adding alt text on photos, including meta description, and customizing blog posts & URLs. What’s more, SEO plays a big role in enhancing menu navigation, especially when it comes to responsiveness matters. For these reasons, select a CMS platform with reliable and stable SEO tools to simplify your work and speed up your business growth.

• Security

You cannot overlook security concerns when choosing a viable CMS platform for your small business. While most CMS platforms have security features, some require a keen follow-up to ensure regular updates. These regular updates are what make the CMS platform fully functional and effective in diverse ways. Therefore, before you choose a CMS platform for your small business, check the security features. Are they automatic? If there are no automatic updates, can you manage those regular updates by yourself, or will you need an expert? Think of these issues before settling on the final CMS platform. Above all, select a CMS platform with solid security measures, such as the use of codes and passwords to safeguard your details, including those of all your clients or any other user.

• Key Features

Well, every CMS platform has its set of features for different functionalities. Depending on your business needs, you need to evaluate the key features that are relevant to push your business to the next level. Ideally, a fully functional CMS platform should include the following key features:

• Digital asset management for categorizing all digital assets and making them easily accessible
• Smooth integration for easy integration of other tools to the CMS platform.
• Security features & extensions for securing your website
• Blogging & scheduling functionality for creating and publishing informative, engaging, and SEO blog posts that will drive traffic.
• Collaboration capability for organizing content to create a seamless workflow, which in turn enhances productivity across the teams.
• SEO features & extensions for search engine optimization and content customization to suit the targeted audience.
• Customizable pre-designed templates for easy customization of the website outlook

• Customer Support

Finally, you might experience some difficulties with diverse CMS platforms. Think of how you can resolve or troubleshoot issues in case you face difficulties using the CMS platform for your small business. Of course, a CMS platform with an active and supportive community will be the best solution.

What is the cost of a CMS platform?

When planning to budget for your business’s CMS platform, it is vital to understand that different CMS platforms have different charges. In fact, some are free, and you don’t have to pay any fee. However, you should realize that you will need to pay for third-party extensions, design, and web hosting services.

Again, some might attract a monthly subscription fee, while others may need you to pay an annual fee. The bottom line is to explore each and every CMS platform before you start using it. Know the charges to avoid inconveniences later on.

Final thoughts 

Searching and picking the most acceptable CMS is a challenging task. Hopefully, the above-stated CMS solutions will help you pick the proper system to match your company’s demands and deliver an excellent business view.

Any queries about CMS development? Feel free to fill our contact form to get a free consultation from our experts.

Also check: Cost to hire WordPress developers | Drupal development cost