Need help choosing a Commercial CMS!

Question

Hi,

We currently use Joomla or Silverstripe for our CMS websites. The time has come where we need to expand and adopt a more commercial CMS (whitelabel) which is easy to customise, create templates, expand, has a lot of powerful feature and is also easy to use for a client.

Before I start to research I thought id seek your knowledge/experience. Which Commercial CMS's have you guys used before and would recommend?

Thanks for any input.

Answer 1

I have too little experience in commercial CMS's to make a recommendation, but be sure to check out commercialcms.com. They host demo versions of commercial CMS's (what their sister site opensourcecms.com does for OS ones). They are young and the selection is not too big yet, but still worth a look.

Other than that, some more specifications wouldn't hurt: How many users there will be, how complex a right management you will need, and so on.

Answer 2

In all my searching for a CMS comeracial or not, the absolutely best solution I have found is MODxCMS.

• It is flexible.
• It make senses as far how the site is structured.
• You can easily lock down certain parts that only you should edit.
• It's easy to get a client to understand how it works.
• it's open-source.
• creates seo friendly urls
• The control panel can be themed, and white labeled.
• Easy to customize, both design and code.
• has a great templating system.
• has an amazing tool for creating and styling menus.
• has a fast ajax interface.
• the list goes on.

Check it out I think you'll like it.

Answer 3

Though not strictly commercial (the core is open-source and free to use) I would definitely recommend Umbraco (if you are can use asp.net platform). It's main power is it's flexibility - you are not constrained in the mark-up you generate so you can manage any content with it very easily. It also has an active community, lots of free extensions and also comes in a pro-version (if you require support and additional features).

Answer 4

Telerik Sitefinity

IMHO it's one of the most professional CMS at the moment. (It also has some excellent references.) If you can use an ASP.NET-based system you should try it.

Answer 5

DotNetNuke. IMHO is one of the most advanced CMS on the way, but the limitation is that is for .NET.

The community editions is very god, but if you need more there is the professional edition (I'm very happy with the first one, there are a lot of components and templates and I never felt the need to migrate in more than 3 years of use).