What CMS To Choose In 2020

Content Management System, or CMS, makes our lives easier when starting a decent blog, an online shop, or a full-fledged business website. The great thing about it is that you will be able to do it without touching any piece of code. 

CMSs are typically used for enterprise content management and web content management. You need to be aware that content management systems are not one-size-fits-all technologies, and there is no "right" answer when selecting a custom content management system or open-source platform. Thus, the question of choosing a CMS should not be approached solely from an SEO point of view because we can't state that search engines "love" some CMS or, on the contrary, rank poorly others. When choosing the CMS that is right for you, you need to consider the most basic information, pricing, SEO friendliness, and usability to the more specific technology stacks, coding language, and back-end management.

The most popular CMS systems in 2020

WordPress, Joomla, Drupal,  Contao, and Neos are currently the most popular standard solutions for professional website operation. But every system is, of course, not an equal fit for every individual purpose. 

How To Pick The Right CMS For Your Website

1. Estimate your budget. If you are an absolute beginner, then the best solution would be to choose a free CMS, for example, WordPress or Joomla, as it has a steep learning curve. A new user can start a blog in a matter of minutes. If your project brings a stable profit, then we advise you to pay attention to paid systems. They are better protected from hacking and viruses and are updated more often.

2. Estimate project scope and complexity. Let's say you are the owner of a blog or landing page (one-page website). In this case, the WordPress capacities will be enough. But if you have a large online store with a wide range of products, then you will need a more powerful CMS with flexible functionalities and analytics (for example, 1C-Bitrix).

3. Assess your professional skills. Are you planning to install the CMS by yourself? Take a sober look at your knowledge and skills. You don't need any unique talents to install WordPress, but there can be some difficulties with Drupal or Magento.

4. Evaluate the hosting capacity. See how much disk space is provided, what version of PHP is supported, and whether it can be changed, or it is possible to install the CMS out of the box.

5. Check the community support. CMSs with active communities are continually evolving, so you will always have access to updates, security patches, and help from other experts.

Top Popular CMS in 2020 and 2021

Hither, we reviewed the widely used content management systems and their remarkable features. 

There are over 100 content management systems. They are tailored to specific purposes, with their advantages and disadvantages, and specific functionalities that can solve various problems. One CMS works well for an online store, while the other is a perfect fit for a small blog. 

So here are the most popular CMS in 2020. Let’s have a closer look at them.

WordPress

WordPress is open-source and free to download.

There are many highly qualified specialists, and a considerable number of professional plugins developed, including specifically for the development of online stores.

In 90% of the cases, WordPress + a few extra plugins can accommodate any website. However, when you need your website to connect and pass data to some internal database connected to a different system, a standard plugin might not be enough. You will have no choice but to develop that functionality from scratch.

Suitable for: medium and large website, blog, online store, information or news portal, community site, forum.

Drupal

It is the oldest free CMS on this list — its first versions were released back in 2001. Nevertheless, for all twenty years, Drupal has been developing non-stop. It has become a robust framework based on which you can build a website of any complexity. Unlike many other CMS (WordPress or Joomla), Drupal's basic version provides minimal functionality that must be extended by installing add-ons (called modules) in Drupal. Nevertheless, due to modules that can be previously developed by third-party developers or independently, you can seriously tighten up the functionality and quickly raise an online store or even a social network on Drupal.

Suitable for: medium-size and large website, blog, online store, information or news portal, community site, forum.

Joomla

Free, open-source engine with the ability to upgrade the core of the system. For those cases, when the basic functionality is not enough, Joomla will offer a wide range of extensions and custom themes. Besides, in Joomla, there is support for simultaneous work with different languages by default, which makes it easy to create sites for a multilingual audience.

Joomla and Drupal appeal to different audiences compared to their biggest contender, WordPress. Though, both are slightly more complicated and can be better used for complex websites.

Suitable for: small website, blog, online store, information or news portal, community site, forum.

Magento

It is a free and flexible, open-source e-commerce platform written in PHP code. It offers a wide range of solutions depending on your business's size, including SaaS. The CMS is appealing to anyone looking to start an e-commerce business. It is a reliable platform offering features like order management and business intelligence, bestsellers analysis, new customers, turnover for the entire period. It is a bit complicated to get set-up online, but there's a good support team available once you do.

Suitable for: small and medium-size website, blog, online store, information or news portal, community site, forum.

Shopify

CMS for online stores are suitable for small and medium businesses. Shopify functions as SaaS (Software as a Service) so you don’t need to install anything on your PC to use it because it’s all stored in the cloud. The platform can integrate with Amazon, Google, Facebook, so it is more suitable for projects targeted at Europe and the USA. 

The pricing is relatively reasonable for what’s offered, and an array of options provides users with choices to create a top e-commerce site for their needs.

Suitable for: blog, online store, information or news portal, community site, forum.

Conclusion

Choosing which CMS to use is as personal as choosing an operating system. All the best CMS options have their supporters and opponents, but you should make a well-informed decision.

The right choice derives from what you believe is the best fit for your company and what features you would most commonly use. There is no wrong choice at the end of the day, as long as you have a CMS that works for you.

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