Which Is The Best Content Management System For My Small Business?

Starting your own business can be difficult if you do not know where to start. Setting your business up with a proper website followed by social media channels is one of the first things you should start looking at. Having a website is one of the ways where you can increase your online presence as well.

Finding which content management system you should use can be hard if you do not know much about CMS. Here are five different content management systems that could be the perfect fit for your business.

WordPress

This is the most popular CMS out there. Closely followed by Joomla. One of the best thing about WordPress is that it is free. WordPress is the CMS for over 64 million websites with around 661 different websites each day.

WordPress is completely free like mentioned earlier. However, there are some things that you have to pay for such as certain themes and extensions. There is plenty of themes on there that are free to use so, have a browse with them before purchasing anything.

WordPress is very simple to use compared to the other CMS out there. If you ever get stuck, try searching on Google or YouTube on how to do it. With WordPress being so popular, many people create tutorials on how to do things on WordPress. You will not be an expert straight away so, be patient with yourself.

A lot of websites in this list will get compared to WordPress due to how good it is.

Joomla

This is the second most popular CMS out there being the host for over 2.5 million websites. Now, that number is nowhere near WordPress although, it is still good. Joomla is like WordPress by being completely free to use. Not to mention it was released back in 2005 so it has plenty of features that you can add to your website.

There are a few negatives that come with Joomla though. For starters, it is far more complicated to use compared to WordPress. It can be difficult to use but, they do have plenty of community support if you ever have any issues. If you are building a complex website, Joomla would be great for you.

The only thing you need to pay for when using Joomla is a domain name, just like WordPress.

Drupal

Drupal is another great CMS and competes with the likes of WordPress and Joomla. This CMS is also free to download and use. Drupal is great if you wish to highly customise your site that is going to contain plenty of data.

It is very easy to add new content on Drupal. Not to mention there are plenty of modules/ plugins that you can implement into your site. Again, if you ever get stuck building your website or have any issues once it is live. Then you can contact customer support for Drupal. The user management is also fantastic as well because it is simple enough to add new roles.

Like all CMS, Drupal is far from perfect. For starters, it can be hard to change the appearance of your site or even make some additions to it. The majority of the sites that use Drupal will use a customised theme that would have been created by a website developer. This can be very expensive so be prepared to spend a lot of money.

Wix

Wix is another popular CMS platform and, is one that you have probably seen in advertisements. Wix is very simple to use due to its drag and drop interface. There are also a lot of pre-made templates that can assist you with building your website.

There are plenty of applications available on Wix as well which work similarly to the plugins on WordPress. Again, some negatives come with this CMS. Once you have selected a template, you are not able to change it to a different one.

One final thing to add about Wix is that you cannot run an eCommerce store with it unless you upgrade to a paid plan. If your business was a branding agency in Manchester, then Wix would be suitable for your business.

BigCommerce

This is an eCommerce platform that is easy to use if you are a novice at building websites. You can use a free domain that will have BigCommerce included or you can pay for one. BigCommerce is one of those sites that charges a monthly subscription to use. Nonetheless, it does give you a trial period for using it for your website before you commit to a monthly plan.

One of the best things about BigCommercce is that it allows you to pay in different ways for your eCommerce site. You have the options of Paypal, Amazon Pay, Credit or even debit cards. BigCommerce also has an excellent customer support system 24/7.

BigCommerce does not give you much power compared to the plugin for WordPress, WooCommerce. There are limited themes that can stop you from using third party services. The pricing can be expensive as well. There is a standard fee of just under $30 per month. However, if you hit the threshold of $50K per year for sales. You will have to start paying a lot more which, can add a lot to your bills. If you are a small business, it is probably very unlikely you will go over that threshold. Depending on what products or services you are trying to sell.

Summary

So there five different content management systems that could all be great for building your website. Some have more features than others. Some CMS are very flexible and others can be quite restricting. At the end of the day, it all just depends on what you think will be best for your business.

WordPress is the best CMS to use for your business. However, if you wish to run an eCommerce then consider downloading the plugin, WooCommere as this is probably one of the best out there for your eCommerce sites.