Which CMS is Best for My Business: Open-source or Commercial?

When it comes to choosing a CMS, the users often come across the ongoing superiority debate between open source and commercial content management systems. As a result, this tends to generate a great degree of confusion among them. Well in this article, we are going to cover different factors that can help you choose after a careful analyzation.

First, let us get the definitions clear:

Open source CMS: These types of systems are often available to users at free of cost. Most of these tend to have their contributors’ community, that includes developers from all across the globe. They are often involved in creating and sharing the plugins. Examples for open source systems include Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress.

Commercial CMS: Also known as Proprietary content management system, these are developed by a single company and may require a licensing fee to be paid by the users. Instead of accepting the 3rd party plugins, its built-in functionalities are developed and supported by the company(parent). IBM WebSphere, Kentico CMS, SharePoint and much more.

Now Take a Look at Some Important Factors

The term free should not be confused with cheap here. An access to an open source solution simply means that you would not receive the out-of-the-box product you expect. However, the case is vice versa in the commercial CMS.

When talking of the cost of ownership, it can play an important role in letting you selecting the what is best according to your requirements. On one hand, commercial software requires a license purchase, whereas its counterpart generally comes up with free or low-cost options for the purchase of the license.

Upfront cost is a big part of commercial systems as it can be range from several thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands. Every enterprise content management system tends to charge a certain amount of recurring fees for updates and support.

Open source CMS often rely on the community network when it feels the requirement of a support via website blogs and forums. If a company requires a significant amount of support, then solutions provided by open source would prove to be of no use to the company. Whereas almost all of their commercial counterparts specializes in providing extensive technical support and full documentation while conducting the management of interactive environments of forum.

To conclude, the value-added services and additional solutions provided by the commercial software tends to justify the additional cost. However, if you have a budget of over $15,000, then it would prove to be the right choice. However, if you have a budget that is less than the given amount, going for open source would be a more realistic option. In case, you face any doubt, get in touch with a web app development company that can help you in choosing the type of CMS you require. Moreover, it can provide with various other services including enterprise content management, big data analytics solutions, loyalty programs for customers and much more.