Concrete CMS vs. Umbraco CMS

Concrete5 is perfect for a website that needs to be regularly updated without accessing the code, whether that be because a developer created your site for you, or because you yourself are a developer who wants to keep the time spent on updates down.

In my experience, it's less useful for modern web apps such as PWAs that would benefit more from technologies such as React and Vue.

Incentivized

Umbraco is well suited for websites that are looking to do a wide range of activities that require complex technoligies. An example of this is a company with several different products or services. Umbraco would be overkill for simple sites that are mostly static. It is also difficult to find developers who have Umbraco experience, as it's market share is not all that high

Incentivized

• Concrete5 has a modular editing system, so you can edit the pages without having knowledge of coding. You just pick the module you want to insert or edit and click where you want it to go.
• You are able to edit modules in an HTML format if you would like to, so if you have the knowledge you can have even more control over your modules.
• You can also edit entire page themes by selecting them from the page layout menu. This allows you a greater versatility of the pages on your site.

Incentivized

• Quick to learn. For most if cases, developer needs to know Razor coding.
• Doesn't require back-end programming.
• Has build in users management (developers, content managers) and members management consoles (users of the site).
• Clear admin tool (especially in version 7)
• Fast.
• Creating code from scratch, so it is easier to create clean code.

• Concrete5.6 websites have no good path to migrate to 5.7, short of manual content migration. This is a big problem and affected the user community negatively.
• Some features that were available as paid add-ons in 5.6, such as discussion forums and e-commerce shopping cart, are missing from newer versions 5.7/5.8.
• Starting to develop add-ons and customizations for Concrete5 can be challenging as 5.7/5.8 documentation is not yet complete.

Incentivized

• Migration of data between servers. There are tools that you can pay for that help facilitate this, but like any CMS system, there are still some tricks to getting it to work correctly.
• Running as a Web Project instead of a Web Site. Umbraco does not run compiled code, but instead compiles it on the fly. I find this to cause some performance issues that would otherwise be resolved with a compiled code base.

Incentivized

I have had nothing but good experiences with Concrete5. I have used it on several client websites and even several of my own sites. It is the leading CMS I will go to if I have a need to dynamically update content on a website by people who are typically untrained. They have solved every angst I had with the other solutions I have evaluated in the past and continue to be the simplest to implement and customize.

Although there is a slight learning curve (as with any software), it is very easy to use once you get a hold of it. It is easy to upload and manage files (and other digital assets), and the drag-n-drop interface on the front-end is easy for end-users to understand

Incentivized

Umbraco CMS effectively addresses enterprise content management needs. It's quite mature .NET based CMS, standing out as a leader among its competitors. Websites built with Umbraco are blazing fast. Extensive customization capabilities, and user-friendly content publishing interface makes it an ideal choice for businesses looking for a mature CMS solution.

Incentivized

Since it's not tied to a central server (other than for authorizing updates and assigning licenses to specific sites), it's available pretty much 100% of the time.

Incentivized

Occasionally, errors will appear in the admin that make it impossible to work without developer support.

Incentivized

The site works extremely well, the front end flies, searches and form submissions are very fast indeed. The reason its a 9 not a ten? the back end can be a little slow at times, and this is unfair, because for the backend to be so amazing, it has to do a huge amount of work!

Working in the admin panel (adding / reviewing / editing content) is very slow. The public facing site speed is dependent on what the pages are doing and how well the code was written (whether it is optimized for speed).

Incentivized

Concrete5 is open-source and has an incredibly strong, polite, and supportive community. You can get an answer to nearly anything you want to do with Concrete5 by googling for it, searching the Concrete5 discussion forums or stack overflow, or posting your question to the forum. Members are very courteous and do not look down on those with less knowledge. And answers are always quick, informative, and supportive.

Incentivized

Support for Umbraco-owned paid plugins is nonexistent.

Incentivized

Online training is often based on older versions of the platform. So, you'll have to fill in the gaps on your own.

Incentivized

It's important that any CMS is implemented by a skilled developer. Content management is not a commodity. One of the keys I've found with Concrete5 is to create a homogenous content-entry method (e.g. focus on in-context editing OR focus on using the Composer feature). This seems to make it more likely that site editors will be able to easily come back to editing after a layoff without having to "remember" too much.

Incentivized

Spend the time to wireframe the content structure prior to diving in. This helps speed the process of implementation and it serves as documentation for end users.

Incentivized

I didn't have to spend too much time learning Concrete CMS, whereas I had to spend a long time learning other CMSs. After struggling to develop a plugin for WordPress, developing an add-on for Concrete CMS was piece of cake thanks to many available APIs. Making custom themes and blocks was much easier than WordPress.

We previously used WordPress, however this was not easy to use, it was a complicated system and was limited in what we could achieve, there was a big outlay in buying bolts on and ensuring the system was safe. We found we where spammed loads, we tried to make it work however after a year we decided to leave WordPress behind. The company did evaluated Adobe but the dev team decided that Umbraco was the best tool to meet our own needs.

Incentivized

Without significant development, the product does not scale well.

Incentivized

• Even though the Concrete5 community is growing, it's still not up to the level as some of the other WCMS communities.
• More detailed statistics with historical data could be provided by the system.
• Concrete5 hihgly depends on Jquery. It makes it hard to upgrade the javascript library since the control panel depends on it.

• CMS is free
• Support form Umbraco HQ is not expensive, can include Courier or other functionality
• For most cases does not need back end developer
• For trained Umbraco developers (Razor coding, using admin tool), developing medium site, takes a few weeks max