CoreMedia vs. Umbraco CMS

I think this CMS is best suited as an enterprise level system. For small, or simple sites, there are better options, but for large high-traffic sites, this is a great CMS.

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

• CoreMedia is a robust system that can manage large sites with multiple, well-organized subsites.
• CoreMedia has a built-in workflow system that functions well for a distributed contributor model.

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.

• Every so often, there would be issues with HTML, that were occasionally difficult to troubleshoot.
• Suggest having a preview feature that would show exactly what the website will look like after changes are implemented.
• Add direct social media feature.

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

CoreMedia continues to refine and deliver new features. They also explore new technologies and trends, like social media integration. The platform is solid and growing. We are also slightly locked into using CoreMedia. Migrating such a large amount of content to another system would likely not be feasible or prudent.

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

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

Incentivized

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

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

Set aside more time than you think you need to migrate content. That is the hard part. Implementing the technology is easy.

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

CoreMedia is slightly better. I was not a part of the original team to select CoreMedia for our web content management tool. It was already in place when I came to my organization, but it's certainly presented challenges along the way as well as solutions to certain problems. I think at this point, we're going to continue using CoreMedia, although we're investigated ways to enhance our use of it.

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

• Once trained, users really ramp up, but getting them to switch mindsets has not been easy or painless.
• We can easily show ROI with add-ons and increasingly do so.
• Since it's a very large site, we have to go a bit slower than everyone would like in terms of the roll-out.

Incentivized

• 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