Kentico Xperience vs. Plone

Well suited for marketers that do not have in-house web programming or web designing resources available. Less appropriate for people that aren't computer savvy (i.e. don't know how to use basic programs like email, Excel, PowerPoint) or for those who are not detail-oriented because if you skip certain steps when adding/editing content, your webpage won't render correctly and/or create negative impact for search engine optimization without you knowing it.

Incentivized

The larger your organization, the more appropriate Plone will be. This is not to say that Plone is a worse choice for small websites, only that the minimum investment for a Plone site is certainly higher than for other platforms. If you already use Plone for your site and are looking for a redesign or an overhaul, I would only advise switching to a different platform such as WordPress or Drupal if your organization is downsizing. For any other situation, Plone is the natural choice for your growth.

• Ease of use for the developer, content authors, and internet marketers that use it. The user interface in Kentico 8 truly is amazing and easy to pick up with no training.
• Strong customization and integration capabilities, including the built in REST service, Integration Bus, and elegant API. I love the fact that if there is anything not in the box we can use the system to extend it or connect it to any CRM, ERP, or other third party service very easily.
• Large out of the box functionality. There is an extremely high level of value that the platform provides. Instead of having to build extra modules for things like Event Booking, Forums, Polls, or E-commerce, they are already there for us to use.
• Ability to control the HTML output of the site at a very fine level. Creating HTML5 is very easy in Kentico and implementing any design, as responsive, is totally possible in the system.
• The ability to get a very high level of insight into the visitors journey through the website and market back to them with the Contact management, Lead Scoring, and Marketing Automation modules is very impressive.
• The scalablity of the system is impressive. Running a very highly trafficked web site is totally possible with Kentico and its strong caching and web farm capabilities.
• The support that Kentico provides is top notch, 24/7 global support is included with any purchase, 7 day bug fix policy, and excellent documentation
• The development community is engaged and ready to help if you are a developer learning Kentico, and the Kentico partner community is very strong as well.

Incentivized

• Rock-solid technology stack. The python/Zope/Plone stack is as solid as anything else out there.
• Highly customizable TTW, if needed, via the Zope Management Interface, or Diazo XSL-transform theme design.
• Good support from core developers, lots of solid add-ons which address just about any needs.
• Amazingly customizable workflow, permissions and security management.

Incentivized

• Their slogan - "Right First Time Technology" - I get what they mean, but some things may be lost in translation. This is a sentence fragment in English, and some clients may be turned off by it.
• Easier to understand documentation - their official documentation could use an overhaul. All of the information is there, but most of their code examples need to be fleshed out a bit. This aspect of their product can be very hard to navigate for first-time Kentico developers.
• Email Queue - this should be in the same section as Email Marketing; currently this is under Configuration

Incentivized

• Bullets and formatting sometimes make it difficult to add text to an existing paragraph. The 'code' button is useful in those cases, but only to those who know html.
• Sometimes the pages don't save correctly and you use information.
• Uploading and displaying images is a bit too much work.

We are locked into Kentico for the long haul. It provides us with an easy and flexible solution for a very non technical company to create a site and have the features they want, especially with the inclusion of EMS into our license. Now we have a true platform to build and grow our solutions.

Plone has been used for more than ten years and it already has an interesting roadmap for its future. I do not know any other open source CMS with the same story of continuous evolution and security track. Interesting new features are added at each release and new modules are created continuously

It seriously is one of the best interfaces I have ever used. I also love the fact that I can use UI personalization to secure any functionality by user or role that I don't want that role to have access to. The best part is the customization of the UI, I can add in any button, tab, or menu item I want through it, no code required.

Incentivized

Compared to the amount of Plone sites, users and customizations we have in our organization, the amount of support requests and training needed is really small.

The new user interface in Plone 6 is even better, it is super fast, has lots of different blocks for enhancing the page, has flexible layout system and is easy to extend with more features.

Our Plone sites are very robust. We have critical systems on Plone and we have been running sites on Plone for over 20 years with very little unexpected downtime.

Plone is very intensive in its operations, and if not configured well it can be slow. However it is designed and built with speed in mind and with proper use of coding, templates and caching can perform extremely well under high loads. It is capable of scaling to very high load availability environments with no specific coding requirements.

Their support staff is friendly, knowledgeable, and will work with you until your issue is fixed. This could take a few phone calls back and forth, but they are very diligent in helping you.

Incentivized

There are not too many Plone companies in the world. But the ones who are, are high level professionals

I have been participating Plone training and the trainers have always been professional. Materials were good and the instructions clear

Well organized, professional training with good materials and instructions

The system provides many opportunities to integrate and enhance the platform and makes it easy to do so.

Previously we used Microsoft SharePoint as a content management system and it was very limited, required a ton of support, and we encountered bugs on a weekly/monthly basis. All of the negatives that we had associated with SharePoint went away when we switched to Kentico. It was really night and day and Kentico has really helped us move forward and become much more efficient.

Incentivized

Plone is much harder to learn then Wordpress. Development in Wordpress is learnt in day's, where development in Plone really takes years to get to the full depth. That said, once you're able to develop in Plone, is it a rock solid system, with readable code. In my experience Wordpress websites need to be updated so often, and the code feels bad organised. I have been building Wordpress websites, choosing Wordpress only when the client has almost no money. But I can never deliver the quality I want to deliver when using Wordpress. Plone does offer the possibility to deliver professional websites. As for Joomla, in the past I have done some Joomla development, but the whole CMS-paradigm could not settle in my brain. Being a web developer for over 15 years now, Joomla always felt contra-intuitive. Let alone the task of teaching this to my clients. Plone is now my only choice. It gives me a fast development-cycle, a user-friendly CMS and a rock stable and very secure system.

Plone has no limits. We have massive sites and can run them just fine

• Kentico has allowed us to deliver to clients more quickly, more cheaply, and with high quality to our clients. It's an inexpensive licensing model, an easy development platform, and powerful enough we can deliver amazing results to our clients.
• Kentico's quick setup and deployment model has allowed me to very quickly ramp up new developers. This saves money and time.
• We routinely see extraordinary returns in visits, time on page, and other critical metrics after rolling out Kentico-based systems/applications.

Incentivized

• We thought that tapping into the user/content management tooling of Plone would be a good and useful thing, however it turned out to be a major pain to tie into those parts of Plone.
• I wish we would have built the extra functionality completely outside Plone and found a way to integrate it. It would have been much easier.