Likelihood to Recommend The only thing I believe Accrisoft Freedom is not as well suited is for large e-commerce sites. Accrisoft Freedom actually has an E-commerce module and can do products and online sales, however if this is the majority of what your business does (or your clients' businesses), I would recommend an E-commerce focused CMS. For almost all other circumstances I can think of though, I would recommend Accrisoft Freedom - ma and pa shops on up to a corporation.
Read full review LightCMS is perfect for 90% of websites out there. It has all the basic modules like calendars, photo galleries, news/blog, or forms building built in. Small businesses to mid-sized businesses are perfect for LightCMS. We use other solutions when the requierments for the website include a lot of third party integrations or custom modules. As a hosted CMS it has the same limitations as others with server-side development.
Read full review Pros Hosting and maintenance is taken care of. Due to it being proprietary software, everything is built to work together. Simple to use. Basic functionality for websites is built in without having to dig through thousands of potential options. Development is straightforward...no backend languages required. So if someone wants a unique layout for a portfolio, it's very simple to add a new content type and build the new layout using basic html and css. Read full review LightCMS provides all the major functionality 90% of sites need. It keeps out of its own way by making these solutions intuitive and simple and not trying to solve every problem for everyone which would over-complicate the tool-set. This is the easiest to use CMS we have ever seen. I tell my client's that if they can make a Facebook post, they can manage their website, and it's true. Their UI is so easy and keeps getting easier to use. Untrained users get it in minutes and are able to manage their sites without our help. LightCMS's code is simple and light-weight. Sites are fast and the CMS doesnt get in the way of performance. You can do almost anything you want (except server-side programming) with LightCMS. So, we can create any design we want and it works great with Light CMS's tokens and editable regions concept (which is also simple to implement.) Constantly upgraded and fixed, the product is 1000x better after 10 years of working with it, but is still simple and not bloated. Read full review Cons Their preview setup for reviewing page changes prior to pushing them live is not good. You basically have to push things live to see how they will look, then go back and tweak it, while the changes in progress are live on the site. They need a sandbox, or a better preview feature within the backend so you dont have to keep pushing changes live to test out functionality. Integration with outside tools is non existent. Instead of trying to force people to use their modules or features it would make much more sense to more easily integrate with leading tools in niche spaces. The UI is pretty old. It could use a big refresh. Things like drag and drop builders and functionality should be standard these days. This is also a plus for non tech savvy users as it keeps their page structures to what works without letting people tinker. But if you want to tinker and be a higher end user Freedom isn't the best bet. Read full review While keeping it simple is LightCMS's thing, some of the elements/modules could use deeper options or control for advanced users. Some content, such as calendars, cannot have data exported/imported easily. Support was amazing 10 years ago. We openly talked about how awesome they were... it isn't as good as it once was, but is still way above almost every support of other CMS systems we have used. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We switched to WordPress; it was out of my control.
Read full review Support Rating This rating is based on personal experience only. I believe majority of people would say their support is top notch & 10/10. The only reason I am personally am giving it lower is because I consider my self a much more advanced user of Freedom than their typical Solution Provider developers. Because I am advanced, I troubleshoot my own issues pretty in-depth before I even contact Accrisoft support. Therefore sometimes I feel it takes longer to get the researched & specific answer I need vs. a simple support question would.
Read full review Alternatives Considered In all honesty, we have been moving away from Accrisoft Freedom due to its lack of customizability. We as an agency generally prefer open source solutions since our client base primarily consists of those looking for a more custom solution that can be built off of in the future. While yes, these tend to need more care and attention, they have benefited us more.
Read full review We have looked at hundrends of CMS's and LightCMS is a perfect entry-level system for most of our small to mid sized clients. LightCMS's feature set is less complex than almost every other system and the actual interface is miles ahead of most other CMS systems. It's simply thought out better. It lacks sensibility and an API as well as other advanced features many more expensive or more DIY systems have, but the simplicity makes up for it.
Read full review Return on Investment This was the first CMS we had at our company so hard to say positive or negative impact. Prior to this CMS there was a static site that html files had to be ftp to a company to have the site updated. So from that standpoint it made updating the site much less expensive. Compared to a tool like Wordpress this is much more secure and easier to manage, but since we outsource that portion of it to the company that built the site we dont realize those gains. Read full review While I always think the price could be cheaper, LightCMS is incredibly inexpensive if you consider the costs of hosting, support, and upgrading is all included. As part of their partner program, we are able to control client accounts from our master account, making moving between clients easier and supporting them faster which ultimately makes our labor costs better. Read full review ScreenShots —