Amaxus was a commercial PHP-based content management system from Box UK, an agile software developer and consulting company. It provided an enterprise-level web content management system used by large brand and agencies. It is known for a focus on usability. The product has been discontinued.
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Concrete CMS
Score 9.2 out of 10
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Concrete CMS (formerly Concrete5) is a free and open source, PHP built content management system for content on the web and also for intranets. It is optimized to support the creation of online magazines and newspapers.
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Pricing
Amaxus CMS (discontinued)
Concrete CMS
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amaxus CMS (discontinued)
Concrete CMS
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amaxus CMS (discontinued)
Concrete CMS
Features
Amaxus CMS (discontinued)
Concrete CMS
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Amaxus CMS (discontinued)
9.0
1 Ratings
9% above category average
Concrete CMS
9.5
38 Ratings
15% above category average
Role-based user permissions
9.01 Ratings
9.538 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Amaxus CMS (discontinued)
7.4
1 Ratings
5% below category average
Concrete CMS
8.4
42 Ratings
8% above category average
WYSIWYG editor
5.01 Ratings
9.342 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness
6.01 Ratings
10.037 Ratings
Admin section
6.01 Ratings
10.040 Ratings
Page templates
10.01 Ratings
10.040 Ratings
Library of website themes
8.01 Ratings
4.238 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design
10.01 Ratings
9.739 Ratings
Publishing workflow
8.01 Ratings
7.737 Ratings
Form generator
6.01 Ratings
6.639 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Amaxus CMS (discontinued)
7.3
1 Ratings
2% below category average
Concrete CMS
6.9
40 Ratings
8% below category average
Content taxonomy
7.01 Ratings
8.939 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions
10.01 Ratings
5.439 Ratings
Community / comment management
5.01 Ratings
5.439 Ratings
SEO support
00 Ratings
9.039 Ratings
Bulk management
00 Ratings
6.039 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Amaxus is well suited as a development platform and content management system for companies who have a dedicated, experienced development team because it has such complex functionality. It is not well suited for companies whose main content updater will be a person with limited development experience, because it is so hard to learn and understand how to use.
Suitable if you are part of small to large scale companies or web-houses which have PHP developers and frontend engineers with some budgets. [Also suitable if] you or your client want to build a website that requires some features or uniqueness [and needs] some customization and freedom. Additionally suitable if you want this project to be DevOps based project or if the project requires very tight security and is inside of a closed network.
As a dev, the Page object (coupled with page attributes, nav menus and page lists) makes structuring a website or web app a dream. The separation of page templates from page types also helps, the former being about layout while the latter is more conceptual.
As an admin, you pretty much have as much control as the developers of the site decide to give you.
The versioning system allows admins to roll changes back and work on changes before publishing them.
The permissions system is exceptionally powerful, allowing roles and/or individual users to be included or excluded from each permission.
The attributes system allows pages, files and users to be given custom properties of various types (e.g. text, image, colour).
Its a very solid, very consistent package that never lets you down or leaves you frustrated. It gets a 10/10 because its so much better than anything else currently available. It also gets a 10/10 because, even if not compared to others, it does not leave you wanting for features or functionality. It is an excellent piece of software that will answer almost every CMS need.
I have used it on over 30 projects in the past 3 years and it's still a pleasure to work in. Doesn't always have all the answers, no CMS does, but I still find it very easy to use from prototyping to working to final project. Also there is no problem working on a localhost then moving to a live site, like there is with WordPress. It's my go to app in my CMS quiver.
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.
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!
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.
Build off of an existing theme to speed up the creation of custom designed themed. Bootstrap is a good one but there are many others that are probably much simpler to build from than the Bootstrap one was. Make sure you host on a Unix/Linux server so you don't have to install PHP or MySQL separately. It's just smoother on those platforms.
I have used an in-house CMS which was very simple and only allowed the user to update very basic templated content, and I have used Sitecore, which is sort of like a middle-of-the-road. Sitecore is great because it allows for the user to have a lot of control over templates and updating content, but it's not so complex that it is very difficult and time-consuming to learn how to use, like Amaxus.
WordPress at the time was riddled with security breaches in the news and while Concrete5 was smaller (and therefore a smaller attack vector), after eleven years of use, Concrete5 has only had one published incident with an add-on that resolved within hours and with excellent communication. You can talk to the CEO and the CTO (or the rest of the team). They are very engaged and you're working with a small company of people who care, not a call-center with people just waiting to go home.
Concrete5 is the customer-facing side of our business. It's where we host the site that potential customers see before they choose to purchase and create an account with us. We are able to keep that site clean, user-friendly, and with a lot of available options for customers to interact with thanks to Concrete5
The ability to have multiple users and admins for the site means that we all members of our team can go in and create new content, fix or troubleshoot issues, and edit the site easily.
Our CRM isn't directly integrated with Concrete5, so when customers go to make a purchase with us, they have to leave our Concrete5 site.
