Likelihood to Recommend Cascade Server is well suited with it's WYSIWYG editor being better than most editors that I have used in other systems. In context, editing makes adding content easy compared to the last CMS I used where you had to wing it and view the page outside of the CMS to see if it was correct. The ability mix HTML, CSS, and the Script of your choice anywhere and with ease.
The scenarios were Cascade Server is less appropriate would be in the use of compilers or programs like Visual studio. You need to go out of Cascade Server and go to other environments to perform tasks and then copy the result to Cascade Server. You can write directly in Cascade Server, but it's easier to do in and editor that is specific to a function.
Read full review Webflow is great for designing pages and creating a really nice looking website, without needing to be a pro designer. However, trying to scale a company blog for SEO leaves a lot of room for desire. There are various SEO-related shortcomings (like how canonical tags are added to pages) and I also need to add a lot of custom code elements to blog posts to get the desired control. This means adding new posts and getting them looking the way we want takes way more time than it should do. Also doesn't support next-gen images, which is impacting our page speed scores and leaving us behind when it comes to Core Web Vitals update. Finally, the fact that only one person can enter the designer at one time is really annoying. I get that the Editor should be the solution to this, but it's so so so slow and jumpy that this is essentially unusable.
Read full review Pros Cascade CMS makes no assumptions about your content. Templates control how the content gets displayed. Workflows are intuitive and allow for one or more people to review content before it is published. The published site is static (no database connection) which allows for faster page loads and reduced risk of attack. Read full review Easy to use and customize CMS. Develop engaging CSS interactions and JavaScript animations visually. Several competitively priced hosting tiers are available and all use AWS servers and Fastly CDN. Code can be exported to be used with other CMS platforms such as WordPress, or E-Commerce platforms such as Shopify. Read full review Cons Cascade CMS is not an out-of-the-box pre-built system that you can install, turn on and expect to be serving sites and pages on day one. It's not a blogging system like WordPress, or a drag-and-drop system like SquareSpace (both of which I've used for their own purposes). You need to have someone tasked with management and system administration – and if you implement the on-premise self-hosted version, you ought to have several people. We have the university's IT shop handling infrastructure (server hardware, containers, clustering, operating systems, load-balancing, DNS, database servers, NAS/SAN drives), our Web & Design team managing Cascade CMS (system settings, sites, templates, permissions) and managers coordinating each respective academic unit (A&S, business, education, law, marine science). Read full review pricing is a little high pretty steep learning curve have to use 3rd party form vendor if you want to export and host yourself Read full review Likelihood to Renew Changing systems would require too much effort. Our institution is using Cascade Server,
WordPress and Drupal but we only serve 2200 students so we have 1 too many content management systems. Reflecting on current technical resources we would like to drop down to 2. This effort hasn't moved forward because of the extensive work required to migrate content and train users in a new system.
Read full review Usability Cascade CMS is completely usable on mobile devices, we can train our content editors in a single 2-hour session, and we support 1,000 users with a very small team.
There is a level of complexity for the system administrators, site managers and web programmers who implement templates and content types. But the complexity is neither arbitrary nor inconsistent – and once learned provides a powerful environment within which we can develop robust sites that are beautiful and powerful, yet easy for our content editors to manage.
Read full review It is extremely easy to use, especially with available templates and guides. It is used primarily by accounts and creative rather than dev. It is also easy to import/export projects or duplicate them for re-use and modification for another client. While it is rarely the end platform for a deliverable, it is often instrumental in pitching.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Amazing customer service and VERY customizable.
Read full review In my experience, their customer service is an absolute joke, I tried reaching out to them they took forever. I had to keep following up with them as if they never received it in the first place. It’s a new platform, so guidance is needed. Tried the university they offer, in my opinion, it is completely useless, I would just completely move on from this website.
Read full review Performance Does a great job.
Read full review In my opinion, it is horrible, the rendering takes forever. I have the newest MacBook and the platform will still lag and slow down on me. I’m not a developer, I am a designer which makes it worst because I am using the features they are providing not extra coding features. In my opinion, it is a horrible platform really, stay away.
Read full review Support Rating They have always regarded any question or problem we encountered as very important. We have never felt that they ignore or downplay any issue and not once has anything been left unresolved. They also hold an annual conference where users are invited to attend and share their experiences and wisdom with the entire Cascade community. And with the care and support the provide, we all feel a part of that community.
Read full review We pay hundreds of dollars a month to Webflow, yet their support is worse than a typical free SaaS product. We were prevented from deploying changes to our site because of how Webflow structures its support. It delayed a product launch for the whole company. Support options? Beg for help on community forums, it took a threat to email the CEO to finally get movement. If there were easy alternatives, we would switch. But for now we just pray nothing breaks and that we don't need to interact with Webflow support.
Read full review In-Person Training Training was helpful.
Read full review Online Training Still needed that physical help
Read full review Implementation Rating The key to any CMS implementation is PLAN, PLAN, PLAN. Proper planning with Cascade can increase your satisfaction exponentially once the site migration/creation is complete. When all is said and done, your implementation can make your site run like a Yugo or Maserati. Be smart and deliberate in your decisions. Drive the Maserati. It is already paid for.
Read full review Alternatives Considered We selected Cascade server seven years ago, and the CMS environment at the time was clearly different than it is today. We decided to go with a vendor solution rather than a free solution because the long term cost in hosting a free solution is not, in fact, free; we've found Cascade to have been an excellent choice for us.
Read full review The code quality and speed can't even be compared to
Elementor ; Webflow is simply a much better tool.
Instapage has a cool feature for dynamic landing pages, which changes according to Google Ads Keyword, which I miss; however, amazing webflow community members recreated that functionality with a custom script. For the majority of users, it's a safer bet than
WordPress in terms of speed and code quality.
WordPress could provide amazing results if hosted properly (nginx, caching configuration) and requires best practices to maintain code quality. Webflow solves these issues out of the box at a fraction of cost.
Read full review Scalability I used it only a few times.
Read full review I feel it doesn’t perform the way it’s supposed to and it doesn’t have any beneficial factors to it. In my opinion, there is no reason to use a platform like this when
Wix and Shopify, and WordPress exist. I believe Webflow is a platform that shouldn’t exist and it’s only popular because of the hype it received. I tried it and hate it completely.
Read full review Return on Investment Initially, ROI was positive - because we completely redesigned the website when we implemented Cascade. Over time, the inability to keep up with the latest interactive tools has reduced visitors time on site. Also over time, the difficulty of use has led to less buy-in by backend users, leading to outdated pages, little timely information, and lower visitors. Read full review It allowed us to go from earning hundreds to thousands We were able to expand our services The only negative would be that we cannot really use it as a Shopify substitute yet, nor a big blog site. Read full review ScreenShots