CommonSpot vs. Contentful

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
CommonSpot
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
CommonSpot is a Web platform that includes a content management system, an application development framework, marketing solutions, and social media features from PaperThin, Inc, a privately held, MA-based company. PaperThin's customers span multiple industries, including: government, healthcare, higher education, and association/non-profit sectors.N/A
Contentful
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
Contentful is a cloud based CMS solution that provides the ability to manage content across multiple platforms.The editing interface allows for managing content interactively and provides developers the ability to deliver the content with the programming language and template framework of their choice.
$300
per month
Pricing
CommonSpotContentful
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Lite
$300
per month
Community
Free
Enterprise
Custom
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CommonSpotContentful
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
CommonSpotContentful
Considered Both Products
CommonSpot
Chose CommonSpot
Commonspot works in tandem with Zendesk very well to accomplish tasks an an efficient manner.
Chose CommonSpot
CommonSpot is the only web content management program I have used.
Contentful
Chose Contentful
I used DatoCMS and in a nutshell, Contentful is more mature in terms of tooling and documentation.
Chose Contentful
Better, easier, mostly cheaper.
Chose Contentful
Webflow is stronger in terms of being a WYSIWYG platform. Contentful however is easier for us to integrate with our many other services that need to be orchestrated by a single application, which we accomplish by creating and referencing Contentful components and entries. …
Chose Contentful
Easy to use and much more organized as a single platform versus multi. The layout is clean and easy to read and we don’t have to worry about certain users safe guarding data or content then losing it when they leave the company. It’s a one stop shop for imagery.
Chose Contentful
Contentful was affordable and much simpler than the Java based systems and preferred over a PHP solution
Chose Contentful
In the past we've used WordPress to manage documentation content. Wordpress was more flexible than Contentful but also prone to inconsistencies and we ended having a lot of hacks to accomplish various Wordpress tricks. With Contentful there's less ambiguity so content producers …
Chose Contentful
Contentful offers a great deal of features for a relatively low price. This is what ended up persuading us to purchase it. We also gathered that this was one of the more well-rated products out there, which was encouraging. It definitely stacks up well against its competitors.
Chose Contentful
Very similar to WordPress, but has more organizational properties than square space.
Chose Contentful
For custom solutions, Contentful blows every other CMS I've used out of the water. Unlike WordPress, there's no clutter to wade through, and you can simply build the infrastructure you need. It's more secure by far, and works seamlessly with modern frontend technologies, like …
Chose Contentful
Contentful was the most user-friendly platform that everyone in our company could understand. It doesn't have the integrations that Wordpress does, but it was easier for everyone in our organization to use. We've also seen good ranking and traffic from the pages created in …
Chose Contentful
Contentful is easy and fast and cheap. I went from zero experience to loading data out of my contentful space in about an hour or more. The cost is very reasonable and compared to options like CloudCMS are a fraction of the cost. The benefit is that with a lower cost entry …
Features
CommonSpotContentful
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
CommonSpot
7.0
Ratings
16% below category average
Contentful
8.5
Ratings
3% above category average
Role-based user permissions7.00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
CommonSpot
6.3
Ratings
21% below category average
Contentful
7.8
Ratings
0% below category average
Code quality / cleanliness6.00 Ratings9.50 Ratings
Admin section6.50 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Page templates7.00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Library of website themes7.00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Publishing workflow7.00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Form generator4.00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings7.30 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design00 Ratings4.50 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
CommonSpot
7.7
Ratings
3% above category average
Contentful
9.4
Ratings
23% above category average
Content taxonomy7.50 Ratings10.00 Ratings
SEO support7.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Bulk management8.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions7.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Community / comment management9.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
CommonSpot
-
Ratings
Contentful
9.5
Ratings
20% above category average
API00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language00 Ratings9.70 Ratings
Best Alternatives
CommonSpotContentful
Small Businesses
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 10.0 out of 10
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
CommonSpotContentful
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
CommonSpotContentful
Likelihood to Recommend
I do actually think CommonSpot is pretty well suited when the organization that you work for requires very specific parameters on site design. It was very clear what could be used and what could not in the design of individual department pages. The other thing I think CommonSpot is best suited for is website content management done by people with little or no website content management experience. It's very intuitive and easy to use and thus, easy to train people on.
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It's a great all rounder for content projects. It's easy in the basics and powerful in the complex, data heavy scenarios. Extending the platform is straightforward and the SDK gives you everything you need. If you have many many varying content types , it gets expensive and perhaps not the best choice .
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Pros
  • I think CommonSpot's greatest strength is its ease of use. It's relatively intuitive in it's usage, so it therefore makes it easy to train new people to use it.
  • Within my usage of it, our options were limited, which again added to it's ease of use.
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  • Flexible. This CMS can be easily extended and provide access to dynamic content
  • Simple. The WYSWG is very easy to work with and identifying pages and content in the system is fairly easy
  • Clean Interface. The interface is clean and uncluttered keeping focus on the content and not other factors.
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Cons
  • Commonspot needs to improve on its authoring feature. It is impossible to author on more than one page at a time . (One must always click on "View work on all changes") before switching between pages otherwise, the changes will not be saved.
  • CommonSpot does not support sharing the definition of any custom element or any template layouts. Therefore, one must recreate these in each site.
  • In Commonspot, a user who has to manage content in multiple sites will have to log in to each site to see and act on any actions.
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  • Contentful uses "references" to allow you to build very modular content. If I have a "slider" content type, I can create a "slide" content type which references a "button" content type, and so forth. This works well, but I occasionally wish there was a better solution for one-off content, like a settings page. Currently, this is done for creating an entire content type called "settings" with a single entry. Not a big deal, but not ideal, either.
  • There are a few quirks with GatsbyJS integration, etc, but these issues are being fixed and improved upon very quickly.
  • A minor gripe, but Contentful does not have a way to organize fields within an entry. Entries with many fields are somewhat tiresome to scroll through.
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Usability
I had no previous background in content management, and found it very easy to use. If I could figure it out, I am pretty certain that just about anyone else could as well.
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It is a very easy to use and configure application. I find that it is on the user to manage the content after the models have been created, yet I still do not encounter issues finding or creating new components for our site. It is easy to set up and easy to navigate.
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Alternatives Considered
Commonspot works in tandem with Zendesk very well to accomplish tasks an an efficient manner.
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For custom solutions, Contentful blows every other CMS I've used out of the water. Unlike WordPress, there's no clutter to wade through, and you can simply build the infrastructure you need. It's more secure by far, and works seamlessly with modern frontend technologies, like GatsbyJS. In contrast to website builders like Squarespace and Wix, Contentful gives developers (like myself) free range to create high-quality, unique, scalable frontends that aren't limited by preexisting design and layout structures.
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Return on Investment
  • Better customer service
  • Improved accountability as it regards tracking the tasks assigned to which employee
  • Improved accountability led to increased employee efficiency
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  • Contentful has saved us valuable development time that was previously spent doing deploys for minor content updates.
  • Contentful has helped us maintain consistent documentation, reducing time needed to review for consistency.
  • Can't say we've really experienced any negative ROI impacts from using Contentful, but we've run into some limitations in adding too many content models and the next pricing tier is substantially more expensive.
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ScreenShots

Contentful Screenshots

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