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.
N/A
Webflow
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Webflow headquartered in San Francisco offers what they describe as a visual solution to web design, with a CMS for editors, designers, and developers that they state allows users to create needed content structures, add content (by hand, from a CSV, or via our API), and then design it visually. Webflow service plans also include website hosting, with a basic plan for sites that don't need a CMS as well as CMS, Business, and Enterprise plans. Webflow's ecommerce plans are designed to support new…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
