More than just a WordPress theme, Divi is a website building platform that replaces the standard WordPress post editor with a new visual editor. The vendor states it can be enjoyed by design professionals and newcomers alike, and is designed to give users the ability to create spectacular designs with ease and efficiency.
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LightCMS (discontinued)
Score 6.1 out of 10
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LightCMS, from NetSuite, was a cloud-based content management system for building websites and eCommerce storefronts. It is designed to be used by individuals, non-profits, and small to medium-sized businesses. The product has been discontinued.
Divi has cornered the market on a simple, straightforward WordPress theme that gives some major integrations and functions! Now that I've worked within it for years, I have a much better understanding of how robust a system it is. It takes some practice to get accustomed to but once you "get" it, it is so fun to use. I've shown so many small business owners how to use Divi and I feel that it is much easier to learn than other themes with functions that are controlled by coding or shortcodes. I could play in Divi all day, and some days I do, depending on which projects I am working on at the time
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.
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.
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.
Divi price is superior and the infinite sites feature got me. Thrive was good for me at some point, but they got stuck in their layout options. Even i liked the Thrive form builder, in general Divi gave me more options to build my websites and build my landing pages. If they work on their interaction with other apps like Mailchimp or Hubspot, for example, or make the tool even more intuitive, i would give them 10 in everything.
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.
It has allowed us to grow our web design business. Today we have an entire independent team that's focused on design and delivery. Production has gone up 40% and and revenue has increased.
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.
