Likelihood to Recommend Kentico is a robust and flexible CMS platform that is great for managing multiple websites and multiple environments (dev, stage, and production for instance). It makes content management very easy and makes it easy to keep the environments synced with the same content. However, the Kentico CMS does require a bit more technical understanding to get it set up properly and requires a bit more effort and support than, say, free open-source options.
Read full review [WooCommerce] does really well for simple stores that don't have a lot of products. It's really easy to set up and get products added so people can purchase them online. It's not the best for really complicated stores with products that need a lot of customization; you have to find 3rd-party plugins to add additional functionality to your store and sometimes those can create conflicts between one another.
Read full review Pros I love the intuitive top and left navigation within the content management platform. I can easily find what section, sub-section, and page I'm looking to edit For creating content, the WYSIWYG editor is so intuitive; it feels like you're working on an MS Word doc! The tab for adding metadata in simple fields takes away the headache of having to hunt and peck through code to add H1 tag, page description etc. The image library is easy to edit and manage Read full review Keeps track of product inventory, including details of product variations such as colors and sizes if required. Keeps track of orders so that the shopkeeper has one place to log in and see the status and history of orders to her shop. Creates shop-related pages automatically. Once you add one or more products, they will automatically appear on your shop home page. Additionally, pages for viewing shopping carts and for checking out are automatically created. Read full review Cons Kentico needs to invest in more enterprise class environment management utilities -- example: global CDN support via the CMS is sorely lacking. There are work-arounds, but it should be more elegant. The Kentico staging module could be improved to support the concept of bundled releases. Current staging module functionality is good, but could be improved. Kentico ecommerce support is a touch immature. While content management is superb, Kentico lags in this area when compared to many open source ecommerce engines. Kentico is lacking MVC support. 99% of the time this isn't an issue for the end-user or business user, but can be a hurdle for technology teams depending on the team's makeup. Read full review Because of how the Wordpress database is structured, WooCommerce isn't great for large or complex e-commerce sites. More out-of-the-box options would be nice within the base software. Because add-on plugins are developed by 3rd parties, sometimes you get conflicts that break things. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We are locked into Kentico for the long haul. It provides us with an easy and flexible solution for a very non technical company to create a site and have the features they want, especially with the inclusion of EMS into our license. Now we have a true platform to build and grow our solutions.
Read full review Despite very rare glitches, more connected to an excessive number of plugins, that affect the speed of the site, we are extremely satisfied with the platform, the ability to import and export products, even though we just export them, as we have our proprietary system for updating inventories. We love the ease of upgrading, enhancing, innovating, and the freedom we have to do whatever we want, which is a plus, when you consider Shopify can take down your whole store as they please, if they think you aren't abiding to their TOS or their ever changing set of rules.
Read full review Usability It seriously is one of the best interfaces I have ever used. I also love the fact that I can use UI personalization to secure any functionality by user or role that I don't want that role to have access to. The best part is the customization of the UI, I can add in any button, tab, or menu item I want through it, no code required.
Read full review I gave it lots of points for being a simple product that instantly gives you a store. Very intuitive and simple for the client to update or implement. Loses LOTS of points when you want to do anything besides just sell stuff (coupons, etc) then it makes you pay big money for the add-ons and makes it difficult and time-intensive to develop your own.
Read full review Support Rating Their support staff is friendly, knowledgeable, and will work with you until your issue is fixed. This could take a few phone calls back and forth, but they are very diligent in helping you.
Read full review not muh support
Read full review Implementation Rating The system provides many opportunities to integrate and enhance the platform and makes it easy to do so.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I've used
Sitecore , Ektron,
Joomla !,
WordPress , and SharePoint (if you want to count that as a competitor for CMS). Kentico 8 blows them all out of the water. Nothing is more intuitive in the way that content is created, the way the site is setup, and how efficient rollouts can be with Content Staging.
Read full review We were pretty sure we wanted a
WordPress site so that we had more control over the site itself, having been burned by third-party vendor sites before. The fact that WooCommerce integrates so well with
WordPress was a big selling point for us.
Magento would have been too heavy of a lift for our small dev team and we didn't want to rely on
Shopify or
BigCommerce (though all of those products could have their merits for other projects or clients).
Read full review Return on Investment Kentico has enabled faster speed to market for SMEs. They are empowered to enter content them selves while still having that content go through editorial review to ensure tone of voice and brand are maintained. Deploying Kentico has freed up web developer resources from manual content entry enabling them to build more useful solutions to support the business efforts Tapping into the Kentico event pipelne allows us to trigger external system events when product content is published. Read full review Positive: low cost to start up, and allowed us to start selling right away. Negative: better plug-ins have a high cost of entry. For example if you want to do subscriptions you need a paid plugin for it. Positive: easily integrates with PayPal and Stripe. Justin Esgar CEO/President - 360° IT Consulting, Server Management, IT Security
Read full review ScreenShots Kentico Xperience Screenshots