Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review If you are looking to manage multiple social channels and quickly schedule posts it's a great tool. Not the best tool if you're looking to provide real time or near real time support and feedback to customers who are in the moment.
Mike Bernard Vice President of Marketing and Sales Operations
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review The ability to schedule months of content at a time and view it across a calendar. The approval process - you can set up teams to create, edit, publish, approve etc. The content and apps module allows you to create modules which can be displayed on your Facebook page under the tabs section. You can create interactive modules for your customers to view. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review Videos posted to Facebook via SRM have to be clicked to run instead of running automatically. No ability to boost posts or ads from SRM. Due to privacy restrictions of various social streams, unable to listen to 'people'; can only listen to business pages. Not able to publish the same post at the same hour across time zones. So, if you want to publish a post at 8 am EST and 8 am PST, you have to do 2 separate posts. Otherwise your 8 am EST will post at 5 am PST. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Our personal support finally came back at the end of our contract, but their product just could not offer what the competition offered. Social media is moving fast, and you need to work with companies that understand that and are at the forefront of trends, you can't get stuck with a company that is standing still.
Read full review Usability Within a few hours you should be able to get up to speed to do the basics. I find it very intuitive
Mike Bernard Vice President of Marketing and Sales Operations
Read full review Support Rating The personalized support of a single individual who gets to know your business and your needs is priceless. They will assist with anything from a technical glitch to a campaign strategy that has worked for other companies
Read full review Online Training Vitrue's training was limited online and not very in-depth, but the the platform is overall very easy to use and doesn't necessarily need a large amount of training.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review I have used one other enterprise level application; it was comparable to SRM. We moved away from the first application because our parent company uses many other Oracle applications, not because we were 'unhappy' with the application we had at the time. Having said that, SRM does everything we need from it; in fact, there are features we aren't fully leveraging at this point. I especially find Engage, Content and Apps and Publish particularly useful. This is the kind of platform that is very robust; you get out of it what you have the time and resources for
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review Audience. Before SRM, we had 1,000 Likes on Facebook. In 1 1/2 years using SRM, our Likes have grown to 20,000. Frequency. Before SRM, we posted once a week on Facebook & Twitter. In 1 1/2 years using SRM, we now post 54 times a month, or about twice a day on weekdays. Internal acceptance. Before SRM, social was considered "a hobby" by senior management. Now, social marketing is a key part of the strategy of every product launch. That is due to the hard work of our social marketing manager, of course, but her efforts were amplified by SRM. Read full review ScreenShots