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.
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Siteglide
Score 9.0 out of 10
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Siteglide is a content management software offering from the company of the same name headquartered in Aldermaston.
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.
As already mentioned, migrating websites from Adobe Business Catalyst, or any other platform is a strength. Using the Siteglide CLI, websites can be migrated as a static site to Siteglide, thus greatly reducing the amount of work necessary for the migration. Also, as long as developers are acquainted with HTML, CSS, Liquid, and Javascript, building sites with Siteglide can be done rapidly using their Siteglide Studio site builder. One of the additional strengths of Siteglide is Webapps. These can be easily used to provide the display and manipulation of dynamic data. The site can be designed so that users can change information without knowing anything about the underlying code. It allows a form-driven way to update site pages.
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.
Billing plans occasionally cost more than competition, mainly because of the way Platform OS works
"Drag and Drop" website building and maintenance could be improved in order to compete with other site-builders. Less reliance on knowing HTML, CSS, Liquid, Javascript, etc. would be a good direction to go in the future.
There could be an improvement for "non-programmers" and drag and drop editing. However, Siteglide's target market of website development agencies is well served and a great fit. Sites can be migrated from other platforms quickly and easily. New responsive websites can be developed quickly using Siteglide Studio and then robust functionality can be built out quickly and reliably. There is a wide range of features included in Siteglide and more features and upgrades are being rapidly added. The environment is built on a stable and performance-oriented platform. This allows agencies to provide excellent service on a worldwide basis.
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.
Siteglide knocks the socks off Duda in terms functionality, it's eCommerce isn't a match for Shopify (yet) but it's got a lot more flexibility and functionality than Shopify which comes up short if businesses want to do more than sell products...and versus WordPress, well, it's just much more professional and doesn't fall on its arse.
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.
