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Cascade CMS

Cascade CMS
Formerly Cascade Server

Overview

What is Cascade CMS?

Cascade CMS (formerly Cascade Server) by Hannon Hill is a content management system, with built-in tools to help users eliminate stale content, increase digital outreach, and promote end-user adoption and accountability. Cascade CMS is designed for decentralized web teams…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Cascade Server is a highly versatile content management system widely used by universities and colleges to manage multiple websites across …
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Cascade Server rocks!

10 out of 10
February 23, 2020
Incentivized
Cascade Server is the perfect CMS for our needs and is being used in several schools across the university. Cascade Server is powerful in …
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Cascade Server is solid

9 out of 10
September 16, 2016
Incentivized
Our Cascade Server instance hosts 185 sites, for several academic departments and programs across our entire organization. The ease of …
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Popular Features

View all 16 features
  • Publishing workflow (19)
    9.0
    90%
  • Role-based user permissions (19)
    8.0
    80%
  • Admin section (19)
    8.0
    80%
  • WYSIWYG editor (19)
    6.1
    61%
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Pricing

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Unavailable

What is Cascade CMS?

Cascade CMS (formerly Cascade Server) by Hannon Hill is a content management system, with built-in tools to help users eliminate stale content, increase digital outreach, and promote end-user adoption and accountability. Cascade CMS is designed for decentralized web teams in most major industries,…

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Features

Security

This component helps a company minimize the security risks by controlling access to the software and its data, and encouraging best practices among users.

8
Avg 8.0

Platform & Infrastructure

Features related to platform-wide settings and structure, such as permissions, languages, integrations, customizations, etc.

7.1
Avg 7.7

Web Content Creation

Features that support the creation of website content.

7.1
Avg 7.6

Web Content Management

Features for managing website content

6.9
Avg 7.3
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Product Details

What is Cascade CMS?

Cascade CMS (formerly Cascade Server) by Hannon Hill is a content management system, with built-in tools to help users eliminate stale content, increase digital outreach, and promote end-user adoption and accountability. Cascade CMS is designed for decentralized web teams in most major industries, including higher education, government, healthcare, and technology.

Included is Clive, an engagement and real-time personalization tool for collecting information and using it to craft personalized web experiences. With it, users can build profiles and engage with audiences through targeted content delivery.

Cascade CMS Features

Web Content Creation Features

  • Supported: WYSIWYG editor
  • Supported: Code quality / cleanliness
  • Supported: Content versioning
  • Supported: Admin section
  • Supported: Page templates
  • Supported: Mobile optimization / responsive design
  • Supported: Publishing workflow
  • Supported: Form generator
  • Supported: Content scheduling

Web Content Management Features

  • Supported: Internal content search
  • Supported: Content taxonomy
  • Supported: SEO support
  • Supported: Browser compatibility
  • Supported: Bulk management
  • Supported: Availability / breadth of extensions
  • Supported: Import / export
  • Supported: Website analytics

Platform & Infrastructure Features

  • Supported: API
  • Supported: Internationalization / multi-language

Security Features

  • Supported: Role-based user permissions
  • Supported: User-level audit trail
  • Supported: Version history
  • Supported: Simple roll-back capabilities

CMS programming language or framework Features

  • Supported: PHP
  • Supported: Python
  • Supported: Java
  • Supported: .NET

Additional Features

  • Supported: Full support of COPE (create once, publish everywhere)

Cascade CMS Video

Using Velocity and XSLT in Cascade Server

Cascade CMS Competitors

Cascade CMS Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Cascade CMS (formerly Cascade Server) by Hannon Hill is a content management system, with built-in tools to help users eliminate stale content, increase digital outreach, and promote end-user adoption and accountability. Cascade CMS is designed for decentralized web teams in most major industries, including higher education, government, healthcare, and technology. Included is Clive, an engagement and real-time personalization tool for collecting information and using it to craft personalized web experiences. With it, users can build profiles and engage with audiences through targeted content delivery.

OU Campus and Drupal are common alternatives for Cascade CMS.

Reviewers rate Page templates and Publishing workflow and Bulk management highest, with a score of 9.

The most common users of Cascade CMS are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(58)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Cascade Server is a highly versatile content management system widely used by universities and colleges to manage multiple websites across various departments and administrative offices. Users with no web technology experience have found Cascade Server to be easy to navigate and use, resulting in an efficient web publishing environment. This has allowed departments with high update rates to have immediate control and updates through the IT department's back-end design and structural support.

Scripps Research, for example, has implemented Cascade Server across its entire institute, empowering individuals, studies, and departments to create their own websites without extensive intervention from the IT department. This has significantly saved time and costs. Northern Illinois University also relies on Cascade Server as its main web client, enabling everyone in the organization to easily update and manage their web pages, particularly in the Marketing and Web Communications Department.

Cascade Server's robust features such as versioning, check-in/out assets, workflow management, and cross-site sharing capabilities make it a powerful tool for managing multiple sites, approving content, and maintaining version control. With its intuitive user interface, staff can efficiently retrieve information from the content repository throughout the workday. Additionally, Cascade Server's integration with Spectate allows for personalized web content, easy form generation, and lead tracking. It serves as a comprehensive suite of web content tools that cater to diverse organizational needs.

The flexibility, adaptability, and scalability of Cascade Server have made it ideal for universities and organizations seeking a powerful CMS solution. Its ability to assign different roles and levels of access has been praised by users for providing a self-service tool for end users without web management experience. Furthermore, Cascade Server has enabled departments and programs without technical resources to build and maintain their own sites effectively. It has become instrumental in managing content from hundreds of university web pages while ensuring consistency across the organization. Additionally, Cascade Server has proven valuable for managing online journals by simplifying text placement, image inclusion, document attachment tasks, thus enhancing efficiency in journal management.

Time-saving Tool: Users have found Cascade Server to be a valuable time-saving tool for monitoring stale content and broken links on their public site. They appreciate the automatic handling of version upgrades on the cloud, which has been lightning fast and only takes about half an hour to convert a site with a large number of assets.

Intuitive Permissions: Setting permissions in Cascade Server is described as intuitive and easy to set up at both high or granular levels. Many users have praised the CMS for its ability to track assets and links when moved, deleted, or renamed, as well as its capability for allowing relational publishing of all affected assets.

Great Integration with Third-Party Products: The integration of Cascade Server with third-party products such as Google Analytics, SiteImprove, and WebDam is highly valued by users. They specifically mention the excellent customer service provided by Hannon Hill, the company behind Cascade Server.

Cons:

  1. Overwhelming and Challenging Interface: Many users have found Cascade CMS overwhelming and challenging to understand, especially without programming knowledge. The complex nature of the system makes it difficult for non-technical users to navigate and utilize effectively.
  2. Limitations with Images: Users have mentioned that Cascade CMS has limitations when it comes to working with images. Specifically, they find it challenging to save multiple versions of uploaded images and encounter difficulties in managing image-related tasks within the system.
  3. Complex Maintenance for Large Websites: Maintaining a large website can be difficult in Cascade Server due to its push architecture and the need to write a web services application for re-publishing template-specific pages. Users express frustration with these complexities, which make it time-consuming and labor-intensive to manage their websites efficiently.

Users commonly recommend purchasing consulting time from Hannon Hill to configure and set up Cascade CMS. They suggest considering WordPress for its ease of use and overall design, while acknowledging that Cascade CMS excels in revisions and file structure management. Additionally, users find Cascade CMS to be a powerful solution for enterprise-level content management, although it does require familiarity with Velocity templating language, XML, and structured content markup. They also highlight the ease of use for basic daily functions in Cascade CMS and praise Hannon Hill's customer support. Lastly, for users with advanced technical expertise, they suggest considering Drupal as an alternative option.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 26)
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April 08, 2015

Power has a price

Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Changing systems would require too much effort. Our institution is using Cascade Server, WordPress and Drupal but we only serve 2200 students so we have 1 too many content management systems. Reflecting on current technical resources we would like to drop down to 2. This effort hasn't moved forward because of the extensive work required to migrate content and train users in a new system.
Josh LaMar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
At this point we are satisfied with Cascade Server and do not plan to transition into another CMS in the future. I am not the person who decides if we renew or not, but I will likely recommend that we stick with Cascade Server. We really need a system that is secure and can push out content to many different servers. In the future I could imagine us switching to the cloud service Hannon Hill provides.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Well, I have finished my Masters and will be moving on from Texas, and so, this is my last month on Cascade at UT Arlington. However, I would like to work with Cascade Server in my future career. I would also recommend UT Arlington to renew the use of Cascade, as it works just awesome and is efficient and helpful in all its means.
September 06, 2014

Good But Not Great

Alexander Christian | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am a basic website developer. I understand that other colleagues have experienced the various abilities for this software. However, for me, I am not able to design the creative ideas that spark at a moments notice, because of the general inaccessibility. I believe that this software has advanced since my last usage, but continues to have room to expand.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
You do not need to install plugins as Cascade Server already comes with the basic functionality required for displaying web content. I think that every project is different and requires different tools. Cascade Server has been a good tool for the work we had at hand.
Hrishikesh Deshkar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My organization did renew the contract for Cascade Server. Maybe it's for the fact that, the upgrade is very easy and the websites are backed up so as to not to go down from being live. And of course the other reasons which I've already mentioned in my previous answers.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Its not up to me, but higher level management but I would definitely renew as it's cumbersome to look for an alternative tool and learn. Rating 7 is for the ease of understanding, version history and it's as simple as editing a Word file.
Christopher Davis | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We're invested monetarily, holistically and even emotionally in the use of Cascade Server. Frankly, to switch over to any other CMS now would slow us down. Besides, pricing has remained reasonable and new features keep being added all of the time.
Casey Gates | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have an ongoing relationship with Hannon Hill. We were with them from the ground up and were able to see where they were 10 years ago and how they have grown now. They have exploded in the Higher Ed world. I believe they are only just beginning and many great things are still ahead for Cascade Server.
Amey Ghadigaonkar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Many employees feel comfortable with Cascade Server. Employees with the HR and finance department are happy since they can create their own content, modify and maintain it without the need for any kind of technical knowledge or any knowledge of how the application is maintained. The system provides a way to insert HTML code directly onto the generated pages. This makes life easier for devs working on creating something interesting on the CMS.
Phillip Coxwell | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The University is actually paying for Cascade Server, so as long as it continues to be used as much as it is, then it should continue to be renewed. We also keep adding more and more colleges, departments and office that are using Cascade all the time.
Steven Naji | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We will most likely renew with Cascade Server simply because it is easy and efficient. It remains a low cost service, has good workflow management, and is easy to teach to new users. It is the best service for the best price. I would highly recommend others try Cascade Server out and I am 100% going to renew with them when the time comes.
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