Skip to main content
TrustRadius
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…

Read more
Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Cascade Server is a highly versatile content management system widely used by universities and colleges to manage multiple websites across …
Continue reading
TrustRadius Insights
TrustRadius Insights

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 …
Continue reading

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 …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

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%
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing
Cascade CMS

Cascade CMS

N/A
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

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

9 people also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

Squarespace

Squarespace

$12
per month
What is Squarespace?

Squarespace is a CMS platform that allows users to create a DIY blog, eCommerce store, and/or portfolio (visual art or music). Some Squarespace website and shop templates are industry or use case-specific, such as menu builders for restaurant sites.

Square Online

Square Online

$6
per month
What is Square Online?

Square Online (formerly Weebly) is a basic content management system with blogging and eCommerce features. It can be utilized for building standard websites or specialized webpages for online stores.

Return to navigation

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
Return to navigation

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

Cascade CMS Downloadables

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).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

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 44)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
February 23, 2020

Cascade Server rocks!

Verified User
Professional in Other
Higher Education Company, 201-500 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Cascade Server is well suited with it's WYSIWYG editor being better than most editors that I have used in other systems. In context, editing makes adding content easy compared to the last CMS I used where you had to wing it and view the page outside of the CMS to see if it was correct. The ability mix HTML, CSS, and the Script of your choice anywhere and with ease.
The scenarios were Cascade Server is less appropriate would be in the use of compilers or programs like Visual studio. You need to go out of Cascade Server and go to other environments to perform tasks and then copy the result to Cascade Server. You can write directly in Cascade Server, but it's easier to do in and editor that is specific to a function.
December 17, 2018

The Gold Standard in CMS Enterprises for Higher Education and More

Craig Campbell | TrustRadius Reviewer
Craig Campbell
Director of University Web Communication
University of Hartford (Higher Education, 501-1000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Likelihood to Recommend
Cascade Server is a great system for institutions that don't have employees with web development skills on hand, and the budget to build their site. Once a website is set up to meet company needs and goals, the bulk of the work will shift to content contributors, with little development necessary. Whatever cost that could have been saved on developing an open source system will be recouped in a year or two.
December 07, 2018

A robust CMS for all of your digital publishing needs

John Dezember | TrustRadius Reviewer
John Dezember
Web & New Media Specialist
Cleveland State Community College (Higher Education, 201-500 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Cascade CMS is great for working with large quantities of content that can then be reused across multiple sites or other apps. The workflow system is robust and completely customizable. Managing users is easy with available custom authentication options like LDAP.
December 01, 2018

A fully-baked enterprise web content management platform

Andrew Bauserman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Andrew Bauserman
Senior Web Architect
William & Mary (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Likelihood to Recommend
Cascade CMS is an enterprise system. It can handle many users assigned to specific groups and roles with very granular permissions. We have about 1,000 users in over 600 groups managing approximately 200,000 assets. It has the potential to be very user-friendly for content editors – but is dependent upon the system administrator and site managers tailoring templates and content types appropriately.

For a small web site with a few users editing a handful of pages, Cascade CMS is overkill. Grab a WordPress or SquareSpace theme and be done. But if you expect to have 100+ users and 1,000+ pages, where the latter options become unwieldy, Cascade CMS is best-of-breed.
October 03, 2016

Cascade, Spectate and Your Web Site: A winning combination

Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Higher Education Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Cascade is well suited for a web content management system, whether centralized or not; it's very adaptable to different environments, and works just as well for a small shop as a large one, for education, large businesses, or small non-profits. With the flexibility it offers, I can't think of a situation it would not fit; however, to set everything up someone in your team has to know some programming - or you can work with outside companies to help get you up and running. Their training is good, though, so if you have someone with a programming background they can be brought up to speed quickly.
September 23, 2016

Cascade: What you see ISN'T what you get

Verified User
Professional in Marketing
Higher Education Company, 51-200 employees
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Even though we know that switching servers would be a HUGE project (especially for our small team) I can't wait to get started. Cascade just doesn't keep up with open source options. I'm very tired of telling people "that's a great idea for our website, but we can't do it with Cascade."
February 17, 2016

Cascade is easy to use intuitively, coming from a place with limited HTML/CSS experience

Mallory Rice | TrustRadius Reviewer
Mallory Rice
Applications Manager
Harvard Medical School (Higher Education, 51-200 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Cascade Server is definitely well suited for a large website, such as in higher education. It would definitely be overkill for a smaller business or personal webpage. You need someone with CSS, HTML, and I assume Javascript knowledge to get everything set up initially, but as far as I'm aware there isn't a ton of maintenance needed after the fact, unless a large website redo occurs.
February 16, 2016

Cascade in California

Jeff Dillon | TrustRadius Reviewer
Jeff Dillon
Director of Web Services
California State University, Sacramento (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Cascade Server is a great solution for organizations where the users do not have advanced web programming skills. The more technical the users, the more frustrated they might become. A small technical team can get the system up and available but it is not built to really have a more advanced user that is not an administrator.
December 23, 2015

Cascade Server is Highly Customizable

Michael G. Wagner | TrustRadius Reviewer
Michael G. Wagner
Webmaster
Hofstra University (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Overall, we have found Cascade Server to be an excellent CMS for an enterprise level website. We have segmented our news and events content onto separate platforms, WordPress and Helios, due to ease of use and to mirror the web architecture at our university.
July 22, 2015

Cascade Server: Easy for end users, customizable for developers

Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Internet Company, 11-50 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
If you need a CMS that is user-friendly, and is able to be customized by developers, then Cascade Server is your tool. If you are looking for a "slick" CMS that requires fewer developers to be involved, then Cascade Server probably isn't for you. Remember, however, with "easy to implement out-of-the-box" comes severe limitations with what you can do with it. Cascade Server is the CMS of choice if you don't want those limitations, and you want to tailor it to your organization's specific needs.
July 20, 2015

Cascade: Easy and Quick

Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Online Media Company, 1-10 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Cascade's file management interface is very similar to an operating system's file management interface. In other words, navigating through Cascade Server's files and folders is as easy to do as navigating through one's computer's files and folders. A new Cascade user should be able to easily locate files and webpages without much formal training, if any.
July 14, 2015

Cascade scales

Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Hospital & Health Care Company, 5001-10,000 employees
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
It is great for a hierarchical, large scale, data heavy website. Less so for a highly dynamic and agile website. It is frustrating to have to publish the entire site to "cascade" a change.
June 30, 2015

Easy to start and great for beginners, experts will be frustrated by point and click nature

Curtis Travers, MPH | TrustRadius Reviewer
Curtis Travers, MPH
Biostatistician
Emory University School of Medicine (Hospital & Health Care, 5001-10,000 employees)
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Cascade Server is well suited for large institutions to release the burden on an IT department and website development groups. It allows the individual within your organization to create and manage their own website with very little oversight from web development teams. If you have basic computer skills and understand file hierarchy, then you can use this program to create your own website.
June 30, 2015

Cascade Server review – our choice for Best in Class WCMS

David Van Wie | TrustRadius Reviewer
David Van Wie
Manager, Campus Web Technology
SUNY Upstate Medical University (Hospital & Health Care, 5001-10,000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Likelihood to Recommend
I think the one question I would put to someone interested in a WCMS is related to the size of the website and organization. I think Cascade Server excels in a situation with a larger website and a deeper user base. A very small website may not need some of the key features we rely on, and it may be much more complex than they would need.
April 17, 2015

Cascade Server - Great support and Flexibility

Erik Espana | TrustRadius Reviewer
Erik Espana
Associate Director of Web Communications
Union College, Communications & Marketing (Higher Education, 501-1000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Cascade Server is well-suited to teams that are comfortable with XML. Fortunately, clients no longer have to rely on XSLT to format content in the system. Developers can now use a more powerful and intuitive scripting language called Velocity. In terms of system administration, clients can now pay Hannon Hill (the parent company) to have their Cascade Server hosted in the cloud. This might be preferable for clients who don't want to worry about hardware purchases, installation or upgrades, or rely on their organization's IT department.
April 08, 2015

Power has a price

JS
Jason Slater
Associate Director of Web Communications
Union College (Higher Education, 501-1000 employees)
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Do you have XML/XSLT developers? Is your user base one of frequent use or infrequent use as infrequent use requires much more support? Are your users technically competent with the ability to navigate file/folder structures and understand basic web concepts to maintain content such as linking, uploading, publishing?

We have users that are not competent and try and follow exact steps to maintain content rather than grasp the concept thus increasing their support needs. Workflow is incredibly complicated and can be more of an impedance to users. There seems to be no easy way to overhaul a websites IA and content while keeping the current site alive and then swapping it out later.
February 25, 2015

Cascade Server - The Agnostic CMS

Josh LaMar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Josh LaMar
Web Developer
Indiana University Bloomington (Higher Education, 5001-10,000 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Cascade Server is good for static content sites. However, it's a little bit involved to create a dynamic web site in Cascade Server (although possible). I would also recommend looking into the universal migration tool which is a CMS agnostic tool for copying the content from any live website to Cascade Server. Although Cascade Server can run on any environment I think it's common to install it on Apache and MySQL. Since files are stored in the database as BLOBs the database can get pretty large (upwards of 100 GB). This doesn't seem to have any impact on performance.
Return to navigation