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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 …
Continue reading
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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 44)
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February 23, 2020

Cascade Server rocks!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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 its versioning, ability to check-in/out assets, provide the workflow, and cross-site sharing. On-boarding our users to update pages on the websites is super easy and helpful to me as I would not have time to do all of the content updates myself. The problems it solves for us are managing several sites in the same place, easy to approve content, and version control of all of our content. We even use Cascade Server as a content repository for staff to find information quickly and easily during the workday.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We manage content from across hundreds of university web pages with Cascade Server. It allows us to implement a consistent style and others meet other guidelines in a central location, as well as assign different roles and levels of access to different people.
Craig Campbell | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Cascade Server is the primary content management system at the University of Hartford. Over the past 9 years our user base has grown throughout campus, and, with the launch of a redesigned site in 2019, it will be used to build out, or be the hub for, about 95% of our University's external website content. Cascade provides an environment where web content can be created, reviewed, edited, and shared in an easy and consistent way, without much internet experience. It meets our users' needs when and where they have them, and sets guardrails to keep everyone using best practices, such as SEO and accessibility.
John Dezember | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Cascade CMS for our institution's main website. While it is primarily used by the Communications Department to manage the visual display, most other departments have a presence and update their own content within the system. A major benefit is Cascade CMS's workflows. Workflows allows content contributors to make changes that are then approved by their supervisor before being published online.
Andrew Bauserman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Cascade CMS is the university's primary content management system, supporting multiple web sites including all administrative offices, all Arts & Sciences undergraduate and graduate programs, and our four graduate and professional schools (business, education, law & marine science). The CMS currently has approximately 200,000 objects (pages, images and files) managed by about 1,000 web content editors.
Cary Thomas, MBA CMA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Scripps Research uses Cascade Server across the entire institute, on both campuses (La Jolla, California and Jupiter, Florida) for both our external web presence and our intranet. We distribute web page authoring among our scientists and academic and administrative departments -- so the product is used for many different purposes and audiences. During 2018 we completely redesigned the external site using a professional design firm and their brilliant ideas were fully implemented with Cascade Server.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Cascade Server as our centralized web content management system, for both our external facing public web pages as well as web accessible internal pages through our portal. We find it easy to use, and our content editors find its interface intuitive. In addition, the support that Hannon Hill provides for the users of Cascade is outstanding. That Spectate, which allows for personalization of web content, easy form generation and lead tracking, is also included with Cascade Server and integrates seamlessly with it, just makes an exceptional suite of web content tools.
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cascade is the server used for our university's main website. It was originally setup to allow all campus departments to keep their sections up to date. But it's not intuitive for users, which (even with training) has led to fewer and fewer users. This has resulted in my department going back to doing most of the website updates.
September 16, 2016

Cascade Server is solid

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our Cascade Server instance hosts 185 sites, for several academic departments and programs across our entire organization. The ease of use, allows us to offer a self-service tool for our end users that is easy to use without web management experience. Cascade helps use provide a solution for departments and programs that wouldn't have the technical resources to build and maintain their own site.

Cascade Server is a powerful CMS that is flexible, adaptable and scalable.
Mallory Rice | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I was the primary user in my department, using it to update our department's website content very often. It was being used across the whole organization, and it was set up by our IT department who still controlled the back-end design and structural support. Certain departments had control over content and updates, and other departments worked entirely through the IT department for updates. Since our department had such high update rates, having immediate control was very important.
February 16, 2016

Cascade in California

Jeff Dillon | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cascade Server is the campus central content management system. It is being used across the entire organization. Approximately 80% of our campus web sites are managed with Cascade. Cascade helps the central web team support campus web development through providing accessible, branded templates. Content managers can focus on the content and not the code behind the pages.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
We used Cascade Server in our own organization as a SaaS Content Management System. We wanted a CMS that allowed our customers to easily manage their websites via a web-based tool. We had around 50 different websites managed within one Cascade Server instance, which allowed our customers to manage and publish their content to their websites that we hosted. We also hosted many other Cascade Server instances, and implemented it for other organizations. It was used by both the Web Development team and the Digital Marketing Team (search engine optimization).
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cascade Server is currently being used across our whole organization to provide support to an online journal. Our online journal is the main product of our organization and is hosted on a website that is completely reliant on Cascade Server. Therefore, editing our journal requires extensive knowledge of Cascade's features. The server allows our online journal to be thoroughly edited, from the placement of text in strategic locations on the webpage to the addition of images and graphics to enhance the look and credibility of our online journal, all the way to the addition of important documents to serve the journal's main functions. Cascade Server allows our online journal to be easily and quickly edited, reducing the time it takes to edit features on the webpage and adding important documents that need to be instantly added or removed due to the current state of the journal.
July 14, 2015

Cascade scales

Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cascade is being used across the entire organization. Most units are managed by the central web group, however larger units like the one I'm in have dedicated web development staff and have more access than others. Over all it helped unify the organizations' web presence and branding.
Curtis Travers, MPH | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My department uses Cascade Server as the main software to create webpages, following our institutions guidelines. In fact, Cascade Server is available to our entire organization. It allows any individual, study, or department to create their own website without much need for interventions from our IT department. The ability for any individual to create their webpage themselves is a big cost and time saver.
David Van Wie | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Cascade Server is used across our entire organization as the preferred tool for web content management. We currently work with more than 200 content managers across our organization that keep their individual sites current and Cascade Server has made that job infinitely easier than in the past. Cascade Server has solved our problem of standardizing the web content management experience and makes it much easier for department managers to quickly see web pages that may be out dated and in need of attention.
Erik Espana | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cascade Server is the web content management system used throughout our organization to maintain the official college website. It's used to solve countless business needs, including admissions marketing, fund-raising, news, events, photo galleries, staff directories and job openings. It's also used by the central marketing department to improve search engine optimization and accessibility, and manage a mobile-friendly website (Kurogo).
April 08, 2015

Power has a price

Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cascade Server is used to maintain the official website for the college primarily devoted to recruitment and alumni/parent relations. It also supports many official office websites. It allowed us to transfer content maintenance duties to various office staff involved with the content development rather than funnel all updates through Web Communications.
March 19, 2015

Cascade Server Rocks!

William White | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently HCCMIS uses Cascade Server to manage multiple websites including 2 WordPress sites and a number of custom coded sites. The goal is to expand the use across other companies held by the parent company. Cascade Server has solved site consistency problems as well as providing us excellent compliance records.
February 25, 2015

Simplicity at its best!

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My organization uses Cascade Server on a daily basis. It's very easy to learn for all users across our organizations, not just techies. The great benefit Cascade Server offers is, it allows us to let everyone in our organization update and mange their web pages.
Josh LaMar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cascade Server is being used by roughly 1500 people at Indiana University to manage around 400 sites from 7 campuses including IU Bloomington, IUPUI Indianapolis, IU Kokomo, IU Northwest, IU South Bend, IU Southeast, and IUPUC Columbus. We have a decentralized IT infrastructure so we needed a push CMS that would allow people to use one system to publish to many different types of web servers. We also decided to use Cascade Server to mitigate risk since other dynamic CMS sites were regularly getting compromised. The sites managed on Cascade Server include marketing gateway sites like www.iu.edu, as well as admissions, departmental sites, schools, news and much more.
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