Overview
What is Concrete CMS?
Concrete CMS (formerly Concrete5) is a free and open source, PHP built content management system for content on the web and also for intranets. It is optimized to support the creation of online magazines and newspapers.
Want a super easy and solid swiss army knife of a website, use Concrete CMS
Feature packed, intuitive to use
Concrete CMS has nicelly choosen it's name, Concrete is really concrete
Concrete CMS is your ultimate choice of CMS!
ConcreteCMS: the Best!
My go to CMS for years
Great CMS system for medium to large websites.
Best CMS
A awesome tool for a better and inclusive web
Amazing CMS, easy to use for both developers and admins
Great value for a quick, easy website
Powerful, easy-to-use website content management
Concrete5 Is The Way to Go for Non-Programmers
As a …
Powerful for developers, easy for site editors
Works as expected, a bit resource intensive
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Popular Features
- Admin section (40)10.0100%
- Page templates (40)10.0100%
- Mobile optimization / responsive design (39)9.797%
- WYSIWYG editor (42)9.292%
Pricing
What is Concrete CMS?
Concrete CMS (formerly Concrete5) is a free and open source, PHP built content management system for content on the web and also for intranets. It is optimized to support the creation of online magazines and newspapers.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?
18 people also want pricing
Alternatives Pricing
What is ExpressionEngine?
ExpressionEngine is a content management system from EllisLab in 2002, a successor to pMachine Pro, a blogging system, which is written in object-oriented PHP and uses MySQL for data storage. ExpressionEngine is their flagship Content Delivery Platform.
What is Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)?
Adobe Business Catalyst was a cloud-hosted system for building and managing web content and online stores with a built-in CRM framework in addition to sales, service, and marketing features including eCommerce and Email Marketing tools. It has been end of life (EOL) since 2020.
Product Demos
Concrete CMS DevOps Hosting
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.
- 9.5Role-based user permissions(38) Ratings
Permissions to perform actions or access or modify data are assigned to roles, which are then assigned to users, reducing complexity of administration.
Platform & Infrastructure
Features related to platform-wide settings and structure, such as permissions, languages, integrations, customizations, etc.
- 9.7API(31) Ratings
An API (application programming interface) provides a standard programming interface for connecting third-party systems to the software for data creation, access, updating and/or deletion.
- 9.7Internationalization / multi-language(30) Ratings
The software supports multiple languages, countries, currencies, etc.
Web Content Creation
Features that support the creation of website content.
- 9.2WYSIWYG editor(42) Ratings
What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get editing tool allows users to build pages without writing code.
- 10Code quality / cleanliness(37) Ratings
Code generated by WYSIWYG editor is clean and validates according to W3C standards.
- 10Admin section(40) Ratings
The admin page is easy to navigate and use.
- 10Page templates(40) Ratings
The CMS has standard webpage templates or types of web pages (e.g. homepage, article page, interior page, blog page, etc.); users can also build custom templates.
- 4.4Library of website themes(38) Ratings
A library of website frameworks or themes is available as a starting point for building a website.
- 9.7Mobile optimization / responsive design(39) Ratings
The CMS helps users build webpages that work well on mobile devices – whether m-dot pages or responsively designed pages.
- 7.8Publishing workflow(37) Ratings
The software allows users to set up a custom workflow for updating the website, including approval processes.
- 6.5Form generator(39) Ratings
Users can build website forms for visitors to fill out.
Web Content Management
Features for managing website content
- 8.8Content taxonomy(39) Ratings
Users can create multiple levels and types of content categories including tags.
- 9SEO support(39) Ratings
The CMS helps users create the right website infrastructure (pagination, page headers, titles, meta tags, url structure, etc.) to increase the site’s visibility in search engine results.
- 6.1Bulk management(39) Ratings
Users can change an attribute on a group of documents or sites all at once through features such as global search and replace, making bulk changes easier.
- 5.6Availability / breadth of extensions(39) Ratings
There is a broad library of extensions, plug-ins, modules or add-ons that allow users to easily customize their websites without building custom code.
- 5.7Community / comment management(39) Ratings
Users can put post/page comments through an approval process, auto-approve commenters based on their email addresses, block commenters by IP address, delete comments, etc.
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Concrete CMS?
Concrete CMS (formerly concrete5) is an Open Source Content Management System for teams. The vendor states users can run a secure website that content contributors will love using with Concrete CMS. Concrete is a platform that grows with the user's needs.
The user experience is built around in-context editing and is designed to be as easy to use as a word processor so that users spend less time training people, and less time having to fix things.
As an open source framework the user can build complex applications as features like permissions, workflow, file management, calendar, forms, SEO and so much more are built right in. A marketplace of add-ons & themes and an active community can help quickly deliver solutions using Concrete CMS.
The vendor boasts fortune 500 companies, nonprofits, individuals and the U.S. Army as users of Concrete CMS to power critical parts of their web presence.
Concrete CMS Features
Web Content Creation Features
- Supported: WYSIWYG editor
- Supported: Code quality / cleanliness
- Supported: Content versioning
- Supported: Admin section
- Supported: Page templates
- Supported: Library of website themes
- 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: Page caching
- Supported: Availability / breadth of extensions
- Supported: E-commerce / shopping cart extension
- Supported: Community / comment management
- Supported: Import / export
Platform & Infrastructure Features
- Supported: API
- Supported: Internationalization / multi-language
Security Features
- Supported: Role-based user permissions
- Supported: Multi-factor authentication
- Supported: User-level audit trail
- Supported: Version history
- Supported: Simple roll-back capabilities
CMS programming language or framework Features
- Supported: PHP
Concrete CMS Screenshots
Concrete CMS Videos
Concrete CMS Technical Details
Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Windows, Linux, Mac |
Mobile Application | No |
Supported Countries | anywhere |
Supported Languages | arabic, bangla, bosnian, chinese, czech, danish, dutch, english, estonian, finnish, french, german, greek, hebrew, hungarian, icelandic, indonesian, italian, japanese, korean, lithuanian, malay, persian, polish, portuguese, romanian, russian, slovak, spanish, swedish, thai, turkish, vietnamese, welsh |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(85)Community Insights
- Pros
- Cons
Smooth User Interface: Many users have praised the smooth user interface of the product, stating that it is intuitive and easy to navigate. Several reviewers have mentioned that they appreciate the clean design and well-organized layout, which enhances their overall experience.
Reliable Performance: Numerous customers have commended the reliable performance of the product. Several reviewers have stated that it consistently meets their expectations and performs tasks efficiently without any glitches or slowdowns. Users have expressed satisfaction with its stability and responsiveness.
Versatile Features: A significant number of users have highlighted the versatility of features offered by the product. Some reviewers have mentioned that it provides a wide range of functionalities, allowing them to accomplish various tasks effectively. The availability of customizable options has also been appreciated by several customers, as it caters to individual preferences and requirements.
Confusing User Interface: Many users have expressed frustration with the confusing and difficult-to-navigate user interface of Concrete5. They find it challenging to complete tasks efficiently due to the lack of intuitive design and organization.
Slow Rendering of Admin Pages: Some users have reported experiencing slow rendering of admin pages, particularly when using older computers. This sluggish performance hampers their productivity and can be frustrating during day-to-day usage.
Limited Customization Options: Users have voiced their concerns about the limited customization options in Concrete5. They feel that these options are buried within the software, making it harder for them to personalize their websites according to their specific preferences and requirements.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 45)- create and publish user-defined database content
- easy and intuitive for site editors *and* developers
- standards compliant and highly secure
- was built from the ground up to be a versatile and robust development environment
- reinvigorate and grow the (addon) developer community
- expand and refine the documentation/education program
- grow brand awareness
- in context editing
- plugin programming
- web security
- modification with mouse
- i don't see
ConcreteCMS: the Best!
My go to CMS for years
- Great UI for users to create content
- No need to deal with the maintenance structure, but when you do it is well designed
- Doesn't most everything you need from the base install
- The user forum needs a shake up. Can be hard to get activity on a thread
- Some more complex features aren't being developed by the community and need to be
- Needs more support to overcome the preference for the 800 pound gorilla in the sector
Great CMS system for medium to large websites.
- n webpage content editing.
- Very easy to use and understand.
- Short learning curve for Web Developers.
- PHP Based CMS system.
- Improve ability to create web page navigation
Amazing CMS, easy to use for both developers and admins
- As a dev, the Page object (coupled with page attributes, nav menus and page lists) makes structuring a website or web app a dream. The separation of page templates from page types also helps, the former being about layout while the latter is more conceptual.
- As an admin, you pretty much have as much control as the developers of the site decide to give you.
- The versioning system allows admins to roll changes back and work on changes before publishing them.
- The permissions system is exceptionally powerful, allowing roles and/or individual users to be included or excluded from each permission.
- The attributes system allows pages, files and users to be given custom properties of various types (e.g. text, image, colour).
- Lack of a REST API for using as a headless CMS (although I believe this will change with the next major version).
- No built-in way that I'm aware of to integrate React and/or Vue components.
Powerful, easy-to-use website content management
- Complete CMS out of the box - extensions not required for basic functionality.
- Modern PHP development framework - build whatever you need to.
- User friendly editing environment - clients love using Concrete5.
- Knowledgeable, supportive and friendly community.
- Documentation is gradually improving, this needs to continue.
- Design and styling controls could be updated.
Concrete5 Is The Way to Go for Non-Programmers
As a web development company, we've seen the move from static HTML web pages to more CMS style pages. This has been for both our clients, who have requested the ability to maintain, update and add their own content, as well as ourselves to be able to better manage development and deployment. Almost all of our projects over the past two years have been done using Concrete5.
- Page rollback and backup functions are great features for clients.
- Easy extendability with package system.
- Fast setup on both local and remote web hosting servers, either via "one button" installs or manually.
- From a designers point of view, Concrete5 is very easy to re-theme with your own custom web design. Any web designer with a basic understanding of HTML and CSS can re-theme a website.
- End users can update their pages using built in forms. It's as easy as using MS Word.
- Allow end users to clear cache when updating pages.
- Needs a few more built in forms.
- The CMS is not multilingual by default. Even though I managed to 'hack' it so, it would be nice to have it included.
- It'd be nice to make use of custom PHP modules through shortcodes more straight forward. It seems the hooks are a bit contrived.
Works as expected, a bit resource intensive
- It is quite extensible.
- There are many add-ons and themes.
- It makes it easy for even non-technical people to be able to update the content on the website.
- The extensions for older versions could be better marked to show if they are compatible with the current version.
- It could stand to have a bit of code optimizing to make it less resource intensive.
- It would be nice if there was a way to import content from my development server to my production server.
- Out-of-the-box functionalities like user management, search, SEO
- Edibility by users.
- Simplicity for non digital natives.
- Backend is for inexperienced users overwhelming.
- Management of custom models can be intensive.
- Frontend in edit-mode is sometimes unresponsive and irritates inexperienced users.
Powerful, Extendable, User-Friendly
- User-Friendly
- Extendable
- Secure
- Learning Curve for Development
- Can be complex
Powerful, Flexible Open-Source CMS
- Flexible, easy to manage websites.
- In-context editor that users and site managers love.
- Secure codebase.
- Development transparency from core team.
- Open-source license model.
- Extensible architecture.
- Ready-to-use out of the box.
- Better documentation from core developers.
- Better display of dashboard details.
- More name recognition.
Amazing and really well thought out CMS. Works out of the box!!
- Works out of the box.
- Packed with Features.
- Simple to use with brilliant UX/UI.
- Great code base to work with.
- Some documentation can be confusing.
- Not enough people using it.
- Has no ecommerce.
Concrete5 - the Wordpress beater
- Ease of use
- Ease of installation
- Highly configurable
- Highly extensible
- Poor developer documentation
- Could do with editor profiles already added so permissions dont have to be set
- Doesn't have a very large marketplace so addons need to be created from scratch
Great for end users. Good for developers.
- Easy for non technical users to edit content
- Curated marketplace of free and paid extensions at a fair price
- Good platform for custom development and further integration
- Reliable and secure
- Easy to manage
- Too much wisdom is lost in the depths of Slack
- With each new release, the infrastructure increases in complexity and leaves the documentation further behind.
- Effective and easy to publish and edit content. You enter the page where you want to edit content, choose edit mode and all editable content is there for you to change. Great overview with sitemap feature, you get full view of your website structure.
- Extremly flexible, you can define page-types and assign custom attributes to each.
- Gives developer full controll over display, and lets the editor plot in correct values.
- Easy to maintain, good security. No need for external plugins in order to preform advanced features.
- Best plugin is no plugin.
- Not suitable for webshops. Sure there are plugins for that such as WooCommerce on WP, but that's a poor choice. Best to go for PrestaShop or full-blood E-Commerce solution.
- No list view edit of the pages such as Joomla, would make it more effective.
Whatever you imagine, you can build anything on it. All you need is a descent developer that has a few brain cells.
Our Experience with Concrete5
- Concrete5 has a modular editing system, so you can edit the pages without having knowledge of coding. You just pick the module you want to insert or edit and click where you want it to go.
- You are able to edit modules in an HTML format if you would like to, so if you have the knowledge you can have even more control over your modules.
- You can also edit entire page themes by selecting them from the page layout menu. This allows you a greater versatility of the pages on your site.
- The file sorting system can be clunky at times. It can be difficult to find the correct file when you are searching for files you have previously uploaded.
- Sometimes the page will crash in the middle of editing, and there isn't an autosave feature to backup your work.
- Without proper training on how to use Concrete5, you can easily get lost or overwhelmed. It's not exactly intuitive right away.
- Concrete5 provides a very easy interface for website owners/administrators. Adding pages and content is simple and straightforward.
- Concrete5.7+ works well on mobile devices such as phones and tablets - including admin editing tools.
- Concrete5 has a good user community and support forums, as well as paid add-ons which provide advanced functionality which other open-source CMSs can lack.
- Concrete5.6 websites have no good path to migrate to 5.7, short of manual content migration. This is a big problem and affected the user community negatively.
- Some features that were available as paid add-ons in 5.6, such as discussion forums and e-commerce shopping cart, are missing from newer versions 5.7/5.8.
- Starting to develop add-ons and customizations for Concrete5 can be challenging as 5.7/5.8 documentation is not yet complete.
Concrete5 is THE WYSIWYG CMS
- Concrete5 is really good at providing a functional WYSIWYG for managing website content. It's the only CMS we tried that truly acts as such without any major issues.
- Similar to the above, in-context editing is a great feature. It allows non-developer savvy people to see exactly what they're doing.
- One click update is really handy. Don't have to download a bunch of files locally, then upload it, and then run a separate update process in order to update Concrete5.
Admin section is great for the non technical people who want to manage their website.
- Built on PHP so it can be hosted easily and usually pretty cheap.
- Has plenty of quick start videos to pick it up fairly quick.
- Well focused content managment system.
- Tends to render a page slowly on some host providers.
- Not an extremely flexible platform if you are looking to do a lot of customizing.
- Have had some issues migrating a fully built website a couple times with Concrete5 so it is hard move from one server to the next.
Inherited C5 Website
- Flexibility
- Clean admin layout
- Language translation
- High learning curve
- Not as intuitive as the competition
Concrete5 - a CMS with a good past, and a better future
It was all I wanted mine to be, and then some!
More recently, 5.7.came out, which has a new interface, and couldn't be easier for the end user.
The intuitive interface allows easy creation and management of pages, with help for SEO, and a wealth of plugins.
With different user roles, its easy to allow different departments to manage their own site areas.
We are a web host, and have an easy install solution for this program, but if you don't use that, the install is remarkably easy to do, with a friendly interface.
Like any online solution, it is not the best answer for every need. But it is the best answer for most needs. With an ever growing supply of themes and plugins, you should definitely look at this for your CMS solutions. Except for sites that we build needing a lot of custom coding, all of our web sites are now run on Concrete5.
- In-line Editing: 7 + has in-line editing, so you see your changes appear in the place they will be on the live site, in the font they will be and the size that they will be.
- File Management: Excellent file manager, allowing images to be grouped, tags added, lists of what pages use that image, so you can put the images in sets for being used together (in sliders, for instance).
- Very Human! Every contact you make with the site, the mail that comes to you is from the owner of the group. (Yes, Concrete5 is Open Source.) Very friendly, very nicely done.
- If you upgrade from pre 5.7 to 5.7, adding pages is rather tricky. Once you are familiar with it, it makes perfect sense!
- If you are using an older computer, the admin pages are very slow to render.
- In some cases, using the column tool will stop a responsive theme from being responsive. This is not the theme's issue, as we have used it many times in the same theme. Some pages stop being responsive, others do not. ("Stop being responsive" is technically incorrect, they behave improperly as they resize. This is with text-only content, and does not have images distorting them.)
- The only way to add h tags is to click on the html editor of a block, and add the the tag to the heading.
If a site is not heavily coded, then Concrete5 is an excellent choice. The only time we still use WordPress is if a client is very familiar with that platform, or it has plugins that the client needs that are not available on Concrete5. (This has only happened once!)
Concrete5: The basic building block of any CMS
- Fast setup on both local and remote web hosting servers, either via "one button" installs or manually
- Does not require Windows hosting or software, so it's less restrictive and allows for a larger selection of hosting environments
- A very active and supportive community both developers and users
- Uses common, open source software like PHP and MySQL
- Custom theme development much easier compared to other platforms like Joomla!, Drupal and WordPress, or can easily integrate into existing design
- Many addons are free or reasonably priced, or you can write your own custom ones
- Migration from host to host relatively painless
- Page rollback and backup functions are great features for clients
- You have to really find a web host that runs well or maybe even a dedicated/virtual server to see the best response.
- Though you can often see live demos and documentation for addons and themes, it would be great to be able to try the product to see if it's a fit for your project.
- Though its UI is one of the easiest to use for clients, there is always room for improvement. Two things come to mind, the first being the Layout block needs improvement, updating or replacing. It doesn't always behave as expected and sometimes to make changes requires you to rebuild the whole thing (especially if you use layouts within layouts). The other item is that you don't always see the correct display while you are logged in. I fought the code for days trying to figure out a formatting issue, until my client said they were seeing it differently from me, and I realized it was because they weren't logged in. I had fixed the code and never knew it! I have to say here that this might not have been an issue with C5 directly, but maybe with the theme I was using. In either case, you have to make sure that you check it both ways.
Quick Project Turn Around with Concrete5
- Customizable - The ability to add modules (some free, some paid)
- Ease of Install and setup
- Templates that can be changed out of and used in different parts of your site
- More robust form making out of the box without the need to purchase a more robust module
- More visitor analytics built into the dash board
- Subdirectories in the file manager
Best CMS is Concrete5
- From a designers point of view, Concrete5 is very easy to re-theme with your own custom web design. Any web designer with a basic understanding of HTML and CSS can re-theme a website.
- From a developers point of view, there are hundreds if not thousands of add-ons that will extend the the core functionally of your site to handle things such as full scale eCommerce inventory management, sales, transactions, customer management, fulfillment and so on. More importantly, there is a ton of documentation on the Concrete5 community site and it is very easy to develop your own custom add on if there is not one available.
- From a site editor's/owner's point of view, Concrete5 is very easy to use. If you can edit your LinkedIn profile and create a Word document then you can edit your Concrete5 website. All page edits are done on the page itself once you are logged in and in edit mode. Any custom add on or redundant task can be saved to the dashboard page for even easier access and use.
- Once area where I would like to improvement is the handling of bulk uploads to the database from the dashboard.
- I would like to see more free add-ons.