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Smooth User Interface: Many users have praised the smooth user interface of the product, stating that it is intuitive and easy to …
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.
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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
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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.
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- No setup fee
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- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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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
What problems does Concrete CMS solve?
Testimonial from a customer
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
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.
Reviewers rate Code quality / cleanliness and Admin section and Page templates highest, with a score of 10.
The most common users of Concrete CMS are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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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!
- 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
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I'm using Concrete CMS for almost all kinds of web-based software I build. It's a real swiss knife. I've made a website, e-commerce, ERP, and many management tools with it. it's a very nice project base. I always have the facility to teach how to use it to the project's users, it's very intuitive.
- in context editing
- plugin programming
- web security
- modification with mouse
- i don't see
February 20, 2021
Powerful for developers, easy for site editors
As a developer, I use Concrete5 to build custom solutions as well as off-the-shelf products for sale in the community marketplace. Concrete5 provides a reliable, safe, scalable base to create powerful websites and web applications. Being open source, the price is right and it is also supported by a committed community of developers, site editors, and users.
I've been using this CMS since 2009, and over a decade later, I'd still choose it again in a heartbeat. The team behind Concrete5 is always pushing the platform further, and taking bold, brave steps to make it a world-class system. As a developer, it's a breeze working with Concrete5. The elegant architecture makes it easy to create complex add-ons and functionality that is clean, fast, and future-proof.
I've been using this CMS since 2009, and over a decade later, I'd still choose it again in a heartbeat. The team behind Concrete5 is always pushing the platform further, and taking bold, brave steps to make it a world-class system. As a developer, it's a breeze working with Concrete5. The elegant architecture makes it easy to create complex add-ons and functionality that is clean, fast, and future-proof.
- Comprehensive editing tools for site owners.
- User-friendly and intuitive interface.
- Extendable architecture for developers.
- Solid community forum for asking questions and getting free and paid help.
- Good number of third-party add-ons and themes to extend the core features.
- Regular news updates from the core team about platform improvements and strategic direction.
- Average quality and depth of developer documentation.
February 18, 2021
Powerful, Extendable, User-Friendly
Concrete5 is great for everything from simple websites to custom, complex, applications. The peer-reviewed marketplace offers out-of-the-box solutions that save plenty of time and cost less than developing on your own with many add-ons available for free. Community support is fantastic with user forums and projects, including an e-Commerce solution that is robust and inexpensive to run with no monthly fees (seriously, the best e-Commerce package you're going to find). Sites can be deployed quickly with minimal costs and end-users can be trained often in minutes instead of hours or days. The platform is secure and allows fine-tooth permissions control. Internationalization is handled too for those that need to display their sites in multiple languages. Self-hosted and Concrete5 hosted options are available and maintenance is usually easily managed at the user-level.
- User-Friendly
- Extendable
- Secure
- Learning Curve for Development
- Can be complex
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- 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.
June 07, 2018
Great Alternative to Wordpress for small projects
With Concrete5, you don't have to explain to your clients on how to edit a site/page. Once they are familiar with the very basics, they can do their thing. Just go to the page where you want to edit something, and click on a so-called "Block" to edit it (a page is a collection of blocks).
- The live editing (and its ease of use) for every page is THE best thing Concrete5 ships with.
- It is easy to use for (tech-unsavvy) users and still extendable for developers.
- The ecosystem for add-ons is small compared to WordPress, so finding solutions is harder or they get updated less frequently.
- The time between updates is slow and lengthy, which can lead to security risks.
I built and maintain a few websites using Concrete5, both for internal use and for clients, over a period of several years. I've used both versions 5.5/5.6 and the newer versions 5.7/5.8 - in fact, I was around for the change and helped migrate a large website from 5.6 to 5.7. Concrete5 is unusual among open-source CMS software in that it is primarily maintained by a for-profit company, which helps give the project direction and stability which other open-source projects can lack.
- 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.
February 29, 2016
Admin section is great for the non technical people who want to manage their website.
Concrete5 was great for creating for small websites. If we had a client come to us such as a small business that needed an online presence we would use this because it is pretty intuitive when creating and managing content on a website. We would work with the client and build a coupe components that fit their needs to help them get what they needed online quickly and easily.
- 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.
July 27, 2015
Concrete5 Is The Way to Go for Non-Programmers
I've used Concrete5 for several websites in the past.
- Very easy learning curve.
- Fast, reliable, open source.
- Lots of nice themes and add-ons.
- In page editing.
- SEO friendly.
- Non-programmers friendly.
- Can't think of any.
July 22, 2015
Best CMS is Concrete5
We use Concrete5 for ninety percent of our client projects. Concrete5 is a perfect solution whether our clients need a simple CMS, a blogging platform or a complex dynamic site. Concrete5 is ideal for user registration, mass content input and display. The platform can also handle transactions via the eCommernce add-on and the best benefit for us is that it is easy to develop custom add-ons. Also, the sheer simplicity of the CMS allows all levels of users to manage their site which saves the site owner money by not having to hire a developer to adjust/edit content.
- 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.
June 07, 2014
Concrete5 - A strong foundation for your website.
Concrete5 is being used as our Content Management System for our Corporate Website. It is being used primarily by the Marketing department but it also is being used to provide access to Product Documentation for our clients by our Customer Success department.
- Super simple interface that even non-web developers can use and get the most out of. This made the training curve extremely fast and very easy to on-board new contributors.
- Built-in version control system so if someone screws up it can be rolled back without hassle.
- Very active marketplace with very cheap plugins that meet particular business needs. We have purchased and used several modules with successful results however we do try out our new purchases on a test bed platform before deploying live to ensure compatibility and verify functionality.
- Built-in permissions for every page that is easy to manage. This ensures that prospects only see what they have access to and clients can see what they have access to, even if they are passed a direct URL.
- It can be difficult to set up on a Windows server. Not impossible mind you, just a little more difficult than your typical Unix server where most even will do automatic installs for you.
- The plugins could be vetted by the company a little better to ensure that plugins that are on the marketplace are always compatible and fulfill the promises they make.