The Gold Standard in CMS Enterprises for Higher Education and More
December 17, 2018
The Gold Standard in CMS Enterprises for Higher Education and More
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Cascade Cloud
Overall Satisfaction with Cascade Server
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.
- Version upgrades on the cloud are lightning fast. Only took about half hour to convert our site, with about 50,000+ assets.
- Setting permissions is very intuitive and easy to set up at a high or granular level.
- CMS tracks assets and links when moved, deleted or renamed, and allows for relational publishing of all effected assets.
- Integrates directly with many third-party products, including Google Analytics, Siteimprove, WebDam, and many more.
- Great customer service!
- There aren't many options in who can assist with developing sites, as there aren't many Cascade developers available. We contract most of our development work with third party vendors.
- The first phase of our Cascade experience brought our University's web users together, and united the look and feel of our pages. We are hoping our next phase will provide the tools necessary to transform the way we market ourselves on the web. More to come.
Our latest round of CMS evaluations we looked at OmniUpdate, Drupal, and Wordpress as possible CMS choices. It quickly became apparent that all of the upper tier products seemed capable of managing strong websites, but upon a deeper investigation of our needs Cascade rose to the top. The two largest considerations is that we had already been using it for 8 years, so most users were familiar with how to use it, and it didn't require inhouse developers. Secondly, since it wasn't open source it had an advantage with being secure out of the gate.