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Solidify Your Company Foundation With Concrete5
June 06, 2014

Solidify Your Company Foundation With Concrete5

Michael Thomas | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

5.6.3.1

Overall Satisfaction with Concrete5

Concrete5 is a great CMS with tons of potential and because of this we built our web presence platform around it. We needed a comprehensive, simple and elegant backbone to our client website without the need to hack or "fix" add-ons or worry about updates going awry. Concrete5 was able to put those worries to rest.
  • Concrete5 has a very easy to use and comprehensive admin panel that left little confusion as to how to update and manage.
  • The add-on's and modules work! With Concrete5 we were never left wondering if the add-on would work as described based on our install configuration or if we would have to modify them to make them work or achieve our need.
  • The end-user result is phenomenal! Concrete5 delivers a clean and code standard HTML rendition of your website to user resulting in lower bounce rates, better asset delivery, and more return viewers.
  • Unlike other CMS's out there, Concrete5 uses minimal mySQL connections which is great for server load. Couple this with the fact that the add-ons and modules also use limited resources and you're left with a lighting fast website without having to compromise.
  • The first thing we noticed was many of the best add-ons cost money and some a fairly high dollar which could be limiting to smaller companies and freelance developers.
  • Often going into a stack or section to configure or edit you find yourself lost when closing out or exiting from the edit screen and are left with just a blank screen with no way of returning to where you were. This results in going back to the dashboard home page and starting the process over.
  • Adding and manipulating the menu(s) is a task and at first very confusing. Other CMS's you have the ability to create custom menus and place them at will by assigning their location. This feature in Concrete5 would be helpful.
  • With Concrete5 we increased our ROI by 15% through better traffic to the site and a lower bounce rate.
  • Our site speed has decreased from using our prior CMS resulting in happier customers.
  • Site maintenance has been cut in half with out the need to alter add-on's and modules which has decreased our maintenance budget.
Comparatively Concrete5 is sleek and sophisticated to most other CMS's. It's ease of use is similar to Joomla! however far exceeds the admin interface where as I find Joomla! to be complex for the average developer and mostly average content provider. The add-on's and modules installation is as easy as using WordPress and again the admin is less confusing to the average content provider however I feel, while WordPress is code intensive, has more potential than Concrete5 beyond it's "out of the box" functionality. Concrete5 is easier to use than Drupal, Sitecore, and Amazon by far but again their potential is seemingly far greater beyond out of the box.
As a developer I like to tailor CMS's and make the impossible possible. I just seem to get my hands dirty enough while using Concrete5. I like the challenge of building out our vision where I see Concrete5 as more of a plug and play. For those reasons I would be less likely to use Concrete5 again in the future.
Concrete5 wouldn't be my first choice to recommend unless they had a good understanding and experience with CMS's and CMS development and also had the budget to potentially spend some money on key functionality. From my experience, Concrete5 is not a very good CMS for eCommerce due to it's limited add-on's for in house online stores. It seems to only be beneficial if you have your store off site and wish to connect the two sites together. However if you have the know how and the budget, depending on your site purpose, Concrete5 is very useful. There's the right CMS out there for every application.