Concrete5 is the most Rock Solid CMS
July 17, 2015
Concrete5 is the most Rock Solid CMS
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
5.6.3.3 and 5.7
Overall Satisfaction with Concrete5
Concrete5 is used for a variety of purposes to address our website needs. From college calendars, news releases, and directories on into marketing and internal support items. It's OOP based architecture makes troubleshooting AND development easy to handle. Since it is database driven, its ability to scale is excellent. The best thing about Concrete5 however is its ease-of-use with In-Context Editing abilities. It's very intuitive to use. As such, it has allowed me to take a supervisory role of the website as a whole, while empowering many editors who are experts on a given area throughout our company to post compelling content to the site, freeing me up for larger development tasks and fine-tuning. Concrete5 is the best CMS I've ever used on a large scale, empowering myself and many colleagues to easily setup, manage, grow and maintain our web presence.
Pros
- Dead simple editing. Basic training can be performed over the phone in under 30 minutes if needed.
- OOP architecture makes development and troubleshooting a logical and easy to handle.
- Ability to override the system with customizations, and ensure those customizations do not break when the system is updated. Brilliant setup to allow this.
Cons
- Speed. As with any system, it's easy for a developer or designer to bloat the system. Attention must be paid to speed costs associated with any new functionalities.
- Higher ROI
- Better conversions
- Increased employee efficiency
- WordPress,Drupal,Joomla,Grav,October,Pico
Concrete5 absolutely shines in comparison. While there are areas where one system may perform a specific task better than Concrete5, when it comes to the whole package Concrete5 can't be beat.
Concrete CMS Feature Ratings
Using Concrete5
Everything from basic personal profile page management that powers the online directory to full-fledged "micro-sites" efficiently managed by experts in a given are, then fine tuned by the admin.
1 - Solid fundamental knowledge of HTML and CSS goes a loooooonnnng way. After that, any knowledge on PHP and Javascript only make it better and allows those with that knowledge to easily create their own functionality packages and themes as needed.
- Online Directory
- SEO and Marketing
- Calendars and Events
- News Posts
- Program information
- Sub-Sites
- Mobile Apps
- Online Directory
- Discussion Forums
- Anything we can dream up for the web, Concrete5 can do for us.
Evaluating Concrete5 and Competitors
Yes - Basic HTML webpages that required manual editing of the HTML to update. Replaced Drupal as the CMS for our site.
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Prior Experience with the Product
- Vendor Reputation
- Existing Relationship with the Vendor
- Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
- Analyst Reports
- Third-party Reviews
Ease of editing is key. After setup, if I—as the developer—have to hand site editors a book on how to edit (I'm looking at your Joomla) then little editing is going to get done. Concrete5 is dead simple to understand for the common man or woman, and that empowers everyone to add a stone to make a mountain easily.
No change.
Concrete5 Implementation
- Implemented in-house
Yes -
- Migrate current site content from Drupal to Concrete5
- Update content and workflows where it made sense during the migration
- Train new editors
- Add more content
Change management was a major issue with the implementation - Needed to develop several customizations during the migration. A better route would have been to re-work them totally rather than trying to emulate what was in Drupal. Once done though, everything worked like a charm.
- Various little details that needed to be addressed
- Ability to pick and choose feature posts and events for the homepage
- Ability to work with Google Calendars.
Concrete5 Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
Yes - On rare occasions where time or expertise prevents us from doing the work ourselves, which has only happened once due to hard deadline constraints.
Bought an add-on that supported Google calendar imports. Noticed some quirks. Filed a support ticket with the add-on developer, who thanked me for pointing it out and quickly fixed it, then issued an add-on update for all users of said add-on to reap the benefits of—all at no cost.
Using Concrete5
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- In-Context editing interface. See a typo? Click edit on the page and edit it right there where you see it. You're not placed into a editing "backend" that looks nothing like the page the typo was found on. See it, edit it, publish it—all on the same page.
- Installing additional (and nice!) themes and functionality add-ons directly from the vetted/curated Concrete5 marketplace
- Adding new content, pages, or posts.
- None
Yes - I've made basic updates on the fly on mobile very quickly. Otherwise, I don't use mobile for editing due to the small, inefficient mobile keyboard—not Concrete5 itself.
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