Amazing CMS, easy to use for both developers and admins
February 27, 2021
Amazing CMS, easy to use for both developers and admins
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Concrete5
Concrete5 is used to allow the company's developers to easily create a flexible website that allows its clients to update their content with minimal fuss, and allows the developers to quickly implement new features or changes as when requested by the client. The level of control a client has over their site can be fully tailored to suit the their needs and technical skills.
- 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.
- POSITIVE: It replaced a custom-built CMS, which instantly meant more features for clients, a smoother development process, and fewer bugs
- POSITIVE: The "Block Designer" plugin allows new, bespoke blocks (types of content) to be created in-house easily and at low cost.
- NEGATIVE: Occasionally, clients will ask for features not supported by Concrete5. Overdependence on this one CMS makes it difficult to estimate for and use alternative technologies.
- WordPress and React
Concrete5 outshines WordPress in almost all regards. The only two areas in which I've known WordPress to be the better option are:
- Its "Advanced Custom Fields" plugin, which has slightly more flexibility than Concrete5's built-in attributes system
- Its menu creator which, while far less automated than Concrete5's excellent auto-nav and page list blocks, does allow full control over which pages will appear in a menu
Do you think Concrete CMS delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Concrete CMS's feature set?
Yes
Did Concrete CMS live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Concrete CMS go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Concrete CMS again?
Yes