Item: Plone
Rating: 10
Author: Rikupekka Oksanen

Overall Satisfaction with Plone

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Plone is widely being used in our organization: from public websites to intranets, customized LMSs or customized sites designed to do some special thing, to smaller sites and different portals. We have had video publishing platforms, payment systems, customized forms, workflows and countless integrations to other internal and external systems. Plone is an extremely solid and safe platform to use, which is very important for us as a university. The content management is easy to use, and customization options are limitless. Especially important for us is the robust, yet flexible permission management; we may, if we want, to control the access permissions to a smallest detail in every page available.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Easy to use content management
Lots of features out of the box
Excellent security
Flexible permission management
Flexible workflow system
Limitless possibilities to extend and customize, also through the web without programming skills
Free to use, open source
Helpful and welcoming community
Customizable content types
Robustness
Accessibility
Multilingual features

Cons

As a big and mature system it might take time to learn how to develop
Not as well known as some other CMSs
Not so easy to find external developers, if needed

Return on Investment

Zero licence cost on 100+ systems we have on Plone. On some other systems the costs might be astronomical based on our user or content amount.
Our customized and well integrated LMSs - since 2009 we have received some 200,000 assignment submissions through our Plone-based systems. The amount of time saved compared to other ways of returning assignments is huge. Integration between Plone, our study management system and payments system allows students to enroll, pay and immediately access course content.
Workflows - we have many systems where we utilize Plone's flexible workflow management, allowing us to easily digitize manual work and sending papers around campus. Again, saves a lot of work and time.

Usability

Compared to the amount of Plone sites, users and customizations we have in our organization, the amount of support requests and training needed is really small.

The new user interface in Plone 6 is even better, it is super fast, has lots of different blocks for enhancing the page, has flexible layout system and is easy to extend with more features.

Alternatives Considered

Drupal, WordPress and Squarespace

Since 2004, when we first started using Plone, here hasn't been any feature or request or system that we couldn't have been done with Plone.

Sometimes there have been cases, where we pilot or test other workflow-based systems, but usually the problems come with licences - as a university we have tens on thousands of users, and the licence costs tend to go so high that we cannot use them.

Key Insights

Do you think Plone delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Plone's feature set?

Yes

Did Plone live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Plone go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Plone again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Flowdock, Microsoft Teams, Mendix, Zulip

Likelihood to Recommend

Well suited for: Huge public sites with hundreds of content managers and granulated permissions Intranets with hundreds of content managers and granulated permissions Customized services with workflows, automated content rules and integrations. Sites that require excellent safety and flexibility to develop further. International, multi-language sites. Customized forms.
Not so good fit for small sites with little amount of content editors

Plone Feature Ratings

Using Plone

Users and Roles

30000 - Teachers, students, administration, researchers, external audience.

Support Headcount Required

4 -

Plone is one of the systems the developement team supports and maintains. So there is no one doing just Plone or supporting just Plone, despite us having tens of different services buit on Plone.

You will need developers and someone to answer users questions and manage new projects.

If you want, with one installation you could build public website, intranet, extranet, small sites, custom solutions so there is no limit of what just one Plone site does.

Business Processes Supported

Video sharing platform
Intranet
Secure video platform for sensitive research material
Public websites
Student wellbeing portal

Innovative Uses

Building 1000+ forms without much support
Custom workflow builder
Video sharing platform created before YouTube and still in use
Secure video sharing platform for researchers
Mobile application integration for secure audio recording and automatic transcription in the video platform above
Registration portals for international students with 10+ integrations

Future Planned Uses

Websites
Custom solutions
Registration portals
Video sharing

Likelihood to Renew

We have critical systems running on Plone so will need it in the future.

Free to use since its Open source, so we don't have to worry about licence costs.

We know how to use and develop Plone and it has no limits.

Evaluating Plone and Competitors

Products Replaced

Yes - In 2004 it replaced plain HTML pages.

Key Differentiators

Scalability
Integration with Other Systems
Ease of Use

Back then, we wanted to have university website that was easy to update by normal people at the faculties just by logging in via browser. Plone provided that, as we had seen in few of our test cases.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

Use lots of money on external consultation and get recommended something that is market leader in Gartner.

Plone Training

Training Types Used

Online Training
In-Person Training

In-Person Training

I have been participating Plone training and the trainers have always been professional. Materials were good and the instructions clear.

Online Training

Well organized, professional training with good materials and instructions.

Plone Support

Support Rating

There are not too many Plone companies in the world. But the ones who are, are high level professionals.

Plone Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
None	None

Premium Support

No need. Plone is free and will always be, thanks to it Foundation backed open source model.

For support, we have internal team.

Bug Resolution

Yes - Yes. Plone community is active and wants to keep the product great.

Exceptional Examples of Plone Support

Just contacting core developers around the world in Discord or forums has helped. No need to pay anything, just ask.

Using Plone

Usability Pros and Cons

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

Easy Tasks

Content management with lots of content - the ability to divide content into folders and pages is easy to understand and allows many different functions. The ability to copy, cut, paste stuff from one place to another
Editing page content.
Forms - easy to edit, yet powerful to use.
Speed. Super fast to edit pages.
Simplicity of the user interface for a content editor
Listing and search blocks for dynamically updated views

Difficult Tasks

Can't think of anything

Mobile Interface Availability and Impressions

Yes - Responsive UI, can be used in a mobile device. Easy to customize further if needed just using CSS.

Integrating Plone

Ease of Integration

Plone RestAPI is great. You can easily integrate Plone with any system or import data to Plone. We have done tens of different integrations and Plone is never the problem.