Comparing CMS Platforms for Managing a Website

March 22 2013

Building a paper airplane is easy, cheap and fun. But it will never fly you to your destination.

This article is part of a series Comparing CMS Platforms through the Lifecycle of a Website.

A website that actually provides value to a business or nonprofit will need to be more than just a few pages. It will need to have new content that is useful to regular visitors and discoverable by search engines so that new customers find the website when they are looking for your product or service. Anything less will be wasted opportunity, because your competitors will steal your customers’ attention with a better website.

Content Management

Visual website builders have initial mass appeal, but once your site grows beyond a handful of pages, they can actually become unwieldy. This limitation is quickly felt on platforms like Wix, Weebly and Squarespace, because they are optimized for websites that are 5-10 pages of static content, plus maybe a blog.

Wordpress was originally designed as a blog that also allowed creation of basic pages. They now provide various add on modules such as calendars, galleries, etc, to help you do just about anything. Gutensite has a huge list of content types available as well, and because both of these platforms are content management systems, it is very easy to keep the records organized and updated, e.g. you can filter and search blog articles, in a separate way from calendar events or team profiles.

With visual website builder like Wix, Weebly and Squarespace, if you write a blog and you want to feature it on the home page, you have to go and edit the home page and write a summary of the blog and link to the new blog. But in Gutensite and Wordpress, you can have a featured blog module on the home page that automatically displays the latest blog whenever you write a new article. This gives you a hint of the power of dynamic content.

Proactive Support

As you manage your website, you will inevitably run into technical problems, need help using some of your features, or need to seek expert advice from people who understand online marketing and internet best-practices. Unfortunately, most platforms do not provide very good support. With rock bottom prices the human costs of quality support are not as scalable as low cost servers and getting good support can be difficult. So make sure you understand how you will get help when the time inevitably comes.

Squarespace says they offer 24/7 support (if you absolutely need help at midnight night). That means you can email them 24/7 and they’ll start an email conversation (you may or not get anything resolved after hours). They don’t offer phone support at all, and their online chat support is only available 8 hours a day.

Wordpress, Wix and Weebly don’t offer any phone or email support. You can use their online knowledgebase or submit a question to their forum. If you have trouble, don’t expect a quick resolution. You are pretty much on your own to figure things out.

Proactive support is where Gutensite really begins to shine. Whether you just need a tutorial, or you can’t figure out how to make a feature perform the way you want, or you have an idea for your website that you want to get expert advice on, our team wants to help. Our phone number and email is posted everywhere in the control panel, because we know that if we help you build a great website, you’ll be loyal customers.

Gutensite has the standard how-to tutorials and forums, as well as email and phone support. If you like talking to real people when you have a problem, people who have the power to help you, who take ownership in your website, and who have authority to make decisions, you’ll love Gutensite. Gutensite support staff has direct access to the developers and the executive team to help with technical or administrative issues. If you report critical bugs they are fixed immediately—non-critical bugs are fixed within a week. If you need urgent help you can call during normal business hours and get personal attention. If you need emergency after hours support, you can request help and someone will contact you in a few minutes.

Although usually overlooked in the initial decision making process, support is probably the most important feature of the platform you choose, because it will affect the quality of your website and the satisfaction of your experience for the life of your website. Building a website takes only a few weeks at most, but managing your website is an ongoing process. So make sure you have a team of dedicated people who will drop everything to help you build and manage and grow a successful website.

Read more about the next phase in the lifecycle of a website: Growing a Website.

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