Best Content Management Systems

A content management system (CMS) can help you produce more impactful content and better convey your brand’s vision and message. 

The right CMS can also help you collaborate between team members and departments. Unsure of where to start? Start with Benzinga’s list of the best content management systems.

Best for Remote Content Collaboration: Paperflite

The new work-from-home model solves the complications that come with remote collaboration. Paperflite is here to fine tune and streamline your remote content creation management. 

Its CMS platform tackles every aspect of content production, tailoring each step of the process to your business. Want to make your content organization more appealing and easy to search? Paperflite can do that. Want to add interactive experiences to keep your customers engaged? Paperflite can help. 

Paperflite makes your content available everywhere you want it, on every device your customers are using and actionable content intelligence and insights drive your sales strategy forward.

If you’d like to check out Paperflite for yourself, you can see its live action demo here or schedule a 20-minute overview with a Paperflite representative.

Pricing: 

• Starter: $30 per month per user
• Professional: $50 per month per user
• Enterprise: Contact for custom pricing

Mobile app? Yes

Best for Scalability: Contentful

Your content strategy is designed to help you grow, so your CMS not only needs to encourage that growth, it needs to grow with you. Contentful is built for enterprises looking to expand. 

Contenful boasts several features that make growth an easily attainable reality. For starters, its digital-first development tools make creating and automating content across all your pertinent channels a cakewalk. 

Its editing capabilities make creating amazing content possible for your whole team, even if they aren’t design savvy. Your editing toolbox includes a customizable interface, global scaling, cloud governance and easy content modeling and structuring to increase consistency and brand impact. 

Contentful prides itself on its reliability, giving you a highly-fortified infrastructure, world-class security measures, expert support and ongoing performance monitoring. You can direct your own content management, integrate with a ton of 3rd party apps and use the programming language you’re most comfortable with. 

Get in touch with Contentful here to find out more.

Pricing: 

• Community: Free
• Team: Starts at $489 per month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

Mobile app? Web app but no mobile app

Best for Higher Education: OU Campus by Omniupdate

If you’re in charge of content management for a college or other higher education institution, you need to check out OU Campus by Omniupdate. OU Campus is designed around the needs of higher education with capabilities for built-in workflows, user levels and accessibility checks to let the right users in and keep the wrong people out. 

It scans for compliance with WCAG 2.1, which are accessibility guidelines and standards. If not met, higher ed institutions can find themselves in trouble with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Plus, you WANT as many eligible students as possible to be able to access your site. 

OU Campus also provides full-service implementation of its CMS, so you can have full faith in a smooth setup process. You can see a demo from Omniupdate here.

Pricing: Contact for pricing

Mobile app? No

Best for Media Companies: Magnolia

If you run a media company, content creation is both your business and a business strategy. Not only do you need to create content that stands out from the constant inundation of news and information, you need it to do several things. Magnolia’s CMS does these things well. 

Magnolia is a CMS company that works with many industries, but it’s especially adept in the media sphere. 

Your content needs to go from the concept stage to the finish line in warp speed. Magnolia’s “light development” low code approach makes this possible. Magnolia delivers digital media to over 70 million users every single day.

If you’d like to find out more about Magnolia or demo any of its products, visit the Magnolia website.

Pricing: Contact for pricing

Mobile app? No

Best for Flexibility: WordPress

The world’s most popular CMS, WordPress doesn’t charge a penny whether you run a major company or a personal blog. WordPress is also open source, which means you can alter or improve its source code to customize your website.

A few reasons to use WordPress:

• WordPress is SEO friendly. Search engines Google and Bing tend to rank WordPress websites higher.
• You can make your website look any way you want with your own WordPress theme. You can use one of the many it provides or buy one of the various premium themes developed by 3rd parties. You can also add and extend certain features to have the site do what you want it to do.
• You can download plugins that let you easily send out email campaigns and newsletters or have WordPress do what you want it to do. 
• You can find thousands in WordPress’ online community for answers and support.
• It’s easy to scale your site and also maintain it.
• You can make security a priority by checking to see that WordPress is always up to date — including the CMS itself, plus its themes and plugins.

Finally, one of the best reasons to use WordPress is that it’s a “self-hosted” CMS. That means you can take the software and set it up on any server to power your website.

Important Features of Content Management Systems

Be sure to weigh the important features any CMS should offer before you commit to a service. Here are our non-negotiable functions:

Content Editor

Multiple team members and departments, from your writers to your design team to your marketing core, have their role in content creation. Your CMS should make it possible for all of your team members to create beautiful, effective content, even if they can’t code. 

A WYSIWG (What You See is What You Get) content editor is standard for many CMS systems, making it easy for your team to let their creativity shine.

3rd-Party Integration 

This is an important feature for most business management softwares these days. From plug-ins that enhance the features of your CMS to integration with social media apps like Facebook and Instagram, it’s important your CMS meshes with the 3rd-party apps and platforms you already use in the operation of your business.

E-Commerce and Marketing Tools 

Make it easier for people to spend money with your company by integrating your e-commerce aims with your CMS. Reach those people quicker and faster by using your CMS to tailor digital marketing campaigns so your clients can share your company on social media.

Customizability 

You need the right level of customizability for your company and the ability to present the information without being limited by your technology.

Flexibility

Do you want themed branding that stays consistent using templates and design starting points or do you want full creative control? Choose the CMS that has the flexibility you need.

Core Functionality

How easy is it to create content? Once it’s created, how easy is it to keep building, add new functions or delete content? Even the most feature-packed CMS will fail if it can’t perform these basic functions. 

Scalability

You may not need that digital marketing campaign now, but what about in a year? What are your growth aims? You’ll want to consider how capable your CMS is of growing with you and adapting to your changing needs.

Benefits of Content Management Systems

A CMS brings immediate benefit to the quality and efficiency of sharing your content. Here is a quick rundown of what you can expect from a CMS:

• Content creation accessible to your whole team, even if tech isn’t every person’s strong suit
• Simplified and automated site maintenance so you can easily edit your website without damaging its overall integrity or continuity
• The ability to plan, schedule and manage all your projects in 1 place, making it easy to shift gears and stay on top of content
• Multiple user accessibility and the option to assign and manage roles within your team 

Cost of Content Management Systems

The size of your business and scale of your content strategy will probably determine how much is appropriate to spend on a CMS. Prices vary from platform to platform. 

Many offer customized quotes for businesses of all sizes, but especially large and enterprise-level operations. Benzinga found that our partners offered services for small, mid-sized and large businesses in the following ranges:

For small businesses: $0 to $30

For mid-sized businesses: $50 to $489

For large businesses: Custom pricing

Most CMS platforms prefer to discuss pricing with and provide custom quotes to the people who will be using their software rather than provide one-size-fits-all subscription tiers.

Simplify, Beautify and Streamline Your Content Production 

The right CMS software streamlines your content management process from start to finish, activates and engages the best team members for the job, makes content creation and editing a breeze and integrates with all the apps and platforms you already use and love. Some will even help you build and maintain your website, conduct marketing campaigns and scale your content strategy as you grow.

Bring your content creation to the next level with a CMS platform. Use Benzinga’s roster of the best content management systems to find the perfect match for your business.

Best Content Management Systems Methodology

Benzinga analyzed the top Content Management System by industry and winnowed the list to include those with the best attributes. We prioritized pricing, features and scalability. We also considered the availability of a mobile app and consumer reviews.