Open Source CMS VS Proprietary CMS

In this day and age, your business must have a website. More and more people favour online shopping to go to shops and fill out online forms instead of ringing the company. Your website has to be ideal for your customers; you must provide your clients with all the online tools and information they need and expect from a modern-day website.

The first big decision you must make when considering your website comes before you’ve even started building it. Open source content management system or proprietary content management system?

Open Source CMS, like WordPress, lets you construct your website by yourself with the help of the Open Source community. There are many open-source cms platforms, including Drupal, Joomla, Magento, and Opencart, to name but a few.

Internal or Proprietary CMS means a different web company custom builds your website using HTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL code. Web companies tend to have software that is not open source and took years of development, resulting in the software they host and support for you.

Both methods have pros and cons, and it is essential to compare them and choose the most appropriate way for your business and your website needs.

What are the positives and negatives of a Proprietary CMS?

Positives of having a web company create a website using a proprietary CMS

•  Internal CMS companies provide their customers with readily available support when they need it.
•  Companies will talk you through everything you need to know and help you swiftly solve any problems on your site. An excellent internal CMS company values their customers and ensures they receive the service they need.
•  Sites that professionals build are much better than a website that you make yourself. Both the aesthetics and the coding will benefit from professionals building your site.
•  An essential aspect of your website is the speed; if your customers have to wait for every single page to load, they’ll leave your site within a couple of pages.
• CMS companies will ensure that your website loads swiftly to avoid deterring customers.
•  CMS companies will provide you with a unique, custom design that’s not dependent on a set design.
•  If your site goes down for a day, you could lose hundreds of customers. With professional companies hosting your site, they’ll keep it online.
•  Retaining search engine rankings are complex; your must update your website from time to time.
• The company that manages your site or if you have a proprietary CMS, you can change your content as and when you want to.

Negatives of having a web company create a website using proprietary CMS

• The cost of proprietary CMS is higher than open-source content. The level of support this comes with is well worth it. Freelancers and one-man-band outfits do not have the skill or time to deal with multiple support requests or dedicate the time needed to help.
•  In many cases, you cannot keep the Proprietary CMS and move it to a separate server. You can ask for a static rip of your website and give the code to the following development company. They will integrate their version of a CMS into your site, or you can choose not to have a CMS and have a static website. However, you will not be able to make any changes or amendments.

What are the benefits of Open Source CMS?

• You can move the site to a different server quickly and easily if you need to.
• There’s an incredible range of skills in the community; for instance, WordPress hosts 20% of all online websites.
• Many skilled developers can be hired to carry out a change or bespoke development on the internet site for you at a cost.
• There is a vast range of additions and plugins that you can add to your site, especially in WordPress.

What are the negatives of Open Source CMS?

• Beginners in Open Source CMS rely on the community, leading to confusion, frustration or even malicious software installed on your site.
• Using Open Source CMS could result in messy coding and wasted time.
• Poorly coded or overly complicated plugins could affect you when you return to change your site.
• There are also SEO issues because too much extra code gets added to the website.
• Sites using Open Source CMS can be difficult to manage if you have no previous coding lessons or experience.
• Because Open Source CMS is community-based, anyone using the old system will be abandoned if the community moves to a new one.
• The vast range of options can be a detriment. It is possible to spend hours finding the options suited to your site, searching through numerous plugins to find well-made add-ons.

Conclusion

Open Source CMS is more suited to smaller websites and people or businesses that need a quick web presence. Many enterprises are sold open-source systems because they are told they own the website. This is right, but your website’s most expensive attribute is the content you put there. If you change your site, the only thing you ever need is the content; images, products, descriptions, PDFs, and videos. So it makes no difference whether you own the website or not. Every web company, by law, has to give you your content when you move away from them.

Most businesses have an open-source system because they get sold one by a sales representative. Someone who does not have the skill level or experience to make a bespoke website using code like PHP and MySQL. It is not valid in every case, but it is nine times out of 10. The world is full of youngsters and graduates who know how to create an Open Source website. They do not have the skill to make anything more than a simple brochure-style website using an off-the-shelf product!

Proprietary CMS is more suited for professional companies needing custom design and development and the support and guidance of experienced software developers and online marketing experts. A well-established web company will employ many designers and developers who have built hundreds if not thousands of websites in their careers. Admittedly it can be more expensive to use a web company. However, if they already have hundreds of customers, it usually means they are doing something correctly.

Your website can be upgraded. The staff working for a web company will go out of their way to ensure you are well looked after and that your website stays updated and works with all the latest technology.

By choosing a professional CMS company, you can be sure they’ll provide consistently fantastic results without disrupting your day-to-day business.