An overview of content management systems (CMSs)
You come to Product Hunt looking for recommendations and information about tech, right? We’re able to provide this to you thanks to our content management system, or CMS. It’s the software that allows us to manage our webpages, keep recommendations fresh, and even bring in industry experts to share their knowledge with you.
There are lots of different CMS tools on the market right now. Their features can vary wildly, from basic systems—just a way to post plain text online—to more complex. Some are even wrapped up with a drag-and-drop website builder or point-of-sale system.
The evolution of content management systems
Content management systems have evolved along with the internet. The first generation of CMS tools were basically static site generators. Eventually, these evolved into more customizable, website building and content management systems (remember GeoCities? That was an early CMS!). But it was the launch of WordPress in 2003 that really ushered in our modern CMS era.
From day one, WordPress was meant to be free and accessible to anyone, and that made it popular. Today, the line between simple content management and complete website design is blurred; many CMS platforms let you build sites without code, update content in a snap, and share it across your website and social media platforms with a click.
Why every business needs a CMS
To put it plainly, if you aren’t using a CMS, you’re wasting your time.
There’s no reason to spend time manually coding new content pages when you can easily apply a template prepared in your CMS. And pushing content out to different sites, apps, and networks is time consuming when you must log in to each one separately. The right CMS will allow you to do all of this in one spot—saving lots of time (and therefore money) in the process.
What does a CMS actually do?
On its most basic level, a content management system is a way to store and distribute content. If we want to create a new page on Product Hunt, we don’t have to sit down and code the entire thing from scratch. We can repurpose a similar page template, upload our content, collaborate on editing, and invite founders to contribute content under their own bylines.
But content management systems can do a lot. Depending on the CMS you use, and the tools it integrates with, you can use one platform to do things like:
Create a product page and have those items automatically appear across your website and mobile app
Publish a blog post and automatically add previews to your home page
Convert webpages into email newsletters
Update landing pages and populate those changes across different sub-domains owned by your company
How much does a CMS cost?
Content management systems run the gamut in price, from free to thousands of dollars per year. Free options are usually open source and require some level of involvement on your end to get them set up, running, and maintained.
While there's a lot of benefits to open source software, we think that busy entrepreneurs might actually get more benefit from a paid, closed-source CMS that you can basically put on autopilot (or truly automate, if you choose a CMS with AI integrations—more on that later.)
If you're running a small operation and need to publish your content on a single website, you'll need to pay anywhere from $6 to $500 a month for a CMS based on the features you select. And if you have more complex needs—such as pushing content out to a website and an app—your CMS cost may be in the $300 to $1500 range each month.
What CMS is right for you?
Of course budget is a big consideration in what kind of CMS you should use. But it's not the only factor. Ask yourself:
Where can people discover about your company online? Do you already have a website? Does it have a blog? Do you want a blog?
Do you have or want a mobile app that people can download to access your digital content, products, or service?
What’s your content creation goal? Do you want to create and publish content that promotes your brand name? What about selling products, or creating help docs that will (ideally) free up more of your customer service team’s time?
Will a large team be in charge of your digital content management, or a handful of people? How technically savvy are they?
Do you have a technical team on hand to resolve any issues related to your website and network? Or is your website more of a do-it-yourself operation?
Your answers to these questions determine what type of CMS will suit you best.
Types of content management systems
There are two main types of content management systems that you can choose from.
Coupled CMS
A coupled (sometimes called “regular” or “traditional”) CMS includes both the back end content management system—what you log into when adding content—and a nicely designed front end website that visitors can access. The front end and back end are linked, and you can’t change this relationship.
Duda, Wix, Framer, and WordPress are examples of coupled content management systems; they both include tools to create and manage content and a drag-and-drop editor for website templates.
This is going to be the best CMS for you if:
You only want to display content on a website
You don’t need content to be shown in a mobile app
You want to change the site yourself without coding or even knowing HTML
You aren’t interested in managing how or where the website is hosted—you’d like to use a cloud-based editor you can access in your browser
A lot of modern coupled CMS platforms are purpose built for specific needs, too. Shopify, for example, makes it easy to manage e-commerce product descriptions ... but the blog experience is poor. It simply doesn't offer as many options for organizing and optimizing your content as, say, WordPress does.
Squarespace, on the other hand, makes it easy to build and maintain a blog full of marketing content. Selling physical products on Squarespace, though, may become overwhelming as your inventory grows.
You can even find CMS options that practically set themselves up—like Dorik, which uses AI to build easily customizable sites.
Headless CMS
A headless CMS is a system in which the back end of your website is decoupled from the front end that visitors see. You’ll have to get someone to design the front end of your website or app, then connect it to the CMS via an application programming interface (API). You usually have to arrange for your website to be hosted on a server somewhere, too.
The benefit of a headless CMS is that it gives you a lot of flexibility—and it's lightweight. A lot of people like that coupled CMS like Shopify and WordPress let you connect plugins and add different themes, but that adds a lot of excess code to the site. Over time, this can slow down your site's functionality.
When you opt for a headless CMS, you can connect it to more than one website or app, build just the custom features you need, and change around the front end of your site without switching to a new product. This flexibility requires a lot of technical knowledge, though. You’ll definitely need to have access to a development team in order to get the most out of a headless system.
Many large e-commerce websites, like Amazon, rely on a headless CMS. If you're interested in this type of setup, we recommend checking out Storyblok, Sanity, and Strapi to start—there are lots of great options on the market today.
The TL;DR: Start with a coupled, regular CMS like Squarespace if you’re just starting a website for the first time, will design the site yourself, or plan to work with a small and mostly non-technical team. Consider headless CMS platforms if you need to push content to an existing website or app and have access to a team of developers. (You can always migrate from coupled to headless in the future if things change!)
What is the most popular CMS software in 2024?
WordPress is the most popular CMS on the market right now. In fact, it’s been the most popular CMS for years. It powers a lot of the websites you use every day—474 million of them, to be exact. That's over 43% of the internet.
This is partially because you can use WordPress as both a coupled, regular CMS or a headless CMS. There are two versions of WordPress on the market:
WordPress.com, which is a coupled CMS and drag-and-drop website editor. You can use it for free (with WordPress branding), and the platform takes care of hosting your site and ensuring it’s online. All you have to do is pay the bill. This version of WordPress is known for its ease of use and good customer experience.
WordPress.org, which is an open-source CMS. It’s a free download—though you’ll have to pay a hosting provider to keep your site online. Because this version of WordPress is open source, you can customize it in just about any way you want. That includes choosing to build your website in WordPress or treat it like a headless system and connect it to a different website or app.
Should you use WordPress?
A lot of web developers recommend WordPress due to how ubiquitous it is. There are tons of WordPress resources online; you can find whole forums dedicated to configuring and managing WordPress sites.
But the popularity of WordPress means that it's vulnerable to attack—it's a well-known system. (Some estimates put the number of hacked WordPress sites at 13,000 per day.) Installing out of date or malicious plugins can increase this likelihood on your own site.
So if you like what WordPress offers, and you’re ready to keep a close eye on your plugins, go for it! If that feels overwhelming, though, it might not be the best CMS for you.
Ghost is another CMS that works similarly to WordPress, offering both coupled and headless options—but with fewer plugins. And Webflow, while technically coupled, offers a lot of great headless-style flexibility if you’re working with a web designer.
Key features to look for in a CMS
WYSIWYG content editing tools
This stands for “what you see is what you get” and it means that you and your team can upload content or edit web pages using similar controls to those found in Microsoft Word. You can just click “bold” to make the content bold—you don’t need to know how to type a bold word in HTML. It’s the most user-friendly type of content editor and is part of all major coupled CMS tools.
Digital asset management (DAM)
While there are standalone tools you can use to manage your digital assets–including content, pictures, and videos—it’s helpful if content and document management tools are built right into your CMS. A headless CMS might not include DAM features, but the most popular coupled ones do!
User permissions and authoring
If your CMS allows for multiple user licenses, you should be able to set up different user permissions and turn on authoring. This means that you can:
Allow different users varied levels of access to the CMS and its settings. You might retain full admin privileges, while a guest blogger may be restricted to uploading content in just one spot.
Have a user’s name show up as a byline on published content. This can be helpful for SEO—if you have some subject matter experts on your team, publishing content under their name can help to promote your company as a trusted source of knowledge.
The future of CMS technology
Just as WordPress’ accessibility transformed content management in the early 2000s, artificial intelligence is doing the same for CMS technology right now. AI allows founders and marketers to automate multiple parts of the entire content management process, from creating a site to generating new content.
Take Framer as an example: the CMS lets you import directly from Figma before using AI to generate pages with dynamic localization, automated updates to different page sections, and even customized text based on your goals. (You can still manually create and update Framer pages, too—either way, it's easier and faster to use this CMS than, say, WordPress).
Webflow also offers a blend of more traditional and AI-powered web design tools that help you create and publish content to pages at scale easily. The Webflow AI can even answer your questions about creating different components within the app, which is awesome for DIY site development.
It's no surprise that more and more people are moving away from tools like Squarespace and Wix in favor of fully or semi-automated CMS features—and we expect to see even more of a migration over the next few years as AI-enhanced CMS options continue to grow.
Picking your CMS
Ultimately, the best CMS for your company is going to depend on:
Your budget
Your level of comfort with managing a website
The number of channels you create content for
The type of experience you want to give your end user.