Off-the-Shelf vs Bespoke CMS – A Comparison To Determine A Perfect CMS For Your Business

Content is the king – is one popular mantra the present day businesses consider while planning their marketing strategies. It helps them drive brand awareness and create more opportunities to strengthen the establishment in the market. As they create and process the content every day in numerous ways, managing a large amount of content becomes tedious. The content management system (CMS) then came into existence to allow companies to manage all the content on a single interface.

Today, every business makes use of the CMS to develop websites not just for themselves but also for their clients. There are a number of solutions available in the market, each supporting a different type. For example, Drupal is an off the shelf type of CMS. With web application development using Drupal, you can create websites faster as it offers a ready-made platform with feature-rich interfaces and frameworks.

While an alternative for the off-the-shelf CMS is a bespoke CMS. The bespoke CMS helps you develop a CMS software customized to your business needs. But before you settle down with one of these, it is important to know the differences between off-the-shelf and bespoke CMS to understand which one will make a right fit for your business.

Off-The-Shelf vs Bespoke – Which One Is the Best CMS?

1. Security: 

• Off-the-shelf CMS – This CMS is installed on many websites. So, if one website is exposed, all the other sites will also be exposed. As the code is accessible by everyone, hackers constantly keep trying to look for the security loopholes in the current versions of the CMS.

• Bespoke CMS – The security holes are highly difficult to find as the CMS is not installed on thousands of websites. Moreover, it is difficult for the hacker to determine whether your website is a static one or database driven.

2. Speed:

• Off-the-shelf CMS – In an off-the-shelf system, there are tons of pre-installed plugins and features which slow down your website. On top of that, the developers also add additional plugins and features that result in a sluggish system.

• Bespoke CMS – While the bespoke system only comprises of features that are specific to your business needs. This leads to a faster-working website.

3. Ease of Use:

• Off-the-shelf CMS – The tools in this system try to include all the features considering a user might ever use, 90% of which your business doesn’t require. This drastically increases the training time.

• Bespoke CMS – As you only have the features you require in bespoke CMS, the control panel is pretty straightforward. It is easy to understand and use, and the training also consumes very less time.

4. Cost:

• Off-the-shelf CMS – It is cheaper to use when you want to build a basic website without a lot of features.

• Bespoke CMS – As it is completely tailored according to your business needs, the cost is really high when compared to the off-the-shelf system.

The Verdict:

Both bespoke and off-the-shelf systems have their own pros and cons. But for a long term, bespoke CMS is the best option. While considering the aspects of adding more features and updates, off-the-shelf makes more sense.

Which one according to you is the right fit for your business? Drop in your comments below.