Picking the best Content Management System (CMS) for your company can be a major headache. There are so many CMSs to choose from and finding the best one can seem like an impossible task. In this blog, we pit CMS heavyweights Umbraco and Squarespace against each other in order to help you make the right decision.
What is Umbraco?
Umbraco is the leading content management system built on Microsoft .NET. It is an open-source CMS that is free to use, meaning you only pay for the developer and hosting costs. Its feature-rich, flexible and powerful platform delivers elegant and engaging websites that can be moulded to your company needs.
What is Sqaurespace?
Squarespace is a modern, easy to use all-in-one system CMS used mostly by small businesses and creative professionals. It is renowned for its sleek and stylish designer templates that create eye-catching and professional websites. Squarespace differs to Umbraco in the fact that you must pay monthly licensing fees.
Umbraco: the pros and cons
For this section, we asked Zeb Sadiq, one of our Umbraco tech leads who has been with us for around 15 years what his main pros and cons of Umbraco were.
Pros:
Umbraco is very quick and easy to set up for developers. For example, it would take around 10 minutes for an experienced developer (we have plenty at ClerksWell) to create a basic website.
It's free and therefore it can be used for small to large websites without having to worry about hefty licensing costs.
The technical design of Umbraco allows developers to create a truly custom and unique experience for the end-user. There are little limitations to what can be built with Umbraco which means you can shape your website the way you want.
Furthermore, the platform has powerful publishing and content editing tools that allow easy to edit, stylish websites.
Umbraco Cloud is a cloud-hosted version of Umbraco and is a great option for organisations who do not want to maintain the hosting infrastructure themselves. Furthermore, it’s hosted on Microsoft’s Azure so expect the same high levels of security on your product as there would be on Microsoft.
Cons:
You will most likely need a developer to help you setup a website but once that’s done it is simple to edit.
It can only be developed and hosted on Windows as it has a dependency on the full .NET Framework.
Though Umbraco is free, you are will most likely have support costs.
Squarespace: the pros and cons
Pros:
Squarespace is beginner friendly as you can create a professional looking website yourself, as there is no coding required.
Squarespace is renowned for its high quality, professional and creative website templates.
It’s an all-in-one platform that provides everything you need in one place e.g. support, hosting, security …
Cons:
Customisability on Squarespace is quite limited and template driven.
It’s only suitable for small to medium-sized clients which Squarespace would even admit themselves.
The page speed can be quite slow, which can lead to a slower user experience and poor search engine rankings.
You have to pay a monthly subscription which can be quite expensive, but that is all you would have to pay each month
So, who is better?
Whether Squarespace or Umbraco is the right match for you truly depends on the type, size and purpose of the website you want to create. At ClerksWell we favour Umbraco as it is an all-round favourite and can be used for sites of all sizes and purposes. Furthermore, it creates functional, secure and engaging website that can be moulded to your company’s brand.
If you’re interested in building or re-platforming your website on Umbraco, please get in touch as our in-house team of experts are always happy to help.
Think Umbraco, Think ClerksWell
ClerksWell recently hosted a virtual panel discussion with the ABPI and Umbraco on the topic of multi-sites, and how organisations with multiple brands can effectively use them to enhance their digital presence. Read the transcript of the webinar here.
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