Why Pay for Sitefinity CMS When Open Source Solutions Are Available?
We all are aware that online business of today needs a perfect Content Management System to make a strategic impact on the ever growing and competitive market.
During CMS evaluation it is important to think about the growth potential of your business and also the additional website features that might be needed in the coming future.
From the plethora of options that are now available in the marketplace, it can really be a perplexing task to select the right CMS for creating your site.
And when the marketing team decides to create a site, the nature of your business plays a crucial role in the selection of the CMS since applicability and usability of the products and services matters the most.
With open source and commercial CMS available before you, it is time to take the right decision now!
An open source CMS that offers a set of free plugins and functionalities may be a right choice for start-up companies or even enterprises seeking a static site.
Businesses that have complex operations and have the opportunity to grow should look for commercial CMS that is customizable and can be tailored as per the specific business needs.
So, here in this blog, we will go through some of the various aspects of commercial CMS like Sitefinity and open source solutions. Let’s start exploring the differences and the parameters that you should consider before finalizing one.
Statistics have revealed that most companies scrap their open source CMS system after every 3 years as it cannot keep up with the growing needs of the business.
But you can spare yourself this costly and unpleasant experience by choosing a CMS solution that has a very intuitive and user friendly interface, encourages engagement, increases productivity and even produces better results to increase the ROI.
With the open framework and usability in the mind, the first CMS solution that comes to our mind is the open source solution. Such solutions are free to download and have various hidden costs associated with supporting and managing them.
Since free usually doesn’t mean cheaper, it is important to take note of all the project development costs, support system, CMS performance future upgrades and much more.
Another option is to choose a CMS that is backed by a leading software vendor. Sitefinity is a robust CMS based on the .NET technology. It offers huge facilities for both the end users and the developers.
And some of the biggest advantages of Sitefinity is its innovative framework architecture, elegant user interface, unlimited extensibility, built in features and functionalities.
Why Sitefinity is Best for Long Term Benefits?
Sitefinity Installation and Deployment Costing:
The installation of Sitefinity CMS is straight forward and there are step by step installation guides that help you through the deployment process even if you are a non-technical person.
Once the CMS is installed, Sitefinity offers various website templates that allow the users to quickly get their site up and running without much wastage of time.
These templates are perfect for evaluating the features of Sitefinity. Global software outsourcing companies can help you with solutions that are perfect for your business.
Open source on the other hand is harder to install and deploy and their lack of detailed documentation and complexity makes the costing very high since it requires expertise to deploy the solutions onto local environments.
Also Read: Get to Know the Latest Features of Sitefinity 11.2 Release
Great amount of time is spent and lack of proper documentation makes the process even slower.
User Friendliness and Interface Usability:
Open source CMSs are usually designed by engineers for others having a technical background. So, technical people usually find it quite easy to build a site, but this is not so in case of a non-technical user.
Hence, the usability and user friendliness of an open source CMS is usually low, which further lowers the business productivity.
Sitefinity development has a separate back-end editing and site configuration interface that allows great control by the content managers. The interface is intuitive, very easy to navigate and also offers fast access to various functions of the CMS.
The drag and drop feature allows the end users to organize the website’s page structure. They can easily drag various content elements from the Sitefinity toolbar onto the content regions and fill the page with elements. The page preview option allows the content editors to view their work prior to saving the changes.
Integration:
Open source solutions do not easily integrate with Microsoft products since they are created by developers who do not make full use of the powerful tools of the Microsoft environment.
Though there are other open source solutions based on the Microsoft technology, but the solutions need additional work and customization to make them work with Microsoft tools.
Sitefinity CMS is a native Microsoft .NET application that easily integrates with Visual studio and also uses all the features of the .NET framework. It is easy to create customized modules, themes, controls and master pages and these customized components can easily be integrated with Sitefinity.
Anyone having good knowledge of Microsoft .NET would find it easy to learn, customize and use the platform. Sitefinity functionalities can be easily extended, combined to get a professional looking website.
Support:
Open source CMSs usually get support from communities, forums, blogs, marketplaces and your queries may go unanswered as the community does not receive any incentive to answer the questions.
This is not so with Sitefinity as the support engineers are very active in the forums and the team also offers a wide range of free videos, developer blogs, webinars, KB articles and etc. thereby improving the impact of customization or implementation.
Global Sitefinity service providers can easily help to upgrade your website to the latest Sitefinity version without effecting any customization that has been implemented.
Open source solutions rely on volunteers for new improvements and features and if people cannot upgrade it themselves, then they are always at the mercy of the community of developers.
Whether to choose Commercial CMS like Sitefinity or an Open Source CMS, it all depends on the business requirements, available skill sets, need of IT support and of course budget allocation.
We have compared both the solutions above and I hope the blog will provide a deeper insight into the features that you should consider while choosing a perfect CMS for your business website.