The Best CMS Platforms: Key Features and Pricing (2025)
Want to know the best CMS platforms now?
By the end of this article, you will know the best CMS platforms today, complete with their key features and pricing information.
Here’s what we’ll talk about here:
- What to look for in a CMS platform
- The best CMS platforms
- Insights on the key features and pricing
Ready? Let’s get started!
What is a CMS platform?
A content management system (CMS) platform is a software application that streamlines creating, managing, and modifying content on a website.
It provides a user-friendly interface where you can build and maintain your website’s content, structure, and design without needing specialized technical knowledge.
These platforms cater to various needs, from blogs to ecommerce sites, that enable individuals and businesses to establish an online presence effectively.
What to look for in a CMS platform?
When looking for a CMS platform to use, the key is to study each and select one that best suits your business or portfolio’s themes and objectives.
It’s not always easy to find the right platform, but here are some top factors to look at:
- Ease of use: A user-friendly interface is important so you can effectively manage and update content without extensive technical knowledge.
- Customization options: The ability to customize the CMS to fit the specific needs and branding of a website is essential for standing out.
- Security features: Robust security measures are vital to protect the website from cyber threats and ensure the safety of user data.
- Scalability: It needs to scale alongside your business, effortlessly managing higher traffic and expanding content without sacrificing speed or efficiency.
- Support and community: This ensures you can get help when needed and leverage shared knowledge and resources for continuous improvement.
Fortunately, the content management systems I’ll be mentioning below are all reputable and have the quality above.
👉 Related: CMS Market Share: The Latest Trends and Statistics
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The Best CMS Platforms
With hundreds of options available, you should find a CMS platform that meets your specific needs and goals, whether you’re a business owner, a blogger, or another enthusiast.
Start your search with the following:
1. WordPress: A Market Leader
WordPress is a prominent content management system (CMS) that powers a large portion of the internet and is renowned for its flexibility and user-friendly interface.
It continues to be popular for its extensive theme and plugin ecosystem that allows for a wide range of website customizations and functions.
The platform is open-source, meaning a community of developers continuously contributes to its improvement and security.
💻 Key features
- Themes and plugins: With thousands of themes and plugins, users can easily customize their sites and add a wide array of functionalities.
- Responsive design: WordPress ensures that websites are mobile-responsive and intuitive, an essential factor for user experience and SEO.
- SEO-friendly: The platform is designed with SEO in mind, proven by its features and plugins that help optimize content for search engines.
- Multilingual support: It offers robust tools for creating multilingual websites, making it effectively versatile for global audiences.
- Regular updates: WordPress releases regular security, functionality, and performance updates to keep sites up-to-date with the latest web standards.
- Custom post types: Enables users to tailor content management according to specific needs, beyond posts and web pages.
- Built-in blogging: WordPress originated as a blogging platform, with robust features, categories, tags, comments, and more.
💰 Pricing
WordPress is a free platform that provides you with the tools needed to get a WordPress site up and running quickly.
2. Shopify: Best for Ecommerce
Shopify stands out as a top-notch ecommerce platform created to help businesses, regardless of size, set up, manage, and expand their online stores.
It offers a range of customizable themes to align with various brand identities and ensures that stores are mobile-responsive and intuitive.
The platform is equipped with inventory management tools, diverse payment gateway support, and comprehensive marketing and SEO tools to enhance visibility and sales.
💻 Key features
- Customizable themes: With a vast selection of mobile-responsive themes, Shopify enables brands to tailor their online presence to reflect their identity.
- Payment gateway integration: Shopify supports a wide array of payment gateways and offers global transaction capabilities.
- Inventory management: The platform provides powerful tools to manage inventory, track stock levels, and set up automatic reorder notifications.
- Marketing and SEO tools: Shopify offers integrated marketing and SEO features to help increase store visibility and attract customers.
- App store: Access to an extensive range of applications and integrations allows for more functionalities and improved customer experiences.
- Digital asset management: Shopify’s CRM software enables effective customer data utilization for personalized marketing campaigns.
- Blogging and content creation: Shopify includes a built-in blogging platform to encourage businesses to conduct content marketing.
💰 Pricing
Shopify’s pricing plans range from $19 to $2300/month, all of which come with a free trial so you can determine what best suits your budget and objectives.
3. Wix: User-Friendly for Beginners
Wix is a cloud-based CMS with a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface that allows users without coding knowledge to create professional websites.
The platform offers a versatile array of customizable templates and ecommerce capabilities that cater to various industries and website types.
Wix also includes powerful SEO tools, an extensive app market, and the option to create a branded mobile app, which all enhance the overall digital presence of businesses.
💻 Key features
- Drag-and-drop interface: Wix’s intuitive interface makes website creation accessible to users at all skill levels.
- Customizable templates: With over 900 templates, Wix provides a broad selection to suit various business and personal website needs.
- Ecommerce capabilities: Wix supports online store creation with integrated payment gateways, product management, and multi-channel sales.
- SEO tools: Built-in SEO features and integrations, like Semrush, help improve website visibility and search engine rankings.
- AI features: Wix’s AI platform, including the ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) and Logo Maker, assists in website and branding creation.
- Wix Studio: A new addition for agencies, designers, and freelancers, providing advanced editing capabilities and workflow management.
- Wix Bookings: This feature enables businesses to schedule services, and appointments, and manage memberships, all integrated with the website.
💰 Pricing
Wix pricing plans range from $4.50 to $24.50 per month, with separate pricing plans for business and ecommerce platforms, but all of them are secured with a 14-day refund guarantee.
4. Drupal: King in Customization
Drupal is a robust and versatile CMS platform that’s highly regarded in the business environment for its scalability and advanced features.
It’s an open-source platform that’s been empowering website development for over two decades, from small blogs to enterprise-level websites.
Drupal’s modular architecture allows for extensive customization through thousands of contributed modules and makes it adaptable to a wide range of requirements.
💻 Key features
- Modular architecture: Drupal’s structure enables users to tailor and extend functionality through numerous contributed modules.
- Content management: Offers advanced content management capabilities, including revision control, content categorization, and advanced search.
- Scalability and efficiency: Drupal is suitable for large, content-rich websites, as it handles large volumes of content and high traffic.
- Security and data protection: Drupal emphasizes security with regular updates and built-in protection against common threats.
- Multilingual support: Drupal supports over 100 languages to facilitate the creation of global, multilingual websites.
- SEO tools: The platform provides various SEO tools to help improve website visibility in search engine results.
- Flexible theming: Users can create unique designs with Drupal’s theming system, which offers a range of pre-built themes and custom templates.
💰 Pricing
Drupal is a free, open-source platform, but plugins and integration may come at extra costs. This makes it a highly functional yet cost-effective solution for site developers.
5. Squarespace: Excellent Design Capabilities
Squarespace is a dynamic CMS software that stands out for its ease of use and comprehensive set of features suitable for various users and businesses.
This user-friendly interface is complemented by stylish templates, an attractive choice for building visually appealing websites without extensive technical expertise.
Marketing tools and AI integration further enhance the platform’s appeal by providing users with advanced capabilities for promoting their websites and generating content.
💻 Key features
- Template design: Squarespace features modern and responsive templates and ensures that websites look great on all devices.
- Blueprint feature: Squarespace’s new feature quickly and efficiently streamlines the process of setting up a website.
- Blog editing: Its minimalist and intuitive blog editing tool helps users add, manage, and schedule posts with various media types.
- Ecommerce platform: It supports a wide range of sales options, including physical products, digital content, and services.
- Marketing tools: The platform includes a suite of marketing tools for email campaigns, SEO customization, and detailed analytics.
- AI integration: Squarespace offers AI tools for web design and content generation to enable users to efficiently create unique websites.
- Social media integration: Provides comprehensive integrations to allow users to seamlessly connect their website with social media platforms.
💰 Pricing
Squarespace’s tiered pricing plans start from $16/month (annual) and are guaranteed with multiple discount options and a 14-day free trial.
6. Joomla: Great for Social Networking Sites
Joomla is a robust and versatile CMS platform renowned for its extensibility and user-friendly nature, a strong contender for website development and management.
It’s an open-source platform — it’s developed and maintained by a vibrant community of volunteers who ensure that Joomla is accessible to everyone, always.
Joomla is set apart by its security-conscious development, featuring built-in two-factor authentication and extensive access control levels.
💻 Key features
- Customization flexibility: Joomla offers extensive customization options, including custom layouts, template overrides, and custom CSS.
- SEO optimization: It comes equipped with powerful SEO tools right out of the box, including metadata and keyword management, and SEF URLs.
- Multilingual support: Joomla stands out for its excellent multilingual capabilities that offer support for over 70 languages.
- Extensibility: With over 8,000 extensions available, Joomla allows you to expand your site’s functionality to meet a broad spectrum of needs.
- Advanced user management: The integrated access control list (ACL) feature enables granular access rights management for different user types.
- Powerful PHP framework: Joomla is also a stable and lightweight PHP framework that promotes web and command-line applications.
- Rich snippets enhancement: Joomla has enhanced support for rich snippets that allow for detailed structured data input directly from the backend.
💰 Pricing
Joomla is a free, open-source platform, but its developers have introduced optional add-ons for a price.
7. BigCommerce: Perfect for Online Stores
BigCommerce is a robust ecommerce platform that provides a comprehensive solution to manage your online business efficiently.
It’s a platform that supports the entire business operation, from product management to order processing and inventory control.
BigCommerce stands out for its seamless integration with leading payment providers and a variety of tools designed to promote and grow your brand.
💻 Key features
- Comprehensive product management: Allows for detailed product information entry, including SEO-rich descriptions, images and custom fields.
- Centralized order management: Enables you to manage orders across all sales channels and to integrate with other order management systems.
- Cart and checkout optimization: Features like abandoned cart saver and single-page checkout process aim to boost conversion rates.
- Marketing and SEO tools: The platform provides a suite of marketing tools, including banner creation, discounts, coupons, and gift certificates.
- Comprehensive shipping options: BigCommerce supports a variety of shipping options and integrates with major carriers.
- Diverse payment gateways: BigCommerce offers flexibility in 65 integrated payment gateways, digital wallets, offline payments, and BNPL services.
- Analytics and reporting: The platform offers real-time analytics and detailed reporting on various aspects of your store’s performance.
💰 Pricing
- Standard: $29/month
- Plus: $79/month
- Pro: $299/month
BigCommerce top-notch ecommerce services are worth every penny, and if you feel that it’s risky, it comes with a 15-day free trial.
8. Adobe Commerce: Top Choice for Large Enterprises
Adobe Commerce, formerly Magento, is a comprehensive, multi-functional platform designed to manage and optimize the ecommerce store experience.
Adobe Commerce stands out for its ability to deliver personalized, scalable, and secure online shopping experiences across every customer touchpoint.
It integrates seamlessly with Adobe Experience Manager and offers a comprehensive suite of features that cater to both business-to-consumer (B2C) and to-business (B2B) markets.
💻 Key features
- Multi-channel selling: Connect shopping experiences across various channels, support expansion, and accommodate both B2B and B2C models.
- Quick checkout: Offers a quick, secure, and mobile-friendly checkout experience to encourage customer satisfaction and conversion.
- Integrated B2B functionality: Provides dedicated B2B features like custom catalogs, pricing, personalized experiences, and self-service portals.
- Inventory and order management: Real-time inventory visibility and efficient order management are core capabilities to meet customer expectations.
- Customer segmentation: Target different customer groups based on their behavior and attributes to create personalized shopping experiences.
- Business intelligence: Visualize ecommerce data to gain insights into trends, sales performance, inventory, customer behavior, and more.
- Extensibility: The platform’s extensibility allows for seamless integration with various third-party applications and services, including cloud delivery.
💰 Pricing
Adobe Commerce’s pricing packages can only be accessed by submitting a request through their site, where it guarantees extensive integrations and intelligent workflows.
Future Trends in CMS Platforms
Depending on the nature of your business, your objectives, and your target audience, a good content management system software sets the tone for success.
An innovative site owner is always forward-looking and knows that the future of CMS solutions is about to be shaped by AI-driven features, user experience, and data security.
One final point: learning about new developments in CMS systems and not just about the one you’re using will give you an edge over all your competitors in the market.
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