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Concrete CMS is an Open Source Content Management System for teams. Run a secure website your content contributors will love using with Concrete CMS. Build complicated web applications that are a delight to manage. Concrete was designed for agencies making pixel perfect websites for demanding clients. It's easy to develop with quickly, and it's intuitive to use so training is simple. Free and open source so you can use it anywhere.
Provider
Concrete CMS
Located In
United States
Foundation
2002
Open API
Unverified
Deployment
Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based
Training
In Person, Webinars, Live Online, Documentation
Support
FAQs/Forum, 24/7 (Live rep), Knowledge Base, Chat
Teams or individuals running complicated websites. Everything from personal websites to corporate identities and intranets. Larger examples include U.S. Army, BASF, GlobalSign, colleges & universities
Content Source: Concrete CMS
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Concrete CMS Reviews
Pros
For secure and well-written code, and a solid, logical module approach, this is a unique solution, and has been reliable for many years already.
Works out of the box, easy to setup and is packed with features so you don't need loads of plugins. Great for editors and very good for developers to build off.
It's intuitive, comprehensive in feature set, easy to set up, easy for clients to use, responsive, adaptable, and secure. The user community is supportive, helpful, and really, really smart.
I've been using concrete5 for years, and I've been always happy with it. I love its powerful features, it's simplicity, its flexibility and its user friendliness.
Cons
Required starting over for most sites, though the old version still runs so disruption was minimal. The user forum needs a shakeup and update.
Documentation is really bad, for developer and enduser.
Support is poor to nonexistent. Vendors are not required to keep up their products, leaving customers hanging.
My only dislike with Concrete5 is the lack of native e-commerce functionality built into the CMS.
"Concrete5 simply the best ^^"
Overall: i'mm using ConcreteCms for all website, e-commerce, content management, proffessionnal software, intranet back end. I can do all with it, then i do :)
Pros: maning thing to say the content and page manaegament, the block system flexibility, the page's management, the easy way for the design development, and so on
Cons: perhaps the docs not completely done for new version
"Powerful, Extendable, User-Friendly"
Pros: Concrete5 is great for everything from simple websites to custom, complex, applications. The peer-reviewed marketplace offers out-of-the-box solutions that save plenty of time and cost less than developing on your own with many add-ons available for free. Community support is fantastic with user forums and projects, including an e-Commerce solution that is robust and inexpensive to run with no monthly fees (seriously, the best e-Commerce package you're going to find). Sites can be deployed quickly with minimal costs and end-users can be trained often in minutes instead of hours or days. The platform is secure and allows fine-tooth permissions control. Internationalization is handled too for those that need to display their sites in multiple languages. Self-hosted and Concrete5 hosted options are available and maintenance is usually easily managed at the user-level. Without question, Concrete5 is the perfect mix of power and usability to allow sites to be deployed quickly at a reasonable cost.
Cons: There can be a learning curve and the technology used in the background has grown more complex over the last few years. This is not to say that it can't be used by those with less technical knowledge, just that like with any CMS there is a learning curve and some occasional pitfalls.
"Have we lost 15 years of work?"
Overall: The theme we paid hard-earned donor money for was never upgraded to keep up with the updates Concrete 5 made to its operating system. Our theme no longer works with current versions of Concrete 5 (5.6) and I have no idea how to fix it. "Explanations" online require a Computer Science PhD to understand and I don't have the knowledge to figure out what they say to do. We've just let it go for years, but now we have t to change servers and I don't think the new server can handle the outdated version of Concrete 5 needed for our site to operate. YEARS of work are going to go down the drain if I cannot somehow salvage this. I have NO IDEA WHERE TO TURN for a plain-English response as to what to do.
Pros: Concrete 5 was OK in the beginning but now it looks like our choice to use this is going to cost us YEARS of hard work.
Cons: It is VERY hard to understand what to do with this software. Support is poor to nonexistent. Vendors are not required to keep up their products, leaving customers hanging. See our dilemma, below.
Vendor Response
"Great for end-users and developers"
Overall: Love it as a developer and I love providing Concrete5 powered websites to my clients. Doesn't get too much more ideal than that!
Pros: I love to provide Concrete5 powered websites to my clients for many reasons. In particular though, the in-context page editing abilities of Concrete5, easy-to-use dashboard, customizable theme styles and extensibility through the Concrete5 marketplace make it a tool that suits a WIDE range of needs.
Cons: My only dislike with Concrete5 is the lack of native e-commerce functionality built into the CMS. If Concrete5 and/or the C5 community were able to develop some simple e-commerce functionality (much like woocommerce) I think C5 could re-gain some market share from other CMS tools in the industry today.
Vendor Response
"Flexible, Customizable, Edit Anywhere Web Sites"
Overall: We needed to upgrade a very old website and do it in stages, when we had time. We needed the website to work on mobile devices as well as computer browsers. Finally, we are a professional firm, so we needed a website that looked professional and not canned or weak. Concrete5 provided us with a solution that worked on cross platforms and provided templates that look professional from the start. We have also been able to develop the site in stages. While we are not completed, we are much closer, much faster than other tools would have provided us. Page styles give us some structure on different sections and multiple users also allow faster setup and maintenance. I will use this on other websites I manage.
Pros: Concrete5 is very customizable regardless of the template used, and many templates exist that let you hit the ground running. Most of the editing capabilities work on iOS, so you can perform most edits and design work on an iPad and mobile. The interface is clean and the version control allows some experimenting. I have used blog software and computer based software, but this allows the best of all worlds so far.
Cons: The learning curve to purchase a template and add controls to a web site took a little bit to figure out, but this is done very infrequently. Using a templated page, it also took some time to figure out some heading columns and other columns were fixed and not movable, but so many other areas are customizable, workarounds were fine.
