--- title: "Concrete CMS Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice" description: "Reviews of Concrete CMS. Learn how real users rate this software's ease-of-use, functionality, overall quality and customer support. Talk to our advisors to see if Concrete CMS is a good fit for you!" source_url: "https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/concrete5-profile/reviews/" page_type: "reviews" language: "en" --- 1 million+ businesses helped. Get advice Get Free Advice [Home](https://www.softwareadvice.com/) / [Web Content Management Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com/web-content-management/) / [Concrete CMS](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/concrete5-profile/) / Concrete CMS Reviews Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee. [Overview](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/concrete5-profile/) Reviews [Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/concrete5-profile/alternatives/) # Concrete CMS User Reviews ## Reviews summary - Overall rating: 4.5/5 - Total reviews: 54 ### Secondary ratings - Ease of use: 4.5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Value for money: 4.6/5 - Functionality: 4.3/5 ### Rating distribution - 5 stars: 38 reviews (70%) - 4 stars: 11 reviews (20%) - 3 stars: 1 reviews (2%) - 2 stars: 1 reviews (2%) - 1 star: 3 reviews (6%) ### Most mentioned pros - concrete5 has increased our client's enjoyment of the editing process and has enabled us to efficiently deliver sites that meet a very wide range of requirements. - It has just enough addons to make everything work as it should and the community is there for you if you have any issues. Plus, since it is open source you can make changes where you need to or even make your own addons. - The website looked good, was mobile responsive (though not without issue) and was able to handle some plug-ins for some of the things we needed our site to be able to do. ### Most mentioned cons - I had to delte the site and have no plans on starting over. - Not enough themes and addons for working with multiple clients, no way to test addons prior to purchase, unless you purchase and then return the product (which would really annoy me if I was a developer). - This was something we did not know, I'm not sure if the vendor we selected to build our site new that it was about to expire. ## Concrete CMS customer reviews Showing reviews 1-25 of 54 (page 1). ### Concrete5 simply the best ^^ - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Olivier S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: December 2021 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered 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 :) #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### 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 #### Reasons for choosing Concrete CMS 12 years ago it was the best for in context editing, and it's always the case in these days --- ### Concrete5 Easy to use - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Liv G. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Sports - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: September 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. It's easy and fast to post, edit, and update. The menus are comprehensive and simple and makes keeping your site running easy. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros It's intuitive - the block system is much easier than Wordpress. This power is in the simplicity - but you can make it as complex as you need with add ons. It's much easier to organize your site with Concrete5, also. #### Cons There may be fewer add ons than Wordpress options? But I can't say for sure. #### Reasons for choosing Concrete CMS The block system, and the menus. Wordpress has such a steep learning curve, concrete5 is far easier to get your footin. --- ### Obsolete - Overall rating: 2/5 - Reviewer: Kelly F. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Non-Profit Organization Management - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. We were happy at the outset of our Concrete5 journey, but it didn't last long making us feel we were thrown into the ocean wearing concrete shoes as support was no longer available to fix problems on our site. Needless to say we did not have our website rebuilt in Concrete5. None of the vendors with reasonable rates even recommended using this platform for creating a website. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 2/5 - Value for money: 1/5 - Customer support: 2/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros When our website was first built in this software we were thrilled. It was truly an upgrade from our former site. We could fairly easily make updates and changes. The website looked good, was mobile responsive (though not without issue) and was able to handle some plug-ins for some of the things we needed our site to be able to do. #### Cons Our site was built on a version that was already on the fast track to becoming obsolete. This was something we did not know, I'm not sure if the vendor we selected to build our site new that it was about to expire. At any rate, we had spent thousands of dollars to get this beautiful site and once it expired in 2019 we had no option but to start again from scratch. Costing our organization a great deal of hard earned donations. #### Reasons for switching to Concrete CMS We switched so that we could more easily manage the website from any device by logging in whereever we were. We are having our new site built in Wordpress. --- ### Congrete5 CMS Review - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Ikechukwu A. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2021 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Concrete5 has all features on one page, you dont have tol be moving allover looking for a particular feature or tool or function, they are all right there before you on you backend screen #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Powerful Backend Flexible CMS App and Date and admin Tools in one Place Integration in ways that is very smart and effective Use AI to provide insight #### Cons Not Very Popular and needs alot of awareness to see the beauty #### Reasons for choosing Concrete CMS It has all functionality on one page and very flexible to use and beautiful and smart features and development blocks --- ### Painless CMS - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Tim C. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Architecture & Planning - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. It has made it possible to both create customer sites for clients in the past as well as maintain a highly functioning enterprise website today. The learning curve is manageable and the addons are, typically, well tested and reliable. It is the best development platform I've used to date. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros C5 allows you to set up either templated site frameworks or makes it fairly easy to adapt a scratch design to enterprise-level CMS. As a developer, I find set up easy and fairly intuitive. As a user and one who coordinates other users, I find it far superior to Wordpress in terms in managing and adding content. And, while no framework is bulletproof from a security standpoint, I've found C5 to be the best at preventing issues, easily backing up and easily restoring a site when stuff does happen. #### Cons There's a bit of a lag between the software's upgrades and PHP updates. Like Wordpress, functionality is managed via plugins created largely by independent developers. As host update PHP versions, there is frequently a disconnection between functionality and available/installed "stuff." In other words, the core C5 app may well be functional with an updated PHP version but the plugins in use will, on occasion, not keep up. That leaves short period of scrambling to either fix it yourself or make due until the fix is made. #### Reasons for choosing Concrete CMS Cost and easy of use. #### Reasons for switching to Concrete CMS The ability to quickly and affordably customize in terms of both appearance and functionality, It keeps development costs down while making content easy to manage after launch. --- ### Stay away from this - Overall rating: 1/5 - Reviewer: Jim G. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Government Administration - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 1/5 - Value for money: 1/5 - Customer support: 1/5 - Functionality: 1/5 #### Pros are there any? I have not been able to find them #### Cons It is NOT A CMS - it's just a web tool. It was not worth the money. #### Reasons for choosing Concrete CMS I thought it was a good alternative to Drupal. It's not. --- ### concrete5 - The Best of Breed CMS - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Jeremy R. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: August 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. For me as a developer, concrete5 is a great base to build almost any project on. The extremely powerful attribute system lets you add custom categories so you can reuse tried and tested code for free. You can even add your own custom attribute types which can pull from other data sources. The built in user management system, complete with support for Oauth is one less thing you have to code. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros As a user, I love the in page editing features of concrete5. You simply click the edit button, click the content you want to edit, type in the content, save, publish and you're done. No messing about with the dark recesses of a hidden control panel. All that you need is right there in the page. #### Cons As a developer, the documentation is sometimes quite a way behind the product itself or doesn't actually exist at all. This can be frustrating because the underlying architecture of concrete5 is built on the best of breed open source components, and to do things correctly without modifying the core can take time to figure out. It's usually pretty simple once you've figured it out though. #### Reasons for choosing Concrete CMS Joomla's control panel was frankly hideous. Wordpress is/was/always will be a security nightmare and the everything-is-a-post database is overly simplistic and hideous to work with. #### Reasons for switching to Concrete CMS Home grown CMS was too old to be of use and not as flexible, and had a much poorer user experience. --- ### Hands down best cms / framework - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: John E. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2019 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Even for complexly applications it's usually my preferable platform even over frameworks as it provides the functionality of a framework yet still provides additional functional that is almost always useful regardless of your use case. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The system is architected using modern object oriented php. It's very easy for front end devs to create websites from mocks that are intuitive to edit for end users using the cms. It provides a foundation similar to a traditional framework for more complex applications with enterprise level permissions and features out of the box. Extending the cms uses an intuitive pattern allowing changes to persist thru updates to the software. It promotes professional programming design concepts and favors traditional programming design patterns over strict convention. The editing experience from a end users standpoint beats drupal, wordpress and joomla hands down. The security track record is impeccable as well contrasted to other cms systems. #### Cons Off the shelf plugins are limited but the plugins that are available are properly vetted and less likely to be insecure than wordpress. Developer docs are lacking but if you have a good understanding of php it's easy to follow the code as it follows industry conventions and concepts and theming is a breeze. --- ### Excellent CMS! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Graphic Design - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used other for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Concrete5 made is easy for us to setup complete websites, including a built-in blog, for users who had little or no experience with blogging. Once we adjusted to the user interface and the customization methods, we were running smoothly in a very short time. Highly recommend it! #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Concrete5 is like a breath of fresh air when it comes to content management systems. We have worked with WordPress for several years, but wanted to try something different. Concrete5 got the nod after some research showed that it is a solid platform with enough support behind it to make it worth our time and efforts. Setup is super easy and customization is pretty easy once you understand how it functions. Oh, and the fact that it isn't as popular as WordPress makes it almost a waste of time for hackers, so it's very safe. #### Cons Because Concrete5 isn't as popular as some of the other CMS systems, it doesn't have nearly as many free plugins or addons. Most of the time, what you need can be found, but it might require purchasing what you want or hiring someone to custom-create it for you. #### Reasons for switching to Concrete CMS Concrete5 offered us a fresh platform that wasn't being targeted by hackers or malware. --- ### User Friendly Website CMS - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I was able to come into my position having past experience with WordPress and easily figure out how to use Concrete5. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I like how modern and user friendly this content management system is. Many features are drag & drop so even a novice can create a web page, but there are robust capabilities that can be coded in as well. #### Cons I would have liked other options for viewing files, specifically images. And increased ease of navigation through the back end of the website. #### Reasons for switching to Concrete CMS Switched jobs --- ### Une bonne expérience utilisateur - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Brice G. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Internet - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2021 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Concrete5 me permet de me faire gagner du temps sur la maintenance et les mises à jour des contenus du site. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Le principal point fort est que le coeur du CMS Concrete embarque de manière native les fonctions essentielles pour une site vitrine. Vous n'avez pas besoin de plugin pour profitez d'une expérience d'édition agréable et intuitive. La solution est très flexible et permet une grande personnalisation du site. #### Cons Le faible choix des thèmes est un point faible. Aussi il existe assez peu de plugins de qualité lorsque l'on souhaite économiser du temps de développement. #### Reasons for switching to Concrete CMS Je suis passé à Concrete5 car j'ai trouvé la solution open source qui pourrait m'offrir une expérience agréable et intuitive dans l'édition des contenus des sites Internet. --- ### The greatest CMS - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Daniel G. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Program Development - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2017 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review. As a web developer, two considerations are important when chosing a CMS. The first is the codebase, the quality of the core code. It technically up to date, well structured and the security is up to date. The second point to take into consideration is the usability for the user of a CMS. concrete5 has a very well thought and designed "In Page Editing" feature which makes it easy also for non experienced users to create and maintain their website easily. I can highly recommend concrete5 as a very powerful yet easy to handle CMS #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros CLean & good code structure, Easy to create a website. #### Cons None! #### Vendor response Thanks! Replied April 2017 --- ### Amazing Website Editing Experience!!! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Nikolas V. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2017 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Open-Source with MIT License, soure code provided and is free, many blocks available and it can easily be modified to have different look and feel. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Drag and Drop editor, customization of blocks and layouts is a piece of cake. Really don't think that I would live without this software. #### Cons No mature ecommerce package available for this software, there is package but is outdated. It could have an ecommerce package that would but as awesome as the CMS. --- ### The best CMS on the market for the moment - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Marco K. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Program Development - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2021 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered from simple one pager to complex applications #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Inline Editing, Workflows, Permissions, packaging system #### Cons Documentation is really bad, for developer and enduser --- ### Scaling with CMS with Concrete5 - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Raymond K. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Architecture & Planning - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2021 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Its the best CMS service if you want to scale content management in your application #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Easy integration and good marketplace to get the third party integrations, also has the best templates for landing pages #### Cons Need more channels for seeking support service at the moment we using slack which is not easy to track messages --- ### Concrete5 has all you need to get the job done! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Eva K. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Religious Institutions - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: August 2019 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered We've been using Concrete5 for many years for one of our youth summer camp programs. I have very limited website management/design experience. But I find that Concrete5 has easy to use interface that allows me to change and update pages with little to no issue. In all the years we've been using Concrete5, there have been no major issues that would make me considering using different software. Very happy with this software! #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Easy to use Updated regularly Free Customer resources for issues #### Cons If I were to pick ANY con, it would be that there isn't a more customer service. But I've never felt like any issue I've had didn't have resources to solve the issue. #### Reasons for choosing Concrete CMS Free... we are on a very limited budget. Concrete5 allowed us the freedom to use our own website design offers us plenty of helpful plugins to grow the capabilities of the website, if necessary. --- ### Awesome, Professional.....Good for programming dumb like me - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Chatchom J. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Outsourcing/ Offshoring - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: August 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I need a website that is responsive to the customer with choices of theme and concrete5 served it. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros Drag and Drop, What you see is what you get, Fast and simple to understand procedure #### Cons It consumes a bit too much storage and too little choices of font. #### Reasons for switching to Concrete CMS i need something easier --- ### The best CMS - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Michele L. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Product usage: Used unspecified for unspecified - Reviewed: April 2017 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review. 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. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Vendor response thx Replied April 2017 --- ### Powerful, Extendable, User-Friendly - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Brian M. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Online Media - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2021 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### 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. #### Reasons for choosing Concrete CMS I have used Concrete5 for "business-card" type websites and complex applications including product lifecycle management, project management software, and health claims. Costs are very low to implement and the structure is robust and well thought out. Concrete5 allows me to build secure sites quickly that my clients love to use. --- ### Have we lost 15 years of work? - Overall rating: 1/5 - Reviewer: Marybeth K. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Non-Profit Organization Management - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. 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. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 1/5 - Value for money: 1/5 - Customer support: 1/5 - Functionality: 1/5 #### 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. #### Reasons for choosing Concrete CMS I liked the theme we had for our site. But had I known that the vendor AND Concrete 5 were both going to drop support for this version I would have gone with WordPress. It is better-known and easier to get help! #### Reasons for switching to Concrete CMS I wanted our organization to have a more modern-looking site with responsive pages. #### Vendor response I'm disappointed to hear this Marybeth. You're right that in the 10 years we've been open source we've changed a lot. Keeping your site on the latest version is something that does require ongoing attention from a somewhat technical resource. Version 5.6 is actually legacy at this point, we're all the way to version 8.5 and are looking at a version 9 release in 2020. Today, to keep your concrete5 site running in a healthy manner it will need occasional attention from a web developer, who we'd happily make an introduction to if you filled out the contact form or the "We can build it together" overlay at the top of every page on concrete5.org. That said, I'm sure it will cost more than the $30-$50 you spent 10 years ago on that theme, and I completely understand if that's not the right choice for your non-profit. This is pretty common with open source software, but we are working on some new hosting approaches that mitigate some of the challenges around this in the future. Replied December 2019 --- ### Great for end-users and developers - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Jordan S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Internet - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: August 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Love it as a developer and I love providing Concrete5 powered websites to my clients. Doesn't get too much more ideal than that! #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### 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. #### Reasons for choosing Concrete CMS The complicated mess of plugins (and their delicate inter-connectivity) inside of Wordpress was a HUGE turn-off to me. Also the page editing interface in the dashboard is MILES behind what Concrete5 can offer with it's file manager and in-context page editing. These other e-commerce tools are nice and serve some e-comm needs nicely. Unfortunately though, they come at a premium price to Concrete5 and still don't offer all of the tools that make editing and updating content on a web page very easy. #### Vendor response Good news, there is ecommerce for concrete5 here: https://github.com/concrete5-community-store Replied August 2019 --- ### Flexible, Customizable, Edit Anywhere Web Sites - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: David K. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Accounting - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 6 months - Reviewed: September 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by the software vendor to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. 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. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### 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. #### Reasons for choosing Concrete CMS I essentially chose Concrete5 over all other software items I reviewed because of the ability to design, edit and correct items on the fly, on my iPad or my computer. Real cloud development. #### Reasons for switching to Concrete CMS RapidWeaver allowed me much flexible and customizable development, but had to be done on my computer at home. The software provided the development and had to be uploaded to test how it worked. Concrete5 is a system installed on the website, so development of the site is a real cloud environment. This allows me to be flexible with my time and correct and edit when away from the computer as issues are found. I love Concrete5! --- ### Amazing CMS, easy to use for both developers and admins - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Marketing and Advertising - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2021 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered A great CMS that makes updating a site easy. So easy, that as a web developer I choose it for my own sites safe in the knowledge that I can make updates quickly and easily without having to alter the code in most cases. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros - As a dev, the Page object (coupled with page attributes, nav menus and page lists) makes structuring a website or web app a dream. The separation of page templates from page types also helps, the former being about layout while the latter is more conceptual. - As an admin, you pretty much have as much control as the developers of the site decide to give you. - The versioning system allows admins to roll changes back and work on changes before publishing them. - The permissions system is exceptionally powerful, allowing roles and/or individual users to be included or excluded from each permission. - The attributes system allows pages, files and users to be given custom properties of various types (e.g. text, image, colour). #### Cons - Lack of a REST API for using as a headless CMS (although I believe this will change with the next major version). - No built-in way that I'm aware of to integrate React and/or Vue components. - No equivalent to Wordpress + Advanced Custom Fields' "repeater" fields for adding an indefinitely long list of page/file/user attributes. #### Reasons for choosing Concrete CMS Speed and familiarity of both development and ongoing updates --- ### The right CMS for me for years - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Garrett E. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Design - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2021 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered No idea why people use any other CMS. Hard to be Betamax in a VHS world. Appreciate that add-ons can be tested on new sites before buying. Also the compact marketplace is easier to navigate, though there are some more advanced ones that haven't been developed/ported yet. The Major upgrade to Version 8 was manageable for them in a way other platforms can't pull off no matter how badly they need them. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros When I first started using it more than 10 years ago the field of CMS platforms was pretty rough. It had the best user interface for users to manage content. More recently others have imitated their approach but they still show their clumsy roots in a way C5 doesn't. Impressed by their commitment to update and upgrade over the years. #### Cons The transition to the latest version a few years ago was a tad rough (it was a major update), but it was worth it. Required starting over for most sites, though the old version still runs so disruption was minimal. The user forum needs a shakeup and update. Wish it was easier to manage lots of sites, but luckily they don't require much attention. Some template designers use tricks that undo the ease of use. #### Reasons for choosing Concrete CMS When I was first in the market it was still early and many of the other ones were still too technical to implement. Don't know that any of them survived. I've dabbled in WordPress and avoid it like the plague. --- ### Awesome tool for a better web - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Raphael P. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Internet - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2021 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered I build a lot of websites for different industries like medicine, construction, food, automation, real state etc. The principal benefit is the time I save building with concrete5. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Easy: installation, configuration, customization and to do improvements. A great community that help everyone in trouble (if hapens). Tons of add-ons and great numbers of theme options (could be more, but is ok). #### Cons A few options to customize a theme on core system and few themes selling on market place. #### Reasons for choosing Concrete CMS Concrete5 offer a better enviromment to build a solid website than the other I listed. #### Reasons for switching to Concrete CMS Concrete5 is a system to build an Internet more inclusive, with tools more easy to manage. Wordpress is a tool to make a blog and you need a lot of modifications to reach a basic Concrete5. ## More reviews [Next reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/cms/concrete5-profile/reviews/?page=2) --- Concrete CMS Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice