Concrete CMS

RATING:

4.5

(54)

About Concrete CMS

Concrete CMS is an Open Source Content Management System for teams. Run a secure website your content contributors will love using with Concrete CMS. The user experience is built around in-context editing. It’s as easy to use as a word processor. Users will spend less time training people, and less time having to fix things themselves. As an open source framework the software can build complex applications as features like permissions, workflow, file management, calendar, forms, SEO and so much more are built right in. A marketplace of add-ons & themes and an active community can help users quickly deliver effective solutions using Concrete CMS.

Concrete CMS Pricing

Concrete CMS is completely open-source. It's free to use as is or if you know a PHP developer, they can make do anything you want. You can use any developer, not just specialized consultants licensed by some big company. Concrete CMS is free. Web hosting is not.

Free trial: 

Available

Free version: 

Available

In-context editing

Concrete CMS Reviews

Overall Rating

4.5

Ratings Breakdown

Secondary Ratings

Ease-of-use

4.5

Customer Support

4

Value for money

4.5

Functionality

4.5

Most Helpful Reviews for Concrete CMS

1 - 5 of 53 Reviews

Anonymous

2-10 employees

Used monthly for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed February 2021

Amazing CMS, easy to use for both developers and admins

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.

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.

Reason for choosing Concrete CMS

Speed and familiarity of both development and ongoing updates

Raphael

Internet, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed February 2021

Awesome tool for a better web

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.

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.

Reason 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.

Marybeth

Non-Profit Organization Management, 10,000+ employees

Used monthly for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra

OVERALL RATING:

1

EASE OF USE

1

VALUE FOR MONEY

1

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

1

FUNCTIONALITY

1

Reviewed November 2019

Have we lost 15 years of work?

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.

Reason 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

Brian

Online Media, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed February 2021

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.

Reason 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.

Jordan

Internet, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed August 2019

Great for end-users and developers

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.

Reason 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