Concrete CMS (formerly Concrete5) is a free and open source, PHP built content management system for content on the web and also for intranets. It is optimized to support the creation of online magazines and newspapers.
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Contentstack
Score 8.9 out of 10
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Contentstack headquartered in San Francisco offers an API-first headless CMS. From desktops to smart phones, from kiosks to smart watches, from billboards to jumbotrons, from dashboards to VR headsets – content is delivered with the push of a button and optimized for every screen, device and channel.
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Pricing
Concrete CMS
Contentstack
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Concrete CMS
Contentstack
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Concrete CMS
Contentstack
Features
Concrete CMS
Contentstack
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Concrete CMS
9.5
Ratings
16% above category average
Contentstack
7.4
Ratings
9% below category average
Role-based user permissions
9.50 Ratings
7.40 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Concrete CMS
9.7
Ratings
24% above category average
Contentstack
7.5
Ratings
1% below category average
API
9.70 Ratings
8.10 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language
9.70 Ratings
6.90 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Concrete CMS
8.4
Ratings
8% above category average
Contentstack
8.1
Ratings
5% above category average
WYSIWYG editor
9.30 Ratings
8.10 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness
10.00 Ratings
10.00 Ratings
Admin section
10.00 Ratings
7.70 Ratings
Page templates
10.00 Ratings
7.70 Ratings
Library of website themes
4.20 Ratings
10.00 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design
9.70 Ratings
6.60 Ratings
Publishing workflow
7.70 Ratings
6.80 Ratings
Form generator
6.60 Ratings
00 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Concrete5 is perfect for a website that needs to be regularly updated without accessing the code, whether that be because a developer created your site for you, or because you yourself are a developer who wants to keep the time spent on updates down.
In my experience, it's less useful for modern web apps such as PWAs that would benefit more from technologies such as React and Vue.
Contentstack has flexible functionality which opens up a lot of possibilities for businesses with proactive web development teams to create their own website builder app to compete with 3rd party agencies. This is especially useful in a large enterprise where non-technical teams often turn to expensive outside agencies which cost more in the long run than an up-front investment into an in-house application.
Concrete5 has a modular editing system, so you can edit the pages without having knowledge of coding. You just pick the module you want to insert or edit and click where you want it to go.
You are able to edit modules in an HTML format if you would like to, so if you have the knowledge you can have even more control over your modules.
You can also edit entire page themes by selecting them from the page layout menu. This allows you a greater versatility of the pages on your site.
The user interface is intuitive and cleanly designed.
The functionality is flexible which allows us to build our own application behind the CMS that meets business needs without being restricted by limitations in the CMS.
The service we get from our Account Manager and Technical contacts is excellent.
Concrete5.6 websites have no good path to migrate to 5.7, short of manual content migration. This is a big problem and affected the user community negatively.
Some features that were available as paid add-ons in 5.6, such as discussion forums and e-commerce shopping cart, are missing from newer versions 5.7/5.8.
Starting to develop add-ons and customizations for Concrete5 can be challenging as 5.7/5.8 documentation is not yet complete.
In my opinion it's not very intuitive. I've found its difficult to understand how to best structure entries, especially if they are related
In my experience, entries can get difficult to understand if weren't the creator. It would be helpful to have some meta data around the entry itself and the fields within them in my opinion.
Integration with an A/B testing platform would be nice.
I have had nothing but good experiences with Concrete5. I have used it on several client websites and even several of my own sites. It is the leading CMS I will go to if I have a need to dynamically update content on a website by people who are typically untrained. They have solved every angst I had with the other solutions I have evaluated in the past and continue to be the simplest to implement and customize.
Although there is a slight learning curve (as with any software), it is very easy to use once you get a hold of it. It is easy to upload and manage files (and other digital assets), and the drag-n-drop interface on the front-end is easy for end-users to understand
Since it's not tied to a central server (other than for authorizing updates and assigning licenses to specific sites), it's available pretty much 100% of the time.
The site works extremely well, the front end flies, searches and form submissions are very fast indeed. The reason its a 9 not a ten? the back end can be a little slow at times, and this is unfair, because for the backend to be so amazing, it has to do a huge amount of work!
Concrete5 is open-source and has an incredibly strong, polite, and supportive community. You can get an answer to nearly anything you want to do with Concrete5 by googling for it, searching the Concrete5 discussion forums or stack overflow, or posting your question to the forum. Members are very courteous and do not look down on those with less knowledge. And answers are always quick, informative, and supportive.
They have an in-app chat with their support team, who is always quick to respond and provide helpful answers. I've never walked away from an interaction without my issue being solved quickly and easily. They're also very communicative over email and are sure to follow up after any changes are made to ensure we're seeing the desired result. They are always very professional and easy to work with.
It's important that any CMS is implemented by a skilled developer. Content management is not a commodity. One of the keys I've found with Concrete5 is to create a homogenous content-entry method (e.g. focus on in-context editing OR focus on using the Composer feature). This seems to make it more likely that site editors will be able to easily come back to editing after a layoff without having to "remember" too much.
I didn't have to spend too much time learning Concrete CMS, whereas I had to spend a long time learning other CMSs. After struggling to develop a plugin for WordPress, developing an add-on for Concrete CMS was piece of cake thanks to many available APIs. Making custom themes and blocks was much easier than WordPress.
Contentstack has better international hosting support then Contentful and we found the presales and sales support people were MUCH more responsive than Contentful. The Sitecore sales process was very very slow and overly complex. We felt Sitecore had many features that were not valuable and the cost to benefit ratio was much lower compared to ContentStack
We are able to prepare for large campaigns within a few days which can bel rolled our within a few clicks. This was previously never possible before we moved to Contentstack.
We now have the tools and ability to architect in a way to take advantage of SEO and drive traffic. Our blog now serves more traffic that the rest of our website. This SEO effort wasn't possible before Contentstack.
One of our KPI's for moving to headless was a faster website and we now deliver pages under our original target while serving more asset and content rich pages to visitors
