Concrete CMS Information Reviews & Insights

Score9.2 out of 10

84 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Concrete CMS are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Smooth User Interface: Many users have praised the smooth user interface of the product, stating that it is intuitive and easy to navigate. Several reviewers have mentioned that they appreciate the clean design and well-organized layout, which enhances their overall experience.

Reliable Performance: Numerous customers have commended the reliable performance of the product. Several reviewers have stated that it consistently meets their expectations and performs tasks efficiently without any glitches or slowdowns. Users have expressed satisfaction with its stability and responsiveness.

Versatile Features: A significant number of users have highlighted the versatility of features offered by the product. Some reviewers have mentioned that it provides a wide range of functionalities, allowing them to accomplish various tasks effectively. The availability of customizable options has also been appreciated by several customers, as it caters to individual preferences and requirements.

Concrete CMS Reviews

19 Reviews

InformationComputer Software5Computer Networking1Internet9Broadcast Media1Publishing1Online Media1Media Production1

Concrete CMS has nicelly choosen it's name, Concrete is really concrete

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

March 15, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I'm using Concrete CMS for almost all kinds of web-based software I build. It's a real swiss knife. I've made a website, e-commerce, ERP, and many management tools with it. it's a very nice project base. I always have the facility to teach how to use it to the project's users, it's very intuitive.

Pros

in context editing
plugin programming
web security
modification with mouse

Cons

i don't see

Likelihood to Recommend

more appropriate for a community-based web application, website. less for enterprise but I use it for that too with specific dev of plug-ins. a good choice for little e-commerce too. very good in terms of web security. also, sometimes used for document management in some enterprise and collaborative platforms.

Olivier Soille

Architecte logiciels in Engineering at AdQuate (Computer Networking, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

14 years of experience

View profile

Concrete CMS is your ultimate choice of CMS!

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 26, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I've been using Concrete CMS [for] over 12 years. I've switched it from Joomla. I've cheated on WordPress a bit. But I always came back to Concrete CMS. I loved it so much that I even helped Japanese translation [and] helped implement it for other companies in Japan 12 years ago. It's very secure compared to other CMS. In the last 12 years, they barely had any severe, critical vulnerability. They made a very wise decision to switch it to Symfony-based, so it was built much more secure than WordPress. When you use WordPress, you must be careful not to create vulnerabilities. In the case of Concrete CMS, as long as you use its APIs, you worry much less about security. In addition, Concrete CMS has many default features and you won't need many "basic" add-ons that you would usually have to install when you are using WordPress. I highly recommended it. I'm very happy to help many Japanese small to big companies to expand their digital presence.

Pros

Permission and workflow
Ease of adding features by Symfony and composer
Large enterprise intranet
Big enough global community
University websites

Cons

Community
Hosting service

Likelihood to Recommend

Suitable if you are part of small to large scale companies or web-houses which have PHP developers and frontend engineers with some budgets. [Also suitable if] you or your client want to build a website that requires some features or uniqueness [and needs] some customization and freedom. Additionally suitable if you want this project to be DevOps based project or if the project requires very tight security and is inside of a closed network.

Katz Ueno

Editor-in-Chief in Corporate at deerstudio, llc (Media Production, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

12 years of experience

View profile

ConcreteCMS: the Best!

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 25, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use ConcreteCMS as the choice for our customers. We built and maintain websites, and have been happily doing this with ConcreteCMS (fka Concrete5) since 2009. Our customers soon realize that WordPress is not the way to go once they have seen the possibilities we create for them with ConcreteCMS.

Pros

Content Management for customers
Programming possibilities for us
Smooth & fast, no hassle with daily plug-in updates WordPress has
Never experienced conflicts with different add-ons (daily nightmare in WordPress)

Cons

Better documentation

Likelihood to Recommend

It is simply one of the best true Website Content Management Systems around. It's powerful and stable, both for the end-user as well as us, as developers.

Peter Quintus

Founder & CEO in Information Technology at InDis (Internet, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

12 years of experience

View profile

A awesome tool for a better and inclusive web

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

March 3, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

An awesome tool for a better and inclusive web. I build a lot of websites for different industries like medicine, construction, food, automation, real estate, etc. The principal benefit is the time I save building with concrete5. I discovered it in late 2013 and started building in 2014, making more than 100 websites with this tool.

Pros

Easy: Installation, configuration, customization and to do improvements.
A great community that helps everyone in trouble (if it happens).
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.
A few themes selling on market place.
Small community around the world.

Likelihood to Recommend

Give a chance and you will never look back. Only will see the bright future. Concrete5 is a system to build a more inclusive Internet, with tools easier to manage. You can use an institutional website or build an awesome community to manage the company's workflow. Concrete5 is almost like a low code SDK.

Raphael Peniche

Project Manager in Marketing at Estudio Grafenno (Internet, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

Powerful, easy-to-use website content management

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

February 20, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We deliver content managed websites built on Concrete5 to our clients. Our business is now completely focused on designing, building and supporting concrete5 websites. Concrete5 allows us to deliver sites that are easy to use and to build and configure flexible bespoke solutions for most needs.

Pros

Complete CMS out of the box - extensions not required for basic functionality.
Modern PHP development framework - build whatever you need to.
User friendly editing environment - clients love using Concrete5.
Knowledgeable, supportive and friendly community.

Cons

Documentation is gradually improving, this needs to continue.
Design and styling controls could be updated.

Likelihood to Recommend

Concrete5 provides the ideal solution where a website with bespoke functionality is needed. It is very flexible and can be configured to allow easy editing/maintenance for almost any requirement. It is ideal for slightly larger sites that have a team of people managing content rather than for a smaller sites.

Glyn Jenkins

Managing Director in Marketing at Katalysis Net Ltd (Internet, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

Reseller

12 years of experience

Powerful for developers, easy for site editors

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

February 20, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As a developer, I use Concrete5 to build custom solutions as well as off-the-shelf products for sale in the community marketplace. Concrete5 provides a reliable, safe, scalable base to create powerful websites and web applications. Being open source, the price is right and it is also supported by a committed community of developers, site editors, and users.

I've been using this CMS since 2009, and over a decade later, I'd still choose it again in a heartbeat. The team behind Concrete5 is always pushing the platform further, and taking bold, brave steps to make it a world-class system. As a developer, it's a breeze working with Concrete5. The elegant architecture makes it easy to create complex add-ons and functionality that is clean, fast, and future-proof.

Pros

Comprehensive editing tools for site owners.
User-friendly and intuitive interface.
Extendable architecture for developers.
Solid community forum for asking questions and getting free and paid help.
Good number of third-party add-ons and themes to extend the core features.
Regular news updates from the core team about platform improvements and strategic direction.

Cons

Average quality and depth of developer documentation.

Likelihood to Recommend

It's best suited for complex websites with multiple contributors and editors, such as an online magazine. However, it also performs perfectly for small business brochure-style websites. Considering the wide range of third-party add-ons, what you can do with Concrete5 is only limited by your imagination. I've used it for intranet, e-commerce, and B2B solutions as well.

If you have a large inventory of products and want to build a comprehensive e-commerce site, then there are other CMSes that tackle that challenge better than Concrete5. However, if you only have a few basic products, then this can work very well.

Josh Bender

Senior Web Developer in Information Technology at C5 Extras (Computer Software, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

12 years of experience

Works as expected, a bit resource intensive

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

February 19, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Concrete5 to manage the website for my small publishing company. It is used across the entire company.

Pros

It is quite extensible.
There are many add-ons and themes.
It makes it easy for even non-technical people to be able to update the content on the website.

Cons

The extensions for older versions could be better marked to show if they are compatible with the current version.
It could stand to have a bit of code optimizing to make it less resource intensive.
It would be nice if there was a way to import content from my development server to my production server.

Likelihood to Recommend

It is best for someone who needs to manage websites but does not have the time or inclination to learn various programming languages.

Michael Johnson

Managing Member in Corporate at Creative Solutions Press (Publishing, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Extensive features, once individually simplified, creates happy customers

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

February 19, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use C5 as a go-to solution for medium to large web applications, smaller webshops, and as a management system for users and access-control to standalone applications. We mainly use it for its intended purpose as customizable CMS for websites.

Pros

Out-of-the-box functionalities like user management, search, SEO
Edibility by users.
Simplicity for non digital natives.

Cons

Backend is for inexperienced users overwhelming.
Management of custom models can be intensive.
Frontend in edit-mode is sometimes unresponsive and irritates inexperienced users.

Likelihood to Recommend

For medium-sized web applications with different users and more functionality than just content-pages, I would recommend it. Even for smaller, content-oriented apps, it is suitable if the required configurations are made. Larger apps require user training that consists of pointing out and schooling the users on the features they will actually need to not get lost in the number of features and configurations available.

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (Internet company, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Powerful, Extendable, User-Friendly

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

February 18, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

User-Friendly
Extendable
Secure

Cons

Learning Curve for Development
Can be complex

Likelihood to Recommend

Concrete5 is simple enough for a business-card type website yet powerful enough to build full blown apps like project management, product workflow management, and more. Can be used for blogging, eCommerce, and much more. Peer-reviewed themes and add-ons allow for fast deployment with minimal coding knowledge. Site editors can be trained very quickly and love the ease of use.

Verified User

Executive (Online Media company, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

11 years of experience

Concrete5 - a CMS with a good past, and a better future

Rating: 10 out of 10

July 7, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I discovered Concrete5 3 years ago. I was thoroughly disappointed with Wordpress, and started to create my own CMS. Then an associate sent me a link to Concrete5.
It was all I wanted mine to be, and then some!
More recently, 5.7.came out, which has a new interface, and couldn't be easier for the end user.
The intuitive interface allows easy creation and management of pages, with help for SEO, and a wealth of plugins.

With different user roles, its easy to allow different departments to manage their own site areas.

We are a web host, and have an easy install solution for this program, but if you don't use that, the install is remarkably easy to do, with a friendly interface.
Like any online solution, it is not the best answer for every need. But it is the best answer for most needs. With an ever growing supply of themes and plugins, you should definitely look at this for your CMS solutions. Except for sites that we build needing a lot of custom coding, all of our web sites are now run on Concrete5.

Pros

In-line Editing: 7 + has in-line editing, so you see your changes appear in the place they will be on the live site, in the font they will be and the size that they will be.
File Management: Excellent file manager, allowing images to be grouped, tags added, lists of what pages use that image, so you can put the images in sets for being used together (in sliders, for instance).
Very Human! Every contact you make with the site, the mail that comes to you is from the owner of the group. (Yes, Concrete5 is Open Source.) Very friendly, very nicely done.

Cons

If you upgrade from pre 5.7 to 5.7, adding pages is rather tricky. Once you are familiar with it, it makes perfect sense!
If you are using an older computer, the admin pages are very slow to render.
In some cases, using the column tool will stop a responsive theme from being responsive. This is not the theme's issue, as we have used it many times in the same theme. Some pages stop being responsive, others do not. ("Stop being responsive" is technically incorrect, they behave improperly as they resize. This is with text-only content, and does not have images distorting them.)
The only way to add h tags is to click on the html editor of a block, and add the the tag to the heading.

Likelihood to Recommend

Concrete5, like any CMS, is a very complex program So if you are building a site that has a lot of code and database calls, you would usually be better off building it without a CMS.
If a site is not heavily coded, then Concrete5 is an excellent choice. The only time we still use WordPress is if a client is very familiar with that platform, or it has plugins that the client needs that are not available on Concrete5. (This has only happened once!)

John Smart

Owner in Information Technology at Host2help (Internet, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

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Concrete5 - a CMS with a good past, and a better future

Rating: 10 out of 10

July 7, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

In-line Editing: 7 + has in-line editing, so you see your changes appear in the place they will be on the live site, in the font they will be and the size that they will be.
File Management: Excellent file manager, allowing images to be grouped, tags added, lists of what pages use that image, so you can put the images in sets for being used together (in sliders, for instance).
Very Human! Every contact you make with the site, the mail that comes to you is from the owner of the group. (Yes, Concrete5 is Open Source.) Very friendly, very nicely done.

Cons

If you upgrade from pre 5.7 to 5.7, adding pages is rather tricky. Once you are familiar with it, it makes perfect sense!
If you are using an older computer, the admin pages are very slow to render.
In some cases, using the column tool will stop a responsive theme from being responsive. This is not the theme's issue, as we have used it many times in the same theme. Some pages stop being responsive, others do not. ("Stop being responsive" is technically incorrect, they behave improperly as they resize. This is with text-only content, and does not have images distorting them.)
The only way to add h tags is to click on the html editor of a block, and add the the tag to the heading.

Likelihood to Recommend

John Smart

Owner in Information Technology at Host2help (Internet, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience