About 68% of all websites today use a content management system (CMS) according to WPBeginner. And out of the 1 million top websites by traffic, an overwhelming 900,000 of them use a CMS.
Content management systems aren’t just popular – they also seem to play a role in a website’s success. But with 800 CMS options out there, how do you choose the right one?
Sitecore and WordPress are two popular platforms to consider. But even for these two CMSs, there are still specific needs you’ll have to look into before settling on one. And that’s what we’ll be looking at in this article.
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What is the Difference Between Sitecore and WordPress?
Sitecore and WordPress differ on two main fronts – the target user base and proprietary rights. Compared to Sitecore, WordPress has a far larger target user base including solopreneurs, small businesses, new organizations, and a few large businesses like Microsoft.
It’s no surprise that it’s the most used CMS in the world used by 42.6% of all websites. Websites that use Sitecore, on the other hand, are just 0.1% of all websites with a known CMS since the target user base is enterprise-level organizations.
The fact it’s available as free and open-source software could be another reason for WordPress’ popularity. Sitecore, in contrast, is proprietary with a protected code base and requires hefty licensing fees to use.
4 Things to Consider When Choosing the Right CMS
The ultimate winner between Sitecore and WordPress can be decided based on:
- Versatility
- Integration options
- Ease of use
- Security
Let’s have a look at how the two CMSs fare based on these four qualities.
1. Versatility
A content management system must be adaptable to a company’s needs for two main reasons:
- Branding
- and – most importantly – streamlining the target audience’s user experience.
A versatile CMS makes it easier for companies to quickly adapt to the digital demands of their target audiences as they change.
For WordPress, the adaptability is guaranteed by blocks. Thanks to WordPress blocks, simple page elements like buttons and fonts can be quickly optimized and updated as a company deems fit. Depending on the audience’s demands, the optimization could also be applied to different posts, pages, and even the entire website.
Sitecore, too, does have a thing going for it as far as versatility is concerned with features like:
- content reuse – for duplicating and quickly editing pages
- Sitecore experience accelerator (SXE) – for reusing templates, layouts, and components across many sites.
But in a toe-to-toe race between Sitecore and WordPress, business users will be better off going with the latter. It’s just way simpler and faster to adapt powerful digital experiences with WordPress.
Sitecore, for all its wide list of options, is severely limited by its highly technical nature. With the CMS, users have to carefully build a lot of components from scratch which handicaps its versatility to an extent.
2. Integrations
There’s an immense need to connect various tools in today’s digital world. This is important for marketing efforts as it helps with streamlining workflows and improving what content management systems can do.
The more the integrations the more functionality business owners can add on a CMS.
WordPress being open-source is far more flexible than Sitecore here, allowing for integration with pretty much every platform and software out there via the million or so plugins.
Sitecore does allow for some integrations but these are limited to a handful of listed partners of the CMS. On the flipside, though, Sitecore is a little more superior in terms of out-of-the-box functionalities.
Tracking, conversion optimization, email marketing, marketing automation, and content personalization are some of the key components Sitecore users can expect. That’s, of course, dependent on the specific pricing package a user decides to go with.
3. Ease of Use
One of the main reasons content management systems are a thing is the convenience they offer in creating and managing content. A good CMS should therefore offer an easy way to go about these two functionalities.
Both WordPress and Sitecore offer great features in that regard.
WordPress boasts an editor with WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) capabilities and content blocks that make it easier to create and manage content across different pages. Sitecore also has a WYSIWYG-capable editor in addition to features like content reuse, Sitecore experience accelerator, and content archiving.
But does that mean the two CMSs are easy to use? Far from it.
While WordPress is more of a plug-and-play type, Sitecore comes with a steep learning curve. It’s basically unusable without a dedicated team of experienced developers running point on the majority of the platform’s intricacies including even the most minor tasks or updates, which is why many brands consider moving from Sitecore to WordPress.
But even for these developers, getting it right usually requires lots of figuring out and they’re most likely to run into quite a few errors along the way. Of course, WordPress could also use some developers but the complexity of their role is extremely light compared to what they would have to do with Sitecore.
4. Security
Cyberattacks are an unfortunate part of the digital world with businesses having to increasingly be on the lookout for anything fishy – especially websites. An analysis of 7 million sites by SiteLock found that websites experience an average of 94 attacks every day and are visited by bots over 2,600 times per week.
A vulnerable CMS will certainly make matters worse.
Luckily, both WordPress and Sitecore are as close to being as ironclad as you can get.
Sitecore benefits immensely from a wide array of built-in security features that are updated frequently to stay one step ahead of bad actors. Additionally, the fact that its code is restricted – as opposed to being open-source – shields the platform from vulnerabilities in third-party software and plugins.
WordPress, on the other hand, has more than enough exposure to third-party vulnerabilities given the massive plugin ecosystem. But whether or not these potential exploit points amount to anything is highly dependent on the user. Timely updates on WordPress Core, plugins, and WordPress themes will go a long way in bolstering WordPress security.
Wrapping Up
There are quite a few CMS platforms out there but it’s possible to narrow down to just two – Sitecore and WordPress. Once you have these two, you can then consider how easy each one of them is to use, the flexibility, possible integrations, and the platform’s ability to withstand cyberattacks.
WordPress holds up quite well in all these considerations, so it’s easily a great choice between the two. That’s unless you’re looking for an enterprise solution and have a ready team to handle all of Sitecore’s many complexities.