Why you shouldn’t compromise website security, accessibility and functionality

Featured article by Shawn Moore, Chief Technology Officer at Solodev

The web content management software (CMS) market has become very mature and versatile over the past decade. Although there are hundreds of providers powering more than a billion websites today, there are still large gaps in the areas of functionality, design freedom and security among existing CMS platforms, forcing users to continually compromise and re-prioritize their needs. For this reason, it’s important to ask yourself four key questions in order to choose the proper CMS for your business.

Is it secure?

Security is a major concern in the CMS space and providers have had to make massive changes to address customer anxiety around the hot button topic. Websites are the centerpiece of all digital marketing, but frequently pose a high security risk. In the past, hosting software on-premise was considered the most secure option—until entire datacenters were breached when accessible via an unsecured website.

Consumer CMS verticals solve this problem by utilizing shared hosting, which pose shared security risks of their own. One website breach could mean a breach to dozens of others if located on the same server. In response to frequent security breaches in the past few years, the industry was pushed to adapt and provide more secure hosting solutions. As a result, there has been a massive migration to the cloud, which has been found to be more secure than traditional ways of deploying websites and mobile applications.

Is it accessible?

In addition to the added layers of security, moving to the cloud enables CMS providers the unsurpassed speed of deployment at a surprisingly lower cost. A website that might have taken months to build and deploy and cost upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past has been reduced to a process that takes a few days or weeks at a fraction of the cost.

With its capability to improve website security and accessibility, cloud computing has proven its value. Rising quickly from an emerging technology to a competitor of traditional enterprise technology companies, the cloud has taken over the industry and continues to grow in popularity at a rapid rate. This migration to the cloud has also allowed purchasers to buy enterprise software as if they were purchasing a movie on-demand marking a tectonic shift in the way enterprise software is purchased.

Does it offer out-of-the-box functionality?

Throughout the history of the CMS space, there existed a clear divide in four functionality quadrants that came about organically and forced CMS providers to bet on the quadrant they felt had the soundest future as a sustainable business. The four quadrants included open source, proprietary, consumer and enterprise CMS platforms. Many platforms now overlap one another, creating confusion and gaps in functionality among CMS platforms.

Today, a major focus for buyers has shifted from open source vs. proprietary systems to the out-of-the-box functionality of enterprise vs. consumer CMS systems. While the unique benefits of individual quadrants have blurred, consumer CMS platforms generally are open source or DIY tools where drag and drop functionality is standard and widgets, external plugins and themes are the pillars of their websites. Additionally, you do not need to be a programmer or designer to utilize a consumer CMS but you sacrifice a lot in terms of functionality and customization if you go this route.

Conversely, enterprise CMS platforms provide more robust, innovative functionality but require web professionals with coding skills to build the websites. The sites are then handed over to their marketing counterparts for daily management. While enterprise CMS platforms are more costly than a consumer CMS system, they are also more robust and secure without limitations to functionality, support, and design options.

Does it offer complete design freedom?

Creativity in design is severely limited in the consumer CMS space as cookie-cutter themes are unavoidable. While many new theme marketplaces have sprouted with an entire industry dedicated to building them, themes force websites to sacrifice creating a unique look and feel that properly represents a company’s brand. In other words, they fit their identity into a predefined box as the same theme can easily be re-used by hundreds of other companies around the world.

In the enterprise CMS space, web professionals typically enjoy more design freedom. That being said, they may still be limited to a specific web development or design framework, restricting their creativity to the scope of the platform or framework.

Solodev—the solution to web CMS compromise

Built to fill in the gaps of existing CMS platforms, Solodev provides a solution that gives web CMS users what they want at a competitive price point without having to compromise on functionality, creativity and security.

Re-built from the ground up for the AWS Cloud, the enterprise-grade web experience platform offers enhanced security features, instant deployment power and levels the playing field to make the enterprise web CMS market accessible to anyone—not just the Fortune 500s. Businesses can now launch their websites instantly and only pay for the computing resources they use, without arbitrary annual licensing and maintenance fees. Understanding that business needs typically change over time, Solodev is a completely flexible and scalable solution with an infrastructure that uses elastic load balancing, auto scaling and server redundancy.

Uniquely built to be a blank canvas for designers and developers, Solodev removes the challenge of learning and adapting to a new framework in which to build websites. Built for developers by developers, it allows organizations to create the websites that best represent their unique brand with unparalleled levels of security, scalability and total design freedom. By eliminating the compromises from the web CMS market, Solodev gives customers total control of their online presence for the first time.

About Shawn Moore

Shawn Moore is the founder of Solodev and the driving force behind the Solodev web experience platform. A visionary leader, Shawn has strategically grown Solodev from inception to a successful company that services clients across the nation and has been named to the Inc. 5000’s fastest growing private companies for the past two years in a row. Winner of several industry awards for Best CTO and CIO, Shawn is changing the CMS landscape with Solodev, winner of the 2016 People’s Choice Award for Best Cloud CMS.