5 Advantages and Disadvantages of Content Management System | Drawbacks & Benefits of Content Management System

Establishing their presence in the digital world is very crucial for a business. As a result, we can see a rise in the development of websites. 

Content Management System (CMS) is a tool provided by the developer to develop and manage websites. This system is especially designed for users without prior programming or database experience. It basically provides a graphical user interface without needing to directly interact with the coding. Some of the examples for CMS system are Blogger, WordPress, Drupal and Joomla. Among them WordPress is the most popular CMS platform. CMS shares a common server which accessible for everyone. 

Users will be able to access a CMS site with their respective browser, no installation of software is required. Many people prefer a content management system due to their easy way to manage contents. Through there are advantages of using a content management system, there are some disadvantages too. For this reason, it is important to analyze both the benefits and drawbacks of CMS.

In this article, I am going to tell you about 5 Advantages and Disadvantages of Content Management System | Drawbacks & Benefits of Content Management System. From this post, you will know the pros and cons of using CMS.

Let's get started,

Advantages of Content Management System

1. Cost

No one can deny that CMS is a cost effective solution. It totally eliminates the cost of hiring a technical team in order to maintain the site. If you manage the site on your own, you can save a lot of money. Paying a developer at a monthly rate can be quite expensive. 

2. Security

Large community of developers are involved in the making of CMS platforms. Frequently, CMS developers ensure maximum security by making improvements on the code. During these updates, lots of bugs and security vulnerabilities are fixed.

3. Development Speed

Developing a site is extremely fast when using CMS. There is no much time spent in writing codes for HTML and CSS. Thus, you will be able to save significant amount of time. 

4. Coding Requirement

Plugins provide unlimited features all which enhance user experience. Content Management System entirely relies upon plugins for its functioning. So there is no requirement for coding at all.

5. Learning Curve

People without any technical skills will be able to to use CMS conveniently. Comparatively, it takes less amount of time to learn about CMS. After learning about the interface, creating and updating a content is fairly a simple process.

6. SEO Optimizations

Many SEO optimization techniques are already included with a CMS site. Google Search Engine Ranking gives more preference to a content management system site. CMS platforms like WordPress directly support plugins which does not require on page SEO. 

Disadvantages of Content Management System

1. Scalability

Most content management system pose restrictions on number of contents and traffic. They are not able to handle this after a certain limit. So you have to rely on other solutions. 

2. Design Limitations

CMS sites depend on default templates for the website design. There are both free and paid. Most of the free templates offered is only a small number. So there is a chance for the template to be seem in other sites as well. This can seriously affect the uniqueness of your site. Even if you choose to have a paid theme, we cannot guarantee that it will 100% satisfy a site requirement. Therefore, modifications needs to be done accordingly.

3. SEO Limitations

Al though SEO optimization are provided in default, still it is limited. CMS sites are able to generate only dynamic webpages. Meaning that, their URLs are not too long and may contain the characters numbers, words and symbols. Unless this URL is edited manually, the search engines must have difficult time in crawling your webpage. 

Another drawback of a dynamic webpage is that, it rules out meta description. Meta descriptions are the snippets of text which gives a small description about what your content is all about. It is one of the important parameters for search engine ranking.

4. Site Loading Speed

All the sites using CMS is managed by a common server. Sometimes the server can get overloaded with requests which can make your site slow to load. Most users does not give attention to a site that takes long time to load. So there is a chance for you to lose a visitor. This is the reason why custom development options are much faster compared to a site using CMS. 

5. Troubleshooting Errors

Most often clients do update their site accordingly whenever new webpages are created. For an example, changing the font, adding video/images. Due to this the original design has the tendency to get altered leaving your site to 404 error. So unless the issue is rectified, site visitors can no longer read your contents. Now troubleshooting errors is not an easy task since it involves lots of redesigning. Especially, if the necessary backups are not made. 

6. Technical Support

Technical support is not available when using CMS. Since it is an open source platform, there is no support and guidance here. Therefore, users need to rely on community forums and other online documentations. But it is not reliable and cannot guarantee that it will 100% resolve your issue.