Summary

This article defines digital content management (DCM) and reviews the best DCM systems for organizations, focusing on features, benefits, and choosing the right system for your needs.

Amid high global competition, digital marketers are wrestling with several challenges to keep their businesses afloat. They’re striving hard to reach more customers efficiently, enhance productivity and, ultimately, boost revenue.

Traditional digital marketers are embracing newer technologies like digital content management software (CMS) to revolutionize their businesses. Did you know that the revenue in the CMS market is projected to reach $27.30 Billion by 2028 with an annual growth rate of 5.44%?

The efficiencies and built-in productivity of digital content management (DCM) systems enable digital marketers to leverage upsell and cross-sell opportunities, launch new products in the market swiftly, and create new revenue streams.

Before we explore the best DCM systems, let’s learn more about digital content management services and the critical components you need for any DCM software.

Table of Contents:

Understanding Digital Content Management Services

Digital content management helps companies streamline the production, allocation, and distribution of digital content for successful business operations. It is the process for delivery, collection, governance, retrieval, and overall management of content in any digital format.

This includes static pages, blog posts, private course content, forum posts, eCommerce products, and memberships. From creation to permanent storage and deletion, digital or cloud-based content management services help in the administration of content lifestyle.

Also referred to as digital asset management, digital CMS tools also allow you to create a website and publish and manage content on the web without writing code or learning how to code.

Key Features to Look For When Choosing DCM Systems

The following are some essential characteristics of a CMS tool that can speed up the digital transformation of your business:

1. Testing Ability

You must be able to effectively run tests on results for different layouts, headlines, and more, to determine what’s working and do more of the good stuff.

2. Flexible and Powerful Editor 

You must be able to easily edit the content or make simple layout changes on existing pages and quickly create a landing page for social media campaigns within the DCM software.

3. Collaboration and Integration

Your website team (developers, marketers, and content creators) must be able to collaborate within the CMS and set permissions to avoid mismanagement and confusion.

Choose a CMS that can be integrated with your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software and other tech stacks to personalize content or pages and add them easily.

4. Support and Customer Experience

Having a support team that offers round-the-clock assistance ensures that you get the required help, especially when you’re unable to launch a campaign.

What are the 5 Best DCM Systems in 2023?

1. Squarespace

Squarespace is an all-in-one website builder that offers both free and paid templates with award-winning designs. It boasts high-quality, secure hosting with unlimited bandwidth and storage.

Known for its beautiful designs, Squarespace is a popular DCM software option for musicians, creative workers, portfolio sites, and artists.   

Unique Features:

  • Squarespace has a dedicated support team that provides 24*7 customer assistance. It also provides exceptionally useful help documentation.
  • The tool offers unlimited and beautiful out-of-the-box design templates with a multitude of customization options.

Best For: With its gorgeous and contemporary designs, Squarespace is ideal for managing visual content as opposed to text-heavy pages.  

Price: The basic plan for businesses starts at $23 per month, billed annually.  

Also Read: How can Content Authoring Tools Help You in Your Business Growth?

2. WordPress

Powering 43% of the websites on the internet, WordPress is the most widely used DCM system in the world. With a CMS market share of 63.2%, it is the most trusted platform by tens of millions of global users.  

WordPress is a free and open-source CMS that offers more than 50,000 plugins to extend the functionality of your website. It’s also highly customizable, SEO-friendly, responsive, and secure. Although the CMS tool is free, you’ll need to pay for a web hosting package and domain registration.  

Unique Features:

  • It provides powerful media management tools and mobile responsive content.
  • The tool also implements automatic background updates that significantly reduce all security issues.

Best For: WordPress is the ideal choice for content-heavy sites like blogs.

Price: While the basic version of WordPress is free, the business plan is priced at $25 per month, billed annually.

3. Shopify

With a market share of 5.7%, Shopify is the 2nd most popular CMS platform across the globe. It’s an all-in-one eCommerce website builder, perfect for companies opening an online store and looking for an eCommerce-specific CMS platform.

Known for its ease of use and simplicity, Shopify has a built-in payment processor for online selling, and all Shopify websites are PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant by default. Its uncluttered and clean CMS interface allows you to manage, edit, and create blogs and landing pages.     

Unique Features:

  • Shopify has a simple dashboard that makes it easy to manage service orders, products, shipping, and payment.
  • Other useful features include 24*7 customer assistance, a free SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate, and best-in-class built-in marketing tools.

Best For: Shopify is the best CMS platform for eCommerce retailers and first-time sellers.

Price: The basic Shopify plan starts at $29 per month, billed annually.

4. Wix

Wix is a drag-and-drop website builder that allows beginners to create a website from scratch and publish and edit the content on the web without any coding knowledge and development, or design skills.

The platform can be used to build a free website but comes with a Wix subdomain. You’ll need to pay to remove the Wix branding. Wix has robust security protocols in place and boats 99.9% uptime, which ensures that your website will be virtually available even during traffic spikes.

Unique Features:

  • It offers 900+ website design templates that are free and customizable.
  • The pain plans offer additional features, including access to VIP support, increased storage, the ability to add forms, and a calendar.

Best For: Wix is one of the best website builders for people with non-technical backgrounds who require a digital content management platform.

Price: Wix’s Combo plan for personal use starts at $16 per month, billed annually.  

Also Read: Maximizing the Power of AEM for Content Management and Delivery

5. Joomla

Similar to WordPress, Joomla is also a free and open-source platform with a lot of built-in functionality for creating highly customizable content.

It allows you to use multiple templates and themes simultaneously for different types of content and pages. The platform also offers multilingual support (over 70 languages).  

Unique Features:

  • It offers 8,000+ extensions that allow you to fully customize your site and manage your web pages individually.
  • Joomla provides excellent customer assistance with its extended documentation and integrated help system.
  • Other interesting features include several content publishing & editing tools, beautiful design templates, out-of-the-box SEO & SEF, and cache management.

Best For: Joomla is an ideal choice for membership-type sites as it offers exceptional tools for managing users.

Price: Joomla is a free platform that allows you to create a website, modify it, and use open-source code and extensions without any fees.

Conclusion

To sum it up, it’s safe to say that Wix and WordPress are the two best DCM systems for most people. However, you must consider your team and the workflows you have in place before making the right choice.

Looking for professional software developers? Hurix Digital can be your technology partner. We are a next-generation custom software development company offering a suite of designing services to take your brand to the next level. For more information, get in touch with us today!