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Designing a disruptive website is synonymous with business growth in this digital era. A streamlined, easy-to-use website is as significant as the storefront of any brick-and-mortar business.

Choosing the right CMS (content management system) plays a pivotal role in curating and developing a reliable website.

A sound system helps you publish content pieces with ease, creates a seamless experience for your users, and makes managing the lifecycle of your audience simple.

Overall, the right content management system will help business owners manage effectively different aspects of their websites without learning to code. Moreover, it will help you create a website that is the right mix of good marketing and decent automation.

There are myriads of CMS options available in the market. Each CMS brings something uniquely specialised to the table. Keeping the needs of SMBs in mind, here are some of our top picks for the best CMS systems that will suit their requirements efficiently while still delivering a user-friendly and highly functional website.

Wix – Easiest CMS for Building New Websites

Market share – 7.03%

Wix is one of the easy-to-use content management systems and is the top market player in the website building domain. It is specially designed for SMBs, keeping their needs and budgets in mind.

Wix has hosted over 160 million websites and offers some of the best features and a scalable website-building approach. The highlight feature of Wix is its ability to optimise your site automatically for mobile.

Wix makes the process of building websites a breeze.

No, seriously! With Wix, building a website is a drag-and-drop process, complemented with a host of built-in features, customer support, and online resources.

Let’s now take a look at some stand-out features of Wix:

• Optimised for mobile and SEO
• Myriads of free templates
• Automatic security updates
• Extensive eCommerce modules with features like payment acceptance, store management, and product pages
• Premium plans include domain names, web hosting, personalised email, analytics, contact management, and SSL certificate.

WordPress – World’s Most Dominating CMS

Market share – 43.41%

There is no doubt to the fact that WordPress is the largest CMS platform. It dominates the CMS market, powering 43.41 per cent of websites on the internet.

Nearly two decades ago, WordPress started as a blogging tool, but today it has expanded massively as one of the best programmes for creating all kinds of websites.

The platform is free and open-source, making the platform virtually limitless for users. You could have complete control over every aspect of your website with no limitations on customisations, which is why WordPress is very popular among web developers.

Owing to its extensive library of more than 57,000 plugins, even non-technical users could make the best out of this CMS.

With WordPress, You will have to get the domain and hosting from any third-party source on your own.

Since WordPress is an open-source platform, it does not have dedicated support, but it does have a few of the best communities that are highly active and collaborative. You will find a large pool of WordPress developers across the globe seeking and extending support.

Here are some notable features of WordPress:

• Highly versatile and customisable
• SEO-friendly CMS
• An extensive suite of themes and plugins
• A powerful editor for content management and content creation
• Easy to access and high performance
• Mobile responsive
• Excellent media management tools

Shopify – Top CMS for eCommerce Websites

Market share – 5.6%

If you are contemplating an online store or need eCommerce-specific solutions, then Shopify is the best bet for you.

Shopify enables you to set and manage your store in one place. It makes selling online easily manageable for businesses of all sizes.

Whether you have decided to set up a new store from scratch or are shifting from any other existing CMS, Shopify can meet all your requirements.

Let’s view a few of the salient features of this CMS platform:

• Allows you to manage products efficiently and sell from your website, online marketplaces, and social media
• Variety of plugins that enables easy customisation
• An intricate payment processing system
• Manage products, orders, inventory, payments, and shipping easily
• Access to more than 4000 third-party apps to add extended functionality to your site
• Unlimited products
• Search friendly
• Free SSL certificate
• Robust support

SquareSpace – The best CMS for building creative websites

Market share – 4.24%

SquareSpace is an all-in-one website builder that helps businesses of all shapes and sizes. It builds beautiful and robust websites.

SquareSpace is best known for its beautiful designs and award-winning templates. Just like WordPress, it allows complete customisation using its several extensions to fit your unique needs.

SqaureSpace lets you create sites that are professional and sleek. Its modern and pleasing designs make SquareSpace a popular choice for content management.

SquareSpace is a perfect choice for creative professionals, artists, writers, musicians, and portfolio sites.

Let’s take a look at some of the highlights of SqaureSpace CMS:

• Intuitive and easy website building tools
• Free domain for the first year
• Suitable for eCommerce, informative, and blogging sites
• SEO and mobile optimisation
• Third-party extensions for adding new functionalities
• Built-in tools for marketing
• Excellent customer support

Weebly – Most Easy and Affordable CMS

Market share – 1.57%

Weebly is a budget-friendly CMS known for its ease of functionality. Whether you are a tech-savvy person or new to building sites, Weebly is a great choice to create multipurpose sites as well as basic informative ones.

Its drag-and-drop tools allow you to add appealing elements. You can customise your site by choosing from its host of free templates. You can also tweak or revamp your pre-built site to align it with your design needs. More amazingly, you can also upload your brand logo, and it will help you spin your website around your brand aesthetic.

Weebly is an excellent choice for startups looking to put together a professional-looking free site portfolio quickly.

Some exciting features of Weebly are:

• Myriads of free templates
• Easy drag-and-drop elements
• Blogging and eCommerce capabilities
• User-friendliness
• Automatic security and functional updates
• SEO capabilities
• Professional customer support

Bottomline

The above list has been ranked based on usability, SEO-friendliness, customisation, support, and security.

With so many CMS systems in the market, these are my top choices, specially curated, keeping the needs of SMBs in mind. Each has its specialisation and the capability to suffice your unique business needs.

Follow the links in this blog and consider polishing your hands with free trials before putting your money into it.