Every business needs to establish an online presence to become credible in today’s digitally-oriented landscape; that’s why a website has evolved from being a novelty into one of the most essential tools in modern marketing. 

But before you can think about the best ways to incorporate your brand identity and generate content that builds your awareness, it’s important to choose the best content management system (CMS) platforms that would allow you to achieve your goals seamlessly. With that in mind, let’s dive into an analysis of the two CMS platforms to find out which is the best choice for your business.

Feature	WordPress	Umbraco
Market share	30% of all websites	0.1% of all websites using a CMS
Hosting	Choose your host	Choose your host
Price	Free + hosting + development costs	Free + hosting + support + staging development costs
Staging	Yes	Available from $53 per month for 1 site
Ease of Use	4/5	2/5
Customisation	5/5	3/5
Page Builders	Yes	No

WordPress and Umbraco are two of the most accessible, comprehensive, and have lasting dominance in terms of content organisation capabilities. Both offer extensive customisation and functionality that allow businesses to improve user experience in more ways than one, which begs the question: Which is the better CMS system for you?

Factor #1: Usability

The best platforms should be easy to use, and in terms of simple integration, WordPress is famous for being the most straightforward platform that can get your website up and running in no time. 

That’s why tech giants like Sony Music and Facebook Newsroom use WordPress thanks to its effortless navigation, making it easy to add built-in templates and additional widgets to create a professional-looking site. It offers a ton of customization options, allowing users to add new pages and install plugins. The best part is you can even edit complex parts of your site without writing a single line of code. 

On the other hand, Umbraco follows closely behind with its ability for customisations, but what gives it an edge is its ability to adjust back-end development. This makes it easier to customise, giving you more options when creating a truly unique website as far as accessible CMS platforms go. All of this is achievable via Umbraco but it’s worth noting you’ll need to have a developer at hand.

Factor #2: Content

WordPress provides sophisticated layouts that allow businesses to start posting content, but Umbraco takes a bit more know-how since you’ll have to make your own adjustments when it comes to the content layout. WordPress is more accessible for content creators because most of the tools you need for content creation are already built into the platform. On the other hand, Umbraco involves a steep learning curve as it was made for developers first and foremost. You would need to develop the key functionalities you need if you wish to stick with them.

Factor #3: SEO 

SEO plays an important role in fine-tuning your website’s quality, visibility, and authoritativeness, so using a CMS platform that helps you improve your ranking can be an excellent competitive edge. WordPress is one of the easiest platforms that make SEO-friendly websites thanks to its various free plugins, whereas with Umbraco it’s not as easy as go! However, Umbraco does allow the slightest extensive tweaks.

The only thing that makes Umbraco harder, in this case, is that it needs further coding work from a back-end developer, but it can guarantee better performance and higher chances of ranking better. However, with WordPress, you can install the Yoast plug-in to ensure that your post meets the best practices. It also allows mass-edits of metadata and optimisation of permalink structure, making it easy for even the smaller sites to have great SEO. Plus, Google has a good relationship with the platform thanks to its great structure.

The Bottom Line: The Ideal CMS is the One that Suits Your Needs

There is no right choice when choosing between WordPress or Umbraco, but the best pick should be the one that suits your online goals. If you’re looking for a no-brainer platform that helps a lot of businesses kickstart a professional website and can be carried forward by your in-house team then WordPress is the way to go.

But for businesses that want to have greater control over customisations in a CMS system, Umbraco leaves plenty of options to adjust your website’s functionality – but it comes at a price. 

How Can We Help You?

iirth is a branding and web design studio based in London that offers various digital services aimed to enhance your online presence —from branding to building a website that generates results for your business in more ways than one. 

If you’re looking for creative and innovative ways to improve your website performance, we’ve got you covered! Get in touch with us at +44 (0) 207 193 8931 and see how we can propel your growth by creating positive experiences for your website.