Overview
What is Concrete CMS?
Concrete CMS (formerly Concrete5) is a free and open source, PHP built content management system for content on the web and also for intranets. It is optimized to support the creation of online magazines and newspapers.
Want a super easy and solid swiss army knife of a website, use Concrete CMS
Feature packed, intuitive to use
Concrete CMS has nicelly choosen it's name, Concrete is really concrete
Concrete CMS is your ultimate choice of CMS!
ConcreteCMS: the Best!
My go to CMS for years
Great CMS system for medium to large websites.
Best CMS
A awesome tool for a better and inclusive web
Amazing CMS, easy to use for both developers and admins
Great value for a quick, easy website
Powerful, easy-to-use website content management
Concrete5 Is The Way to Go for Non-Programmers
As a …
Powerful for developers, easy for site editors
Works as expected, a bit resource intensive
Awards
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Popular Features
- Admin section (40)10.0100%
- Page templates (40)10.0100%
- Mobile optimization / responsive design (39)9.797%
- WYSIWYG editor (42)9.292%
Pricing
What is Concrete CMS?
Concrete CMS (formerly Concrete5) is a free and open source, PHP built content management system for content on the web and also for intranets. It is optimized to support the creation of online magazines and newspapers.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos
Concrete CMS DevOps Hosting
Features
Security
This component helps a company minimize the security risks by controlling access to the software and its data, and encouraging best practices among users.
- 9.5Role-based user permissions(38) Ratings
Permissions to perform actions or access or modify data are assigned to roles, which are then assigned to users, reducing complexity of administration.
Platform & Infrastructure
Features related to platform-wide settings and structure, such as permissions, languages, integrations, customizations, etc.
- 9.7API(31) Ratings
An API (application programming interface) provides a standard programming interface for connecting third-party systems to the software for data creation, access, updating and/or deletion.
- 9.7Internationalization / multi-language(30) Ratings
The software supports multiple languages, countries, currencies, etc.
Web Content Creation
Features that support the creation of website content.
- 9.2WYSIWYG editor(42) Ratings
What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get editing tool allows users to build pages without writing code.
- 10Code quality / cleanliness(37) Ratings
Code generated by WYSIWYG editor is clean and validates according to W3C standards.
- 10Admin section(40) Ratings
The admin page is easy to navigate and use.
- 10Page templates(40) Ratings
The CMS has standard webpage templates or types of web pages (e.g. homepage, article page, interior page, blog page, etc.); users can also build custom templates.
- 4.4Library of website themes(38) Ratings
A library of website frameworks or themes is available as a starting point for building a website.
- 9.7Mobile optimization / responsive design(39) Ratings
The CMS helps users build webpages that work well on mobile devices – whether m-dot pages or responsively designed pages.
- 7.8Publishing workflow(37) Ratings
The software allows users to set up a custom workflow for updating the website, including approval processes.
- 6.5Form generator(39) Ratings
Users can build website forms for visitors to fill out.
Web Content Management
Features for managing website content
- 8.8Content taxonomy(39) Ratings
Users can create multiple levels and types of content categories including tags.
- 9SEO support(39) Ratings
The CMS helps users create the right website infrastructure (pagination, page headers, titles, meta tags, url structure, etc.) to increase the site’s visibility in search engine results.
- 6.1Bulk management(39) Ratings
Users can change an attribute on a group of documents or sites all at once through features such as global search and replace, making bulk changes easier.
- 5.6Availability / breadth of extensions(39) Ratings
There is a broad library of extensions, plug-ins, modules or add-ons that allow users to easily customize their websites without building custom code.
- 5.6Community / comment management(39) Ratings
Users can put post/page comments through an approval process, auto-approve commenters based on their email addresses, block commenters by IP address, delete comments, etc.
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Concrete CMS?
Concrete CMS (formerly concrete5) is an Open Source Content Management System for teams. The vendor states users can run a secure website that content contributors will love using with Concrete CMS. Concrete is a platform that grows with the user's needs.
The user experience is built around in-context editing and is designed to be as easy to use as a word processor so that users spend less time training people, and less time having to fix things.
As an open source framework the user can build complex applications as features like permissions, workflow, file management, calendar, forms, SEO and so much more are built right in. A marketplace of add-ons & themes and an active community can help quickly deliver solutions using Concrete CMS.
The vendor boasts fortune 500 companies, nonprofits, individuals and the U.S. Army as users of Concrete CMS to power critical parts of their web presence.
Concrete CMS Features
Web Content Creation Features
- Supported: WYSIWYG editor
- Supported: Code quality / cleanliness
- Supported: Content versioning
- Supported: Admin section
- Supported: Page templates
- Supported: Library of website themes
- Supported: Mobile optimization / responsive design
- Supported: Publishing workflow
- Supported: Form generator
- Supported: Content scheduling
Web Content Management Features
- Supported: Internal content search
- Supported: Content taxonomy
- Supported: SEO support
- Supported: Browser compatibility
- Supported: Bulk management
- Supported: Page caching
- Supported: Availability / breadth of extensions
- Supported: E-commerce / shopping cart extension
- Supported: Community / comment management
- Supported: Import / export
Platform & Infrastructure Features
- Supported: API
- Supported: Internationalization / multi-language
Security Features
- Supported: Role-based user permissions
- Supported: Multi-factor authentication
- Supported: User-level audit trail
- Supported: Version history
- Supported: Simple roll-back capabilities
CMS programming language or framework Features
- Supported: PHP
Concrete CMS Screenshots
Concrete CMS Videos
Concrete CMS Technical Details
Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Windows, Linux, Mac |
Mobile Application | No |
Supported Countries | anywhere |
Supported Languages | arabic, bangla, bosnian, chinese, czech, danish, dutch, english, estonian, finnish, french, german, greek, hebrew, hungarian, icelandic, indonesian, italian, japanese, korean, lithuanian, malay, persian, polish, portuguese, romanian, russian, slovak, spanish, swedish, thai, turkish, vietnamese, welsh |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(84)Community Insights
- Pros
- Cons
Smooth User Interface: Many users have praised the smooth user interface of the product, stating that it is intuitive and easy to navigate. Several reviewers have mentioned that they appreciate the clean design and well-organized layout, which enhances their overall experience.
Reliable Performance: Numerous customers have commended the reliable performance of the product. Several reviewers have stated that it consistently meets their expectations and performs tasks efficiently without any glitches or slowdowns. Users have expressed satisfaction with its stability and responsiveness.
Versatile Features: A significant number of users have highlighted the versatility of features offered by the product. Some reviewers have mentioned that it provides a wide range of functionalities, allowing them to accomplish various tasks effectively. The availability of customizable options has also been appreciated by several customers, as it caters to individual preferences and requirements.
Confusing User Interface: Many users have expressed frustration with the confusing and difficult-to-navigate user interface of Concrete5. They find it challenging to complete tasks efficiently due to the lack of intuitive design and organization.
Slow Rendering of Admin Pages: Some users have reported experiencing slow rendering of admin pages, particularly when using older computers. This sluggish performance hampers their productivity and can be frustrating during day-to-day usage.
Limited Customization Options: Users have voiced their concerns about the limited customization options in Concrete5. They feel that these options are buried within the software, making it harder for them to personalize their websites according to their specific preferences and requirements.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 59)- create and publish user-defined database content
- easy and intuitive for site editors *and* developers
- standards compliant and highly secure
- was built from the ground up to be a versatile and robust development environment
- reinvigorate and grow the (addon) developer community
- expand and refine the documentation/education program
- grow brand awareness
Feature packed, intuitive to use
- Easy and intuitive for site editors
- Standards compliant code
- Up to date and secure
- Limitless, easy to extend
- Lots of functionality out of the box
- Documentation could be more extensive
- Need to grow community to encourage developers to sell more in the marketplace
- Build brand awareness
- in context editing
- plugin programming
- web security
- modification with mouse
- i don't see
Concrete CMS is your ultimate choice of CMS!
- Permission and workflow
- Ease of adding features by Symfony and composer
- Large enterprise intranet
- Big enough global community
- University websites
- Community
- Hosting service
ConcreteCMS: the Best!
My go to CMS for years
- Great UI for users to create content
- No need to deal with the maintenance structure, but when you do it is well designed
- Doesn't most everything you need from the base install
- The user forum needs a shake up. Can be hard to get activity on a thread
- Some more complex features aren't being developed by the community and need to be
- Needs more support to overcome the preference for the 800 pound gorilla in the sector
Great CMS system for medium to large websites.
- n webpage content editing.
- Very easy to use and understand.
- Short learning curve for Web Developers.
- PHP Based CMS system.
- Improve ability to create web page navigation
Best CMS
- Many built-in functionalities that makes it a complete CMS
- It constantly keeps on developing and the community is very active
- It can be extended very quick and easy and is a solid framework
- Should be known better
- Traning and certification
- Partner program
A awesome tool for a better and inclusive web
- Easy: Installation, configuration, customization and to do improvements.
- A great community that helps everyone in trouble (if it happens).
- Tons of add-ons and great numbers of theme options (could be more, but is ok).
- A few options to customize a theme on core system.
- A few themes selling on market place.
- Small community around the world.
Amazing CMS, easy to use for both developers and admins
- As a dev, the Page object (coupled with page attributes, nav menus and page lists) makes structuring a website or web app a dream. The separation of page templates from page types also helps, the former being about layout while the latter is more conceptual.
- As an admin, you pretty much have as much control as the developers of the site decide to give you.
- The versioning system allows admins to roll changes back and work on changes before publishing them.
- The permissions system is exceptionally powerful, allowing roles and/or individual users to be included or excluded from each permission.
- The attributes system allows pages, files and users to be given custom properties of various types (e.g. text, image, colour).
- Lack of a REST API for using as a headless CMS (although I believe this will change with the next major version).
- No built-in way that I'm aware of to integrate React and/or Vue components.
Great value for a quick, easy website
- Has a great community
- It's open source
- It's free
- Has an add-on market for features not built in
- Huge time saver
- Add-on market could be bigger
- Documentation can sometimes be lacking
Powerful, easy-to-use website content management
- Complete CMS out of the box - extensions not required for basic functionality.
- Modern PHP development framework - build whatever you need to.
- User friendly editing environment - clients love using Concrete5.
- Knowledgeable, supportive and friendly community.
- Documentation is gradually improving, this needs to continue.
- Design and styling controls could be updated.
Concrete5 Is The Way to Go for Non-Programmers
As a web development company, we've seen the move from static HTML web pages to more CMS style pages. This has been for both our clients, who have requested the ability to maintain, update and add their own content, as well as ourselves to be able to better manage development and deployment. Almost all of our projects over the past two years have been done using Concrete5.
- Page rollback and backup functions are great features for clients.
- Easy extendability with package system.
- Fast setup on both local and remote web hosting servers, either via "one button" installs or manually.
- From a designers point of view, Concrete5 is very easy to re-theme with your own custom web design. Any web designer with a basic understanding of HTML and CSS can re-theme a website.
- End users can update their pages using built in forms. It's as easy as using MS Word.
- Allow end users to clear cache when updating pages.
- Needs a few more built in forms.
- The CMS is not multilingual by default. Even though I managed to 'hack' it so, it would be nice to have it included.
- It'd be nice to make use of custom PHP modules through shortcodes more straight forward. It seems the hooks are a bit contrived.
Powerful for developers, easy for site editors
I've been using this CMS since 2009, and over a decade later, I'd still choose it again in a heartbeat. The team behind Concrete5 is always pushing the platform further, and taking bold, brave steps to make it a world-class system. As a developer, it's a breeze working with Concrete5. The elegant architecture makes it easy to create complex add-ons and functionality that is clean, fast, and future-proof.
- Comprehensive editing tools for site owners.
- User-friendly and intuitive interface.
- Extendable architecture for developers.
- Solid community forum for asking questions and getting free and paid help.
- Good number of third-party add-ons and themes to extend the core features.
- Regular news updates from the core team about platform improvements and strategic direction.
- Average quality and depth of developer documentation.
If you have a large inventory of products and want to build a comprehensive e-commerce site, then there are other CMSes that tackle that challenge better than Concrete5. However, if you only have a few basic products, then this can work very well.
Works as expected, a bit resource intensive
- It is quite extensible.
- There are many add-ons and themes.
- It makes it easy for even non-technical people to be able to update the content on the website.
- The extensions for older versions could be better marked to show if they are compatible with the current version.
- It could stand to have a bit of code optimizing to make it less resource intensive.
- It would be nice if there was a way to import content from my development server to my production server.
- Out-of-the-box functionalities like user management, search, SEO
- Edibility by users.
- Simplicity for non digital natives.
- Backend is for inexperienced users overwhelming.
- Management of custom models can be intensive.
- Frontend in edit-mode is sometimes unresponsive and irritates inexperienced users.
A CMS with clean, well-implemented code and good modular approach, but limited marketplace.
- Clean code
- Modular
- Internationalization
- Themes
- Marketplace needs to grow
- Larger marketshare would drive popularity
- Themes by experienced designers would be a plus
Powerful, Extendable, User-Friendly
- User-Friendly
- Extendable
- Secure
- Learning Curve for Development
- Can be complex
Powerful, Flexible Open-Source CMS
- Flexible, easy to manage websites.
- In-context editor that users and site managers love.
- Secure codebase.
- Development transparency from core team.
- Open-source license model.
- Extensible architecture.
- Ready-to-use out of the box.
- Better documentation from core developers.
- Better display of dashboard details.
- More name recognition.
Amazing and really well thought out CMS. Works out of the box!!
- Works out of the box.
- Packed with Features.
- Simple to use with brilliant UX/UI.
- Great code base to work with.
- Some documentation can be confusing.
- Not enough people using it.
- Has no ecommerce.
Concrete5 - the Wordpress beater
- Ease of use
- Ease of installation
- Highly configurable
- Highly extensible
- Poor developer documentation
- Could do with editor profiles already added so permissions dont have to be set
- Doesn't have a very large marketplace so addons need to be created from scratch
Great for end users. Good for developers.
- Easy for non technical users to edit content
- Curated marketplace of free and paid extensions at a fair price
- Good platform for custom development and further integration
- Reliable and secure
- Easy to manage
- Too much wisdom is lost in the depths of Slack
- With each new release, the infrastructure increases in complexity and leaves the documentation further behind.
- Effective and easy to publish and edit content. You enter the page where you want to edit content, choose edit mode and all editable content is there for you to change. Great overview with sitemap feature, you get full view of your website structure.
- Extremly flexible, you can define page-types and assign custom attributes to each.
- Gives developer full controll over display, and lets the editor plot in correct values.
- Easy to maintain, good security. No need for external plugins in order to preform advanced features.
- Best plugin is no plugin.
- Not suitable for webshops. Sure there are plugins for that such as WooCommerce on WP, but that's a poor choice. Best to go for PrestaShop or full-blood E-Commerce solution.
- No list view edit of the pages such as Joomla, would make it more effective.
Whatever you imagine, you can build anything on it. All you need is a descent developer that has a few brain cells.
Our Experience with Concrete5
- Concrete5 has a modular editing system, so you can edit the pages without having knowledge of coding. You just pick the module you want to insert or edit and click where you want it to go.
- You are able to edit modules in an HTML format if you would like to, so if you have the knowledge you can have even more control over your modules.
- You can also edit entire page themes by selecting them from the page layout menu. This allows you a greater versatility of the pages on your site.
- The file sorting system can be clunky at times. It can be difficult to find the correct file when you are searching for files you have previously uploaded.
- Sometimes the page will crash in the middle of editing, and there isn't an autosave feature to backup your work.
- Without proper training on how to use Concrete5, you can easily get lost or overwhelmed. It's not exactly intuitive right away.
Great Alternative to Wordpress for small projects
- The live editing (and its ease of use) for every page is THE best thing Concrete5 ships with.
- It is easy to use for (tech-unsavvy) users and still extendable for developers.
- The ecosystem for add-ons is small compared to WordPress, so finding solutions is harder or they get updated less frequently.
- The time between updates is slow and lengthy, which can lead to security risks.