Top 10 Content Management System Software Review

Top 10 Content Management System Software side-by-side comparison chart

See the TopTenREVIEWS comparison chart to compare feature sets, specifications and see why we ranked the products the way we did.

Click to see the full side-by-side comparison chart for the best content management system software products.

#1 eZ Publish

Winner of the TopTenReviews "Gold Award"

eZ Publish wins our "TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award" for content management system software by dint of it having the most check marks. That is not to say that it isn't truly powerful, but the "easy" part might leave some users frustrated.

Nonetheless, it is one of the world's leading Open Source Enterprise CMS and development architecture. Some users might consider this complex framework to be complicated, but generally agree that eZ Publish has one feature that stands above the rest: the ability to create different content classes in the administration interface.

Click for full eZ Publish review, specs, screenshots, video demos and the best deals.

#2 Joomla!

Winner of the TopTenReviews "Silver Award"

Joomla! is known as one of the leading and most powerful content management system software out there. Among our ten products that reflect some of the best-of-the-best, Joomla! ranks highly, earning our "TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award" for a wide range of built-in features and many, many free add-ons (plugins).

Click for full Joomla! review, specs, screenshots, video demos and the best deals.

#3 Drupal

Winner of the TopTenReviews "Bronze Award"

Drupal is content management system software that is much-beloved by a large and thriving developer community. The ever-evolving magnum opus of developer Dries Buytaert, the system, its modules, users and developers value flexibility, simplicity, utility, modularity, extensibility and maintainability in the code. The theory here seems to be that the core files are made light and feature-less - a blank canvas on which to create. It for these reasons that this CMS earns our "TopTenREVIEWS Bronze Award."

Click for full Drupal review, specs, screenshots, video demos and the best deals.

#4 WordPress.org

You might not think of WordPress as content management system software, but it does indeed function as one (at WordPress.org). For non-technical online business people, this is a great option. Known primarily as a weblog program (at WordPress.com), it now offers much more in the way of content management.

Click for full WordPress.org review, specs, screenshots, video demos and the best deals.

#5 Movable Type

You might recognize the Movable Type content management system software as looking a bit like blogging engines TypePad or Vox. That's because they're all developed by the good people at Six Apart Ltd.

Click for full Movable Type review, specs, screenshots, video demos and the best deals.

#6 Expression Engine

Expression Engine content management system software is our one proprietary program we reviewed here. Developed by EllisLab, Inc., it's a good-looking, authoritative system that is popular with users.

It's designed for individuals, companies and non-profits creating content-driven sites.

Click for full Expression Engine review, specs, screenshots, video demos and the best deals.

#7 Mambo

Mambo is content management system software focused on business - which means it will handle all your content as well as offer the full complement of commerce options as free plugins. Comparitively, Mambo is considered by some to be a "designer's CMS" meaning that the design elements you can tweak or add are many, without it being as developer-heavy as Drupal. If anything the criticism of Mambo seems to be that it is too light on features.

Click for full Mambo review, specs, screenshots, video demos and the best deals.

#8 Vivvo CMS

We found Vivvo CMS easy to use and a great content management system for publishing articles and news. It is exceptional at managing multiple contributors with a variety of permission levels and access rights. We think that after getting through the initial challenge of setting up your website correctly that you will find adding content, managing articles and contributors and categories surprisingly easy for all of your site's contributors, no coding knowledge required.

Click for full Vivvo CMS review, specs, screenshots, video demos and the best deals.

#9 Textpattern

Textpattern is content management system software that focuses on the content. It's really not quite a CMS but not just a blog engine either. Its users are devoted to the marked separation between content and design - which is the traditional mission of a CMS.

#10 b2evolution

b2evolution has been described as either a hulking monstrosity of a multi-user, multi-blog engine or a somewhat thin, yet powerful content management system software "centered around the blog concept." For our purposes we've reviewed it as the latter. If you want to perform any customization at all with this system (beyond simple CSS) you will need to speak the language of the PHP tribe. If you don't know what we're talking about here head on over to the WordPress review%u2026