Benefits of Kentico from a Kentico Development Agency

Back in 2010, a Denver-based client hired us to research the best CMS for their new website. After weeks of research and numerous product demos and trial installations, we recommended Kentico as the best combination features, ease-of-use, and price. That client commissioned the first Kentico website we developed.

Since then, we’ve worked in numerous other platforms. Some are quite good. Others I would only give to my enemies. (I don’t really have enemies, but if I ever find some, I know exactly which CMS I’m recommending.) But for many enterprise-level websites, no platform has performed all-around like Kentico.

Now, in 2016, we’re helping our original Kentico client with a major site refresh, including an upgrade to the latest version of the CMS. Here are some of the main benefits of Kentico that lead us to making that original recommendation which hold true to this day:

Ease of Use

The entire point of a content management system is to be able to manage website content yourself – but many CMS implementations are so complicated or unintuitive that they fail at their core function. During Kentico demos, we frequently hear, “it’s so simple” when clients see the dashboard and page editing systems.

Here’s editing a page on our website:

You can click through a number of screenshots on Kentico’s website, and they also have an online demo.

All in One

Kentico’s built-in capabilities are eye popping.  Just to name a few:

• Versioning and workflow
• Ecommerce
• Email marketing
• Content personalization
• Marketing automation

See a full list of features here.

This is a tightly integrated online marketing platform. Many other content management systems rely on plugins (often built by third parties) to add even the most basic functionality.  Want ecommerce?  That’s a plugin. Want email marketing? That’s a plugin… that tries to integrate with an outside email vendor. Want marketing automation? Go to your marketing automation system, export the code, figure out how to make it work with your website forms… It’s no wonder these systems can be so hard to use.

Kentico does exactly what you need, with a consistent interface and none of the dreaded integration problems that can plague patchwork systems.

Security and Maintenance

New clients occasionally ask why they should pay for a CMS when well-known, free options exist. It’s a valid question, and my answer is always the same:

Free systems are typically built by volunteer developers. Many plugins for said system are written by different volunteers. A normal open-source website could easily be relying on ten different development groups for updates. Any time one of those components releases a security update, you should install it, test it and deploy it to production.

As an example, here is the WordPress security release log at the time of this writing:

And that’s just for the core system. Don’t forget about the 8-10 plugins you have installed – they each have their own security releases.

I don’t point this out to put down open-source software – no technical solution is maintenance-free. Our open-source clients typically require far more maintenance updates than our Kentico clients simply because they are dealing with 5-10 developers rather than one.

Why Kentico Might not be Right for You

“When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” said someone famous, my dad and countless others. Gravity is more of a toolbox, and we have expert developers in more than just one platform. You may not want to use Kentico if:

• You are a PHP shop
• Your site is static
• You have one very specific need – a standalone blog, an ecommerce-only site, etc.
• You already love your CMS and it’s serving you well

Still have questions?

Our Kentico experts would be happy to chat.