CMS or no CMS?

What exactly is a CMS?

A CMS (content management system) is software on your web server that lets you manage the content of your website yourself. You log in to an admin environment and edit texts, images and pages there. Well-known examples are WordPress and a Joomla. Without a CMS, your site consists of ready-made pages; changes are then carried out by your web developer.

Where does the real difference lie?

The heart of the trade-off is an exchange. A CMS gives you independence: you can publish at any moment. Set against that is ongoing maintenance , because the core, themes and extensions have to be kept up to date and secure. Building without a CMS delivers calm, speed and security , but for changes you depend on someone else.

When is a CMS the better choice?

• You publish new articles, vacancies or news items weekly or daily.
• Several colleagues work on the site and you want to arrange roles and permissions.
• You have a webshop with many products, stock and orders.
• You want connections to other systems through ready-made extensions.

When does a website without a CMS work better?

• Your content is largely stable: services, about us, contact, references.
• You value maximum speed and a minimal attack surface.
• You do not want annual maintenance costs for software you do not need.
• You like the idea of someone else taking care of the changes properly.

You can read how such a site works technically under HTML websites without a CMS.

A simple rule of thumb

Ask yourself one question: how often do I really want to change something myself? If the answer is “almost daily”, a CMS pays for itself. If it is “a few times a year”, then with a CMS you are structurally paying for management you barely use — and a static site is usually cheaper, faster and safer.

Still in doubt?

You will find a more extensive comparison, including costs and vulnerabilities, at a CMS or not. If you also want to weigh up the environmental side, take a look at the comparison of CMS versus HTML. The choice is not irreversible: a site can later be moved to a CMS after all, or the other way round — how that last option works in practice is set out at Converting a CMS website to HTML.