Strengths

Weaknesses

WORDPRESS

• Huge developer community with plenty of documentation and tutorials available
• Free and paid plugins and specialized themes make it possible to create virtually any kind of site with WordPress
• User-friendly dashboard for managing content

• Can be overkill for basic sites
• A standard installation can have a lot of security issues, and is very vulnerable to attack without additional security measures
• No official support outside of user forums, where you may or may not get an official response

JOOMLA

• User authentication can be done with OpenID, Google, and LDAP, among others
• More than 7000 extensions
• Very active user community and tons of documentation available

• Back-end isn’t as user-friendly as some CMSs, though it’s still very usable
• Lack of high-quality themes when compared to some other CMSs
• Can be overkill for simple sites

DRUPAL

• Robust community support, including IRC channels and face-to-face meetups
• More than 6,000 modules, making Drupal highly extensible
• A large number of companies offering commercial support for Drupal

• Can be overkill for simple sites
• A lack of really high-quality free and commercial themes (there are some, but not nearly as many as there are for some CMSs)
• Theming system is fairly complicated

ExpressionEngine

• Commercial support
• Focus on security, with no major security breaches ever
• No restrictions on how a site can be designed

• Cost is high, especially for commercial sites
• Can be overkill for simple or smaller sites
• No interactive demo to try it out before you purchase

TextPattern

• Really easy to use interface
• Well suited for sites of all sizes
• Really great documentation, including a full online manual

• Smaller community
• Fewer plugins than the more popular CMSs
• Relatively few high-quality templates available

Contao

• No restrictions on how you can design a site
• Not much learning curve for content editors and authors
• Good built-in modules

• Hardly any themes available, high-quality or not
• Back-end is sluggish and not particularly well-thought-out
• Because of back-end setup, it’s probably better-suited to smaller sites without dozens or hundreds of pages

SilverStripe

• Basic functions in the back-end are easy to perform
• Designers are free to use HTML and CSS however they want to design their site
• Developed on open standards, so it plays well with others

• Not everything is intuitive in the back-end, which increases the learning curve
• Only a little over 150 extensions/modules
• Not many high-quality themes availabl

Umbraco

• Free and paid tutorials and support
• Powerful and flexible for both websites and intranets
• An open API

• Primary add-ons are paid
• No demo available to try before you download
• Not really any prebuilt themes available for the front-end

concrete5

• Easy to convert a basic HTML site to a concrete5 site in minutes
• Active and growing developer community
• Offer business-class hosting that includes support

• Many useful and basic plugins are quite costly
• Almost all of the best themes are paid
• Paid support is expensive if you don’t host with them ($125 and up)

CushyCMS

• Incredibly easy for content managers to edit their content
• Free plan is suitable for many users
• Very easy and quick to get started

• Paid plan could be pricey if you’re not using it for multiple sites
• Email support only available for the paid version
• Too basic for many types of sites or particularly large sites