Best Content Management Software (CMS) Systems of 2025 – Forbes Advisor

Almost every small business owner I talk to about getting online is interested in e-commerce, so I think it’s important to include e-commerce CMS programs in our best list. BigCommerce’s interface isn’t as sleek as Shopify on the front end, but it makes up for it with flexibility, customization and the ability to manage multiple stores from one account for a discounted extra fee.

BigCommerce offers a ton of flexibility and scalability that lets e-commerce stores invest without worrying about hitting a roadblock later on as their needs increase.

With attractive entry-level pricing that includes a lot of features others charge extra for, such as POS integration, blogging and unlimited file storage and bandwidth, BigCommerce plans grow with your sales. However, that does mean that when you hit sales caps, you’ll have to upgrade plans even if you don’t need the extra features.

Learn more: Read our full BigCommerce review.

Reminiscent of WordPress.org’s page builder, BigCommerce has a minimal learning curve to set up a store.

I was impressed with how simple tasks like setting up conditional offers were with BigCommerce, and the learning curve is minimal for getting a shop set up. I especially appreciate the automatic payment testing feature that is preset to help new shop owners during shop creation.

The only quirky thing that may trip some up is that some theme features, such as carousels, are edited in a different section than the main design editor, similar to how some WordPress themes operate, instead of how you might expect a graphic-based editor to work.

WordPress.org powers around 40% of the web because it is an outstanding generalist that can work with almost all business types. However, that doesn’t mean it is right for everyone. I recommend WordPress very often (but with caveats) because small businesses can use it to DIY on a budget, and it has the potential to power the company through every growth stage.

For example, hosting is not included, and it requires more technical work than a website builder (which is a type of CMS itself), but the learning curve is quite manageable for most.

WordPress.org’s flexibility and easy integration with third-party tools through plugins is also its Achilles heel. Code bloat, dueling plugins that don’t play nice with each other, security holes and developer-abandoned tools are just some of the problems the reliance on external tools brings.

If you aren’t careful about what plugins you choose, it is very easy to slow your WordPress website to a crawl, introduce errors, give hackers a superhighway into your site, use all of your host memory and even break your site completely.

Learn more: Read our full WordPress.org review.

Some controls in WordPress can be theme-dependent on how they are customized.

I’ve used WordPress in building many websites and the biggest things that always strike me are how absolutely clunky the text editor is, how many back-and-forth menu jumps I have to make for some tasks and how almost nothing can be done without plugins.

A part of that is that much of how you work within a theme (that is, where you edit certain parts and some of the content management) is controlled by the theme developer and the tools they used in building the theme, so there isn’t any standardization.

While WordPress.org is a powerhouse, it is definitely not an open-and-run-with-it option. There is absolutely a learning curve that tends to get glossed over in many reviews—perhaps because it is so popular, people are afraid to point out the downsides.

HubSpot’s CMS is part of its larger ecosystem of business tools geared toward marketing and growing your audience, as such, it has some great features that other CMSs tend to lack. For example, I really love that it includes SEO recommendations, analytics and live chat built-in even on the introductory free plan.

Beyond the basics of creating and managing content, HubSpot CMS (part of the Content Hub module plan set) really shines in helping you build your audience and grow your business. That focus on business means a higher level of services in many cases, such as 99.95% uptime guarantee, being able to connect a custom domain even on the free plan and a business email inbox.

However, e-commerce is one arena where it falls a bit short, and many users wind up integrating outside e-commerce specialist platforms to make up that shortfall.

Overall, as part of a family of modules, it gives small businesses a way to add on services as they grow, rather than being stuck between choosing an affordable platform and a fully featured one. HubSpot is a great best-of-both-worlds option for many SMBs.

HubSpot includes a well-laid out content management dashboard suitable for beginners and experts.

Clarity is one of the best ways to describe working with HubSpot. I don’t spend a lot of time guessing where to go next anytime I start working with a new module. For the Content CMS, I especially like how easy it is to add HubSpot features to other channels such as live chat to social media channels or other platform websites.

Shopify focuses primarily on e-commerce, but it also includes supplemental content management for blogging. While it includes powerful e-commerce content management for just about any type of business imaginable, including creating your own print-on-demand and custom order marketplace, customizing the look of your shop can be restrictive.

The drag-and-drop visual editor is important for shop owners without technical teams, but most Shopify shop owners I know need to hire development help more and more frequently as their shops grow to handle even small customization situations.

That said, for smaller shops, the vast library of extensions provides functionality hard to find elsewhere and makes it possible to connect other e-commerce tools so small shop owners can compete against bigger stores.

Learn more: Read our full Shopify review.

While Shopify’s setup process includes a helpful guide, the controls don’t always function properly or intuitively.

Testing Shopify always feels like a mixed bag. Setting up a basic product catalog and connecting a payment processor gateway is straightforward and to the point. However, anything that doesn’t quite fit the mold can be problematic to customize.

For example, one shop owner I’ve worked with allows others to create their own profiles and upload designs the shop will sell and print for them. That feature winds up with very restrictive file size limits that the shop’s other print-on-demand (POD) offerings for individuals aren’t limited by.

One of the website builder-style CMSs on my list, Squarespace focuses on e-commerce but has plenty of features for blogging and supporting website pages as well. Like most website builder-style CMS platforms, you don’t see many back-end controls; instead, it focuses on drag-and-drop editing on a “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) graphic interface.

Designed to take the technical skill requirements out of e-commerce, Squarespace is accessible for anyone regardless of website or e-commerce experience. However, because it is a mostly free-form design environment, it’s easy to miss important supporting steps. For example, new online shop owners might miss the need for filling out SEO metadata, alt text for images and not optimize image sizes for web use.

Likewise, it isn’t portable. While you gain the freedom from installing software on a web host and dealing with cPanel, you lose the option to migrate to another web host, so cost over time could be a concern. Similarly, you may have problems with development if you need customization outside the included extensions and functions.

Learn more: Read our full Squarespace review.

Squarespace controls generally simplify most tasks for beginners.

Every time I work in Squarespace, I wind up scratching my head over the lack of customization. I love how usable it is for those with no coding experience, but the limitations on adjusting layouts seem arbitrary when compared to other website builder CMS platforms such as Showit. However, I do like the ease of setup for the e-commerce features, which is Squarespace’s main focus.

Joomla is a powerful, scalable CMS, but it does require a good bit of tolerance for technical work, and the interface is not remotely as user-friendly as WordPress. If WordPress has ever made you feel overwhelmed, Joomla is not a good choice for you. However, if you are a small design agency and need something more flexible than WordPress.org, Joomla can be a great option.

I especially like the combination of better security and a robust user community, where most CMS platforms seem to fall into one or the other without being able to bring both sides together. There is a well-laid-out dashboard to handle back-end tasks, and built-in tools such as caching are robust. However, front-end design isn’t as fleshed out, so you’ll often find yourself resorting to manual coding or using extra tools to add design shortcuts until things are set up.

While I don’t recommend Joomla for a DIY solution, it is a powerful WordPress alternative for agencies working with clients that need in-depth customization and better security.

Learn more: Read our full Joomla! review.

Joomla’s dashboard is well laid out for some tasks but others require drilling down into less-organized menus.

Joomla is admittedly not my favorite CMS to work with. A big part of that is Joomla’s setup is very different from the workflow of CMS platforms I use more frequently, and swapping between logic sets can be time-consuming.

If someone is brand new to CMS, I would never recommend Joomla as the first system to try. That said, for developers and designers, Joomla documentation to help you through is top-notch, and once you get into the swing of it, the flexibility is absolutely worth the initial effort.