Considering Wordpress for your company's next website? Before you get too far, ask yourself why you're considering WordPress in the first place I bet there's a good chance it's because it's the only CMS (Content Management System) you know by name. And if you've heard of it, you probably heard that it's free and easy to setup. Both things are mostly true. But (there's always a 'but')...

You probably don't know:

1. WordPress is less secure and its popularity makes a frequent target of security attacks and hacks
2. WordPress has a huge ecosystem of plugins and 3rd party tools, which can also lead to security vulnerabilities and poor performance.
3. It is .PHP based, which is not the preferred language of many professional developers.
4. It is harder to extend with custom programming than some of its .Net based counterparts.
5. You'll probably still need to hire a designer/developer to help design, configure, optimize, and launch.
6. It won't end up being as easy to use for day to day content updates as you had hoped.

Don't get me wrong, Wordpress is fine for many sites. It powers a whopping 30 percent of the Web for a reason. But...

We think Umbraco is better.

To quote one of our senior Developers, Frank Branicky: "Wordpress forces a site to be a blog first and shoehorn anything else into that structure. Umbraco comes at it from the other direction." And he's right. WordPress started as a blogging platform that designers and developers sort of morphed into something else. But when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Umbraco has all the CMS features comparable to WordPress. So I won't belabor that point.

• Create, edit, delete pages
• Schedule Publish/unpublish:
  So that Labor Day post come down exactly at midnight (while you are in bed).
• Version history, rollback:
  Go back and restore any previous version of any page, see who made the changes
• Preview on mobile:
  See your new page on different mobile devices before you publish.
• Multilingual site/pages
• User Roles to manage what people can and cannot do
  Both for the administration of your website (writer, editor, admin, etc.) but also for public users, so you can restrict access to sensitive content on your site.

But here's where Umbraco really shines:

The Image Cropper

If you've ever had to upload an image for your website (and you aren't a graphics professional with years of Photoshop experience), you've probably done it wrong. Your image was the wrong size, or it was too big and took forever to download. Well no more. Umbraco automatically generates all the right image sizes and quality settings needed. It'll even let you decide where to keep the focus of the crops.

Page builder

WYSIWYG page editors are the worst. That's why we love the idea of a page builder. Create complex page layouts without touching HTML by selecting from a list of 'building block' components...just add words, pictures, and video. This will change your CMS life.

Custom templates for more structure

Sometimes the page builder is too open-ended. There are some pages where a more consistent structure is called for, such as a product detail page, or team bio. Umbraco lets you have both. Templates are custom to your needs but enforce consistency.

Build your own forms and workflows (without a developer). If you can build pages, why shouldn't you be able to build forms? Umbraco has one of the best forms editors we've seen. Need a special landing page with a unique form that only sends the results to Linda from marketing? No problem. You can have that up and running in less than 20 minutes.

Manage 301 redirects from within the CMS

Did you know that when you move, rename, or delete a page, you should create what's known as a "301 redirect"? If you didn't, you need to know it's important for SEO and that on some websites, you need your developer to do this for you. But in Umbraco, you can view, create, and manage all the 301s yourself in a simple editor.

Microsoft .Net technology, customizations, integrations

Umbraco uses Microsoft's .Net framework, making it a powerful platform, especially if you want to integrate into other systems such as your CRM or ERP. Or, if you need to incorporate your own custom business rules, Umbraco can be easily extended by your development team.

Open source means not just free, but a strong community of developers and support Umbraco is open source which means it is free to use, with no recurring license fees. Your costs are limited to 3rd party costs for things like custom programming, plugins, and hosting. It also has a strong community of developers who are keeping it up to date with new features and security updates.

Aztek has a starter kit which cuts down on development overhead and code bloat.

We've got lots of experience with Umbraco and have developed a starter kit to make sure we can give our clients access to all the neat things we've built, right out of the gate. This means you'll get more features and value out of your new CMS with us.

See it for yourself.

Not convinced yet? Contact us and we'd be happy to give you a demo and answer any other questions about Umbraco that you may have.