I know this might be a strange question but how do you see the future of ConcreteCMS? Here in Germany, Austria and Switzerland people “say to switch away to Wordpress” or another shissle. I personally recommend to every client to use ConcreteCMS because it’s super easy to use and brings a lot of features which good and modern websites need.
Of course there are not as many addons as for other CMS but, do you need them all? Rather less but good ones.
An agency from Germany said they fear that ConcreteCMS will disappear in the next 2–5 years…
I know it’s hard to get an answer but would like to get some thought, because I really love it. And so do my clients who use it.
I can’t speak for concrete CMS as a company, but for me personally I think concrete CMS is here to stay. WordPress offers something for some people. It’s very low-key. A lot of plugins are needed to run any type of website, whereas concrete seems to have constantly added key add-ons into the core of its system and therefore as as things have progressed there are less and less need for add-ons.
I’ve been building sites for 14 years on concrete and I’d say at the moment it’s the best it’s ever been.
Yes, maybe there are parts of the custom development areas that are not for people with very little experience, but in terms of a development system and in terms of being able to spin up quick sites, it’s excellent.
I would ask those agencies in Germany that you’re talking to. What systems do they use? Do they use WordPress? And if they do then it’s obvious why they’re recommending to go with WordPress and not Concrete CMS.
Only real concern would be what happens in 20 years when Franz or Andrew want to retire, but by then I doubt we will even have websites and who knows what technologies will be around.
As @TMDesigns notes, there will always be agencies with vested interests in rebuilding sites in wordpress. Often SEO ‘specialists’ with the bogus claim they need wordpress to achieve SEO results (and can hence take more of your money)
Portland Labs are using Concrete CMS for some big US Gov projects, so we can be sure Concrete CMS is here to stay. There are plenty of other major sites using Concrete CMS.
The update schedule for the core is now monthly, so we don’t need to wait for minor pull requests (though I don’t recommend updating your site core every month).
The documentation system has recently been reworked to provide version specific branches.
A rebuild of the addon and theme marketplace is currently being tested.
because I really love it. And so do my clients who use it.
Stay with that sentiment. That is why Concrete CMS has a future.
dear @TMDesigns@JohntheFish
thank you both for the very honest and professional opinion.
as said, i am a complete fan of the system although i experienced sometimes some breakdowns because i was incompetent
i try my best to make concreteCMS more famous in germany, austria and switzerland!
I have looked at ConcreteCMS again and again and have now switched here from Contao.
I know statements from agencies and especially the Wordpress warehouse.
I think the way Concrete is currently building up and integrating more and more add-ons into the core, we should have a very good and stable system for the next few years.
I really liked Contao, but the visual editing in the new version 9 motivated me to use Conrete to create my own websites, which have been waiting for a relaunch for a long time.
I’m just curious (since I’m not a developer (I’m more of a template designer)) whether I can conjure up a theme based on Atomik.
My opinion is biased as I work for PortlandLabs, but my thoughts from a personal capacity:
Concrete is not WP and never will be. If anything, WP seems to be trying to become Concrete It is a smaller player, but it does seem to be punching above its weight. There are broad initiatives in the works to ensure that Concrete stays relevant and competitive, many of which @JohntheFish already mentioned (and has good knowledge of since he’s a very active community member and helps run the PRB).
These are not the actions of a poorly-supported, dying project in my opinion, but rather a framework and ecosystem which is healthy and seeking ways to keep growing and improving.
My advice: take a look at the roadmap and if there’s something that you feel is missing that will keep Concrete going for the next 10+ years, create a feature request and start the conversation about it.
dear all, many thanks for your feedbacks. highly appreciated!
i am fully convinced that concreteCMS is really an outstanding CMS and has a great future because it’s so easy to handle and brings a looot with it!
i really hope there will be more developers and “partners” in germany, austria and switzerland. that would help
I paid a “so called” professional web company a couple of years ago to do a WP site to replace my old (very old) website. I can really only (and simply) describe the result as a complete mess. Full of add-ons / plugins.
I gave up and started a new site with concrete - it was like a breath of fresh air
You were lucky they didn’t build the site on a Wix platform!
No developer skills or knowledge required to ‘Assemble’ a Wix site.
Just copy and paste javascript modules which creates an extremely bloated site.
Working with Concrete5 since like 10 years, I can say that it’s a mixed bag for me. There’s a lot to love, but the development goes sometimes in pretty weird directions.
The basics are not solid enough and have seen often - quite unbelievable - steps backwards. Like the file manager alone drove customers of us so mad that they wanted something else (it’s good now). Or the complication Tasks brought on the table vs automated jobs.
If the system would make what is there watertight and especially more user friendly, that would be awesome. I wish it would improve on core systems as well to allow editors more simplicity in dealing with responsive content.
98% of projects I had to deal with needed better fundamentals and none of the fluff. They couldn’t and didn’t want to handle overly complicated workflows.
Frankly, we barely hang on to it, but switching is definitely in the cards. But let’s see, it has also seen worse times than right now.
thank you for your thoughts! any new updates on you end?
i see your points – nevertheless i have to say, there are plenty of other CMS which are much less userfriendly than ConcreteCMS. But sometimes for me it’s so slow compared to others.
Concrete CMS is slow. I think this is one of the most significant issues, which is why I have already sent 18 performance improvement pull requests. I’ll continue trying to improve performance, and other contributors will do the same.
From my point of view, I always prefer things that already contain the fundamentals of what I need. I trust the core developer team of any product more than any Add-On-Creators.
So if a product relies on “Plugins” to actually deliver the function I need and another product contains those functions and I might only need to customize them, I will choose the latter.
I also agree that concreteCMS and WP are not real competitors but I see many projects that would be much nicer built on concreteCMS instead of a warped-to-the-max-extended-with-25-plugins-that-have-been-customized WP box.
For something as little as a brochure site ok… but as soon as you need a little bit more functionality, concrete is a bliss.
Although I am struggling myself through incomplete documentation and changed function names, I know that the learning curve is not useless because with knowing how to build on top of concreteCMS, it gives a huge leverage to tackle all kind of challenged because of its well-structured modular codebase.
Maybe I am just lazy to read and write documentation and comments (not forum posts though), but I find concreteCMS very much easy to build with. Once everything is set up, it is also very easy to use for the customer.
The one group of people that seem to have a hard time are the customers that want to build themselves and did not yet grasp the complexity. They can be overwhelmed by the dasboard and where to find stuff.
I think this can (and is already partially) solved by good tutorials. I love concreteCMS dearly for several years now, keep learning with the adaptation of new stuff and fluff.
I think with a good project managment questioning, it will be easy to determine if concreteCMS is a good solution or if something else will do better.