I’ve recently been exploring different CMS platforms for upcoming web projects and Concrete CMS caught my attention again after not using it for quite a while.
What I really like so far is the in-context editing experience and the fact that a lot of useful functionality seems built in instead of relying heavily on plugins for everything. The admin side also feels cleaner than some other CMS platforms I’ve tested recently.
For developers and site owners currently using Concrete CMS:
How has your experience been with recent versions?
Is the community still active enough for long-term support and development?
How does it compare nowadays against platforms like WordPress, Drupal, or Craft CMS for medium-sized business websites?
Any major pros/cons you think newcomers should know before committing to it?
I’d especially love to hear real-world experiences from people actively building and maintaining sites with it today.
I’ve been actively building with Concrete CMS for many years, and from a developer perspective I can honestly say the recent versions have steadily improved in a very practical way.
The editing experience is still one of its biggest strengths. Clients immediately understand in-context editing, and that reduces training/support costs significantly compared to many other CMS platforms.
From the development side, the framework has matured nicely as well. Modern PHP support, cleaner architecture, Composer integration, better DX overall, and continuous refinement across releases have made long-term maintenance much more comfortable than it used to be.
As for the community: it’s definitely smaller than WordPress or Drupal, but still very active where it matters. PortlandLabs continues to lead development, and many long-time community members (myself included) are still actively contributing, maintaining packages, helping in forums, and supporting client projects. The ecosystem may be smaller, but it’s stable and experienced.
Regarding positioning against other CMS platforms, my personal view is:
WordPress is still great for very small/simple sites where speed of deployment and plugin availability matter most.
Drupal remains strong for very large enterprise/government-level systems with highly complex requirements.
But for medium-sized business websites, member portals, corporate sites, and custom web applications, Concrete CMS continues to hit a really good balance between usability, flexibility, and development efficiency.
One downside newcomers should know: the marketplace ecosystem is smaller than the major CMS platforms, so you may occasionally find fewer ready-made add-ons/themes.
That said, I actually think this matters less than it did a few years ago.
With AI-assisted development, learning curves are lower, boilerplate implementation is faster, and custom development has become far more approachable. In our company, we also publish open-source AI agent skills for Concrete CMS development, and they dramatically accelerate scaffolding, implementation, and maintenance work.
Ironically, I think this is one of the best moments in years to seriously evaluate Concrete CMS again.
Another important point: Concrete CMS tends to age very gracefully. We maintain projects that have evolved over many years, and the upgrade/maintenance experience is often far less painful than people expect. That long-term operational stability becomes extremely valuable for business websites that are expected to live for 5–10+ years.
So if someone is looking for:
strong editorial UX,
reasonable developer freedom,
maintainable custom implementations,
and a CMS that sits comfortably between “simple blogging platform” and “heavy enterprise framework,”
Concrete CMS is still a very compelling choice today.
I’ve been using Concrete CMS exclusively since 2009. Back in my freelancing days, my clients were sold on the ease-of-use for in-context editing.
Concrete CMS has evolved significantly over the years. Some of the functionality currently available in the core were once paid add-ons for older versions (i.e. Multi-site support, multi-lingual support).
There’s significant value packed in, providing a solution with plenty of flexible options.
As a developer, I have always found working with Concrete to be much less complicated than other CMS solutions I had experimented with in the past. Both theme and add-on development isn’t confusing, making Concrete’s extensibility strong.
Concrete also has strong SEO support. Built-in tools like Bulk SEO Updater are quite useful for marketing that matters.
Although the marketplace and community here is smaller than that of WP or Drupal, it has nonetheless remained consistent in activity.
With brutal honesty, I believe that Concrete CMS isn’t going away any time soon, and will always be a solid solution to build off of.
I try to use concreteCMS exclusively, other CMSes give a lot of headaches in comparison. Some reasons:
Strong Core
ConcreteCMS comes with a lot of functionalities with the core itself, which means, for many small to medium projects, you do not even need a single plugin-in. This reduces the dependency on different developers and their quality of work.
When a CMS has “a huge marketplace”, it sometimes means: The CMS itself does not provide many functions and depends on third-party code. In my opinion, each Add-On is a porential security hole, which needs maintenance and care on its own, independent on the CMS Core.
I have seen many “other CMS”-Sites being hacked or stopped working because of faulty Add-Ons. So I try to avoid that dependency.
Easy Override System
It is easy to implement changes in a update-proof way, so customization is safe an straightforward
Clean Code
With a very clean and logical codebase, it is easy to develop and program addtional functionality in a straightforward and predictible way. Building new Add-Ons is a pleasure.
Simple editing experience
The In-Context-Editing, the concepts of pages, users, attributes is comparatively clean straightforward to other CMSes. Finding what you are looking for is pretty simple, the concrepts are shaped very thoughtful.
Really interesting perspectives from everyone here, especially regarding long-term maintainability and the balance Concrete CMS strikes between usability and development freedom.
One thing I think often gets overlooked is how valuable “predictability” becomes after managing projects for several years. With many CMS platforms, sites gradually become difficult to maintain because of plugin conflicts, abandoned extensions, or major breaking changes between versions. Concrete CMS has generally felt much more stable in that regard.
I also agree with the point about the smaller marketplace not necessarily being a weakness. A strong core with fewer dependencies can actually be a major advantage for security, performance, and long-term support. In many cases, needing dozens of third-party plugins just to achieve standard functionality creates more problems than it solves.
The in-context editing experience is still one of the best features for non-technical users too. Clients tend to understand it quickly because they edit content directly on the page instead of navigating complicated admin panels.
Another underrated aspect is how approachable custom development feels in Concrete CMS. The architecture is clean enough that building tailored solutions doesn’t become unnecessarily frustrating, which is something many developers appreciate after working with more plugin-heavy ecosystems.
It may never have the market size of WordPress, but for agencies, business websites, portals, and custom client projects, Concrete CMS still feels like one of the most practical and sustainable CMS options available today.