A CMS is the software that lets you build and change a website without writing code for every
page. It gives you a login, an editor and a place to store your content, so publishing a new
page becomes a matter of typing and clicking save rather than editing files and uploading them
to a server. Most of the web now runs on one. This page explains what a CMS actually does, the
main kinds you will run into, and what our own scans show people really use.
What a CMS actually does
Strip away the marketing and every content management system does the same four jobs. Different
platforms are better or worse at each one, but if a tool does not do all four, it is not really
a CMS.
- Stores your content separately from your design. Your words and images live
in a database, not welded into the page. That is why changing your theme does not delete your
articles.
- Gives non-developers a way to edit. An admin area with an editor, so the
person writing the content does not need to touch code or a server.
- Turns stored content into pages. A template decides how a piece of content
is displayed, and the same template renders every item, so a thousand pages stay consistent.
- Handles the routine site plumbing. Users and permissions, media uploads,
drafts and revisions, navigation, and URLs.
The separation in the first point is the one that matters most. Because content is stored apart
from its presentation, the same article can be restyled, reordered, syndicated or redesigned
without being rewritten. A hand-coded site cannot do that without someone editing every file.
What CMS stands for, and the other CMS
CMS stands for content management system. That is the full form, and in any web, design or
marketing context it is what the acronym means.
There is a second meaning that causes real confusion for readers in the United States, where CMS
is also the abbreviation for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, a federal agency.
The two have nothing to do with each other. If you arrived here looking for the healthcare
agency, this is not that. Everything below is about website software.
What sites actually run
This is the part no vendor explainer can give you. Every other page answering this question is
published by a company selling a CMS, so the examples you get are the ones that company wants you
to consider. We run a detector instead, so we can answer from measurement rather than opinion.
We have detected a platform on 5,141,307 sites so far, across
606 different content management systems. The table below is generated from
that index and refreshes as we rescan, so it reflects what we are finding now rather than a
figure typed in when this page was written. Each platform links to what it publishes about
itself and how to recognise it.
Two things in that table surprise people. The first is how concentrated it is. The top five
platforms alone account for 90% of everything we detect, with
WordPress on its own at 51.7%, and the long tail of names
below them barely registers. The second is that several entries are not what a purist would call a CMS at all.
Ecommerce platforms and hosted site builders manage content, so a detector finds them, and for
anyone choosing a tool they are genuine options rather than a category error.
The main types of CMS
Almost every platform you will meet falls into one of four groups. The differences are about
where your content lives and how much of the site the software controls.
Traditional, or coupled
The content store and the public website are one system. You write in the admin area, and the
same software builds the page a visitor sees. This is the familiar model, it is what most of the
web runs on, and it is the easiest to start with because nothing needs wiring together. The
limitation is that your content is tied to one way of displaying it.
Headless
The content store has no front end at all. It holds your content and hands it out through an API,
and you build the site or app that displays it separately. That suits teams publishing to several
places at once, a website plus a mobile app plus a display in a shop, because the same content
feeds all of them. The cost is that somebody has to build and maintain the front end, so it needs
developers in a way traditional platforms do not.
Ecommerce platforms
Built around selling rather than publishing. Products, variants, stock, checkout and payments are
the core, with pages and blogging arranged around them. They manage content, so they are a CMS in
the working sense, but the content model is shaped for a catalogue.
Hosted site builders
The software, the hosting and the editor arrive as one subscription, usually with drag and drop
editing. Nothing to install and nothing to maintain, which is why they suit small sites. The
trade-off is control: you work within what the builder allows, and moving your site elsewhere
later is harder than exporting from an open platform.
A CMS is not a website builder, and not a framework
These three get used interchangeably and they are not the same thing. The useful distinction is
how much is decided for you.
- A website builder is a product you rent. Design, hosting and editing come as
one package, and you work inside its limits.
- A CMS is software that manages content. You choose the hosting, the design
and how far to extend it. Some are open source and free to install, some are commercial.
- A framework is a developer toolkit for building applications. It has no
editor and no admin area until someone builds one. A site built on a framework is not running a
CMS unless a CMS was built on top of it.
The boundary genuinely blurs in places. Several hosted builders have grown proper content models,
and several open platforms now offer a managed hosted version. In practice, ask whether a
non-developer can log in and publish. If yes, it is doing a CMS job, whatever it calls itself.
Is WordPress a CMS?
Yes, and it is the most widely used one by a wide margin. It sits at the top of the table above,
and no other platform we detect comes close to its share. It began as
blogging software in 2003 and grew into a general content management system, which is why it is
the default answer to this question and the platform most people have used without knowing its
name.
Worth knowing when you are comparing: the free software you install yourself and the paid hosted
service that shares its name are two different products. Our
page on recognising WordPress covers how they differ and how to tell
which one a site is on.
What a CMS costs
Anything from nothing to a very large annual contract, and the headline price is rarely the whole
bill.
- Open source platforms are free to download and use. You pay for hosting and
a domain, plus any paid theme or extension you choose. Small sites run on very little.
- Hosted builders and ecommerce platforms charge a monthly subscription that
bundles the software and the hosting. Ecommerce plans usually add transaction fees on top.
- Enterprise systems are quoted rather than listed, and the licence is normally
the smaller half of the cost next to implementation.
The expense people underestimate is not the licence. It is the work: migrating existing content,
building the design, and keeping the thing updated afterwards.
How to tell which CMS a site is using
Most sites give it away. Platforms leave recognisable traces in the page source, in file paths, in
response headers and in the naming patterns their themes and plugins follow. Some announce
themselves in a generator tag. Others are identifiable from the structure of the URLs they
generate.
You can read those signals by hand, and our per-platform pages explain what each one publishes
about itself. It is faster to check automatically:
paste a URL into the CMS detector and it will name the platform and the
technologies running alongside it.
Frequently asked questions
What is an example of a CMS?
WordPress is the most common, and the one most people have used. Drupal and Joomla are long
established open source alternatives, Shopify is the widely used ecommerce example, and Wix and
Squarespace are the best known hosted builders. The table above lists what we detect most often
across the sites we scan.
What does CMS mean?
It stands for content management system: software that stores your content, gives you an editor
to change it, and turns it into web pages without you writing code. In the United States the same
three letters also abbreviate the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which is
unrelated.
What are the different types of CMS?
Four groups cover almost everything. Traditional platforms manage content and display it as one
system. Headless platforms store content and serve it through an API, leaving the front end to
you. Ecommerce platforms are built around a catalogue and a checkout. Hosted site builders bundle
the software, hosting and editor into one subscription.
How much does a CMS cost?
Open source platforms are free to install, so your cost is hosting and a domain. Hosted builders
and ecommerce platforms run on a monthly subscription, with ecommerce plans usually adding
transaction fees. Enterprise systems are quoted individually. In every case the build and the
ongoing upkeep usually cost more than the software.
Do I need a CMS for my website?
If the content will change, yes. Anyone who wants to publish or edit without a developer needs an
editor to do it in. A small site that will never change can be hand-built, but that is rarer than
people expect, and retrofitting a CMS later is more work than starting with one.
Can you tell which CMS a website is built with?
Usually. Most platforms leave identifiable traces in page source, file paths and response headers,
which is what a detector reads. Sites that deliberately strip those signals are harder to identify,
and a site built on a framework rather than a CMS may have no platform to find.
A CMS is simply the difference between a website you can update yourself and one you have to ask
somebody to change. Which platform is right depends on what you are publishing and who will
maintain it, and the table above is a reasonable place to see what other people settled on.
