Has your website CMS evolved to be cloud-based?

It’s been several decades since cloud computing and software evolved from customer premises and data centers on dedicated servers. With that said, however, there are still a handful of software products that haven’t followed this evolutionary trajectory, with an additional few that should be added to the endangered list.

 In the past, IT organisations could argue that software needed to be premise-based for security and configurability reasons. But with advanced and dedicated security teams, the levels of security that an SaaS application can offer is greater than a company can find and afford.

 There’s also the perception that SaaS products are only for SMBs, but the 2019 Blissfully report concluded that companies with over 1000 employees have over 200 SaaS applications running.

Most websites currently run on dedicated servers

 A large number of websites run off WordPress and other CMS software such as Drupal and Joomla. These platforms require developers to patch updates and maintain versioning of the CMS continuously. This can be problematic as the stats show that a large percentage of hacks happen because these patches become outdated due to lax maintenance.

 The tide is rising for cloud-based CMS

 There are several robust cloud-based CMS platforms leading the way. These are HubSpot, Wix, and on the eCommerce side, solutions like Shopify. These solutions are taking care of scalability, elasticity, patches and security exceedingly well. 

 They are also offering more enterprise features, but at affordable prices. In the past, companies would have to invest heavily in software such as Magento to get advanced eCommerce features, but now many of these are available in Shopify and can be easily configured. 

 Usually reserved for companies that could afford a CMS such as SiteCore or Adobe, features such as advanced personalisation, CRM, and forms are now standard in the HubSpot CMS.

You just can’t compare a hosted CMS to WordPress

 Websites undergo major overhauls on an 18 to 24 month cycle. If you’re up for an overhaul soon, you should consider whether you are going to stay server instance-based or move over to cloud. And when comparing proposals, you cannot compare a solution that is proposed on WordPress vs. HubSpot as an example.