Content Management Survey Results
After a solid week of activity, we’ve closed our CMS Survey. Some of the answers were predictable, but there were a few informational gems that we’ll be able to pull from this data set. We’ve summarized the results below for your edification.
To set the stage, this survey collected from 189 responses. Though I’m sure more accurate results could be gleaned from a larger group, I’m satisfied that this is enough data to indicate trends, if only for the audience of this particular site. Now, onto the results.
Which CMSs Have You Used?
WordPress is by far the most broadly used system, but there were plenty of people who either used systems not on our comparison list, or who had created there own at one point or another. I wasn’t surprised to see Expression Engine in third, since I’ve been hearing more and more about it lately.
Satisfaction
So, in general, people seem relatively satisfied with the CMS they have, though there is definitely room for improvement. I noticed in the open-ended questions area, most people, regardless of satisfaction, indicated there were things missing from their current solution. Overall, only 12% of respondants indicated any dissatisfaction with their current CMS, while 38% said they were very satisfied.
Those indicating WordPress as their favorite CMS were very near the average, with slightly fewer people indicating that they were either very satisfied or not satisfied.
Expression Engine was notable because the low level of dissatisfaction, and the high rate of ‘Very Satisfied’, even though the software costs money. However, I would attribute these results more to the licensing system than the software itself, as you would seem less likely to pay for a solution that didn’t meet your needs.
To Host or Not To Host
While I was pretty sure that many people would prefer to host their own Content Management System, I was surprised by just how many were so adamant about it.
Digging into the data a little more showed an interesting insight into the psyche of web developers.
Of all the reasons given for why respondents preferred to host their own solution, the word control was explicitly stated 51% of the time. We truly are a group of control-freaks. I could comment on this finding quite a bit, but I’ll save that for a separate article.
The Rest of the Data
There were a few open-ended questions asked at the end of the survey which don’t have any real computational value to a summary such as this. The data will, however, be used and published here as we begin to develop our own version of managing online content. Hopefully you find this data useful, or at least interesting.