Choosing the Right CMS for Your Digital Transformation Project

A CMS is the backbone of your website—it determines how content is created, managed, and delivered to your users. It shapes the user experience, affects performance, and sets the tone for how easily your digital team can adapt and scale in the future. 

However, with so many options available, selecting a CMS can quickly become overwhelming. Should you go open source or proprietary? Headless or traditional? Flexible or out-of-the-box? It’s no surprise that many organisations feel stuck at this stage, unsure of how to weigh up the options or unsure of what questions to ask. 

But don’t worry—we’ve got you. Here are the key areas to consider when choosing the CMS that’s right for your organisation, along with some guidance on which platform might suit which kind of need.

1. What are your organisational goals? 

Before you get into features or functionality, start with your organisation’s goals. What are you trying to achieve with your new website? Is it about driving engagement, improving operational efficiency, delivering personalised experiences, or consolidating systems? Ensuring your CMS comes with the capabilities to achieve your organisational goals is a critical consideration – neglecting this stage, could result in your team facing future roadblocks. 

If your project is content-heavy, you’ll need a CMS that can support robust editorial workflows. If your focus is on personalisation, then data integrations and flexibility become more important. And if compliance or accessibility is a priority, you’ll need something built with these standards at the core of the product. 

If you need flexibility and scalability for long-term growth, then a headless or robust open-source CMS such as Drupal and Umbraco will allow for this. A headless CMS separates the front-end and back-end of your website, and an open-source CMS means a developer can access and edit any part of your website. Both of these allow for unlimited customisation and integration options. 

If your main priority is needing a tailored but user-friendly system for editors and marketers, then a CMS like Wordpress could be a good choice, due to extensive ‘out-the-box' features and add-ins, which don't require developer input.

2. What’s your internal resource and technical capacity? 

Your CMS should match the technical maturity of your team. Some platforms require regular developer input, while others empower content teams to manage things independently. Its important to make sure those who will be managing the website day-to-day are included at every stage of the process when choosing a CMS, as once development is complete, marketers may be on their own. If your in-house team is lean or non-technical, ease of use and supportability should absolutely be key considerations, to avoid later confusion or additional developer spend. 

For example, Drupal offers unrivalled customisation, but comes with a steeper learning curve due to platform complexity, so it is a great option if you have a capable development team and want fine control. However, Drupal now offers an out-the-box website editor called Drupal CMS which comes pre-installed with SEO tools, media management systems and AI-powered website building, making the overall development process a lot simpler. This would be a fantastic choice for a less tech-savvy team, who are looking to be able to easily make changes to their site, without the need for a developer.

3. What kind of integrations and scalability options will you need? 

Modern websites rarely exist in isolation. You’ll likely need your CMS to integrate with CRMs, marketing automation platforms, analytics tools, and potentially legacy systems. Therefore, the ease with which your CMS supports this is critical, to ensure you dont face future blockages when trying to integrate your existing systems. Key integrations to consider are data sync integrations, for example with a CRM, automated workflows, such as those used with email marketing platforms, reporting systems, such as analytics tools, and personalisation software's. 

Keep an eye out for a few key features such as, clear API documentation and easy authentication, which will support custom integrations when dedicated plug-ins are not available. Maybe consider whether the CMS has a library of plug-and-play integrations which could save you time and money throughout your development process? Does your CMS provider offer the option of micro-sites, or international sites? And always ensure your CMS handles all integrations and data processes with GDPR and data protection practices in mind. 

Most modern, open-source CMS systems allow for unlimited integrations with most up-to-date systems, however it is always worth reaching out to your development team or potential CMS provider to check whether legacy systems can be linked.

4. What’s your budget and total cost of ownership? 

When choosing a perfect CMS for your organisation, remember that cost isn’t just about licensing, it’s also about the time and resource needed to maintain and evolve the platform over time. Always consider three key costs – licensing fees, set-up/development spend, and continued cost of upkeep. Some CMSs have a higher upfront development cost to get your website set-up, and then require continued developer input to make future changes. This increases your overall cost of ownership, but may be the best options for an organistion looking for unlimited customisation options. However, some out-the-box CMS providers may make the cost of set-up a lot quicker and cheaper, and make the management process as simple as possible, but could limit your customisation and integration options.

5. Finally, who will be using the CMS day-to-day? 

A CMS should empower content teams—not frustrate them. Once a website had been developed, content entry, updates and website management responsibilities usually fall to editors and marketers. As these team members will be using the CMS on a daily basis, it is vital that their preferences and experiences are considered when choosing the right CMS. Consider keeping an eye out for features such as ‘What You See Is What You Get’ (WYSIWYG) editors, which allow editors to see exactly how content will appear on the live site, custom page templates to allow for landing pages to be created quickly and easily, and options to edit page URL’s, to ensure customers journeys are as smooth as possible. 

CMS’ such as Umbraco and Kentico have undeniably clean interfaces and preview tools that are built with content teams in mind. If you are looking to streamline editorial workflows and content creation, then this could be a great choice for your organisation. On the other hand, you might have advanced publishing requirements and internal governance needs, in which case Drupal’s permissions and workflow capabilities make it a good fit for complex content models.

Still not sure what’s right for you? 

Choosing a CMS isn’t just a tech decision—it’s a strategic one. It needs to align with your organisation’s goals, support your team’s workflows, and set you up for long-term success. Whether you need full flexibility, editorial simplicity, or something that plays nicely with your wider ecosystem, the right choice exists—it just takes the right questions to figure it out. That’s what we’re here for - get in touch with our strategy team and we’ll help you evaluate your options and find the CMS that best fits your digital transformation project! We pride ourselves on providing truly bespoke services, as opposed to pushing your project into an ill-fitting box.