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Publisher growth tactics for election season | WEBINAR
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Disclaimer: Our top picks are based on our editors’ independent research, analysis, and/or hands-on testing. Editorial policy
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Content management systems (CMSs) are an essential component of the publishing industry, pulling together and centralizing key aspects of the editorial process. But with so many options on the market, picking the best CMS for a news website can be daunting.
A good CMS not only simplifies the process of content creation and editing, it also automates content distribution, helping publishers reach audiences through various omnichannel distribution strategies.
A publisher’s choice of CMS affects not only content creation and distribution, but also factors such as search engine optimization (SEO) and site load time. Choosing poorly can have serious consequences on a publisher’s audience engagement.
With this in mind, we’ve organized a list of the 17 best CMS platforms for news websites.
A content management system is an application that allows users to create, manage and publish digital content at scale.
With a CMS, users can create, edit and publish digital content without needing technical knowledge such as coding. The user-friendly interface of a CMS allows users to input text, images, video and other content, and organize it into pages on a website or a blog. CMSs may also provide features for SEO and other tools to help market the content.
Running a news site can be challenging, especially with the constant pressure to provide accurate and timely information to readers. Without a content management system (CMS), managing and publishing news articles can be a daunting task.
Here are some of the challenges of running a news website and how CMS can help overcome them.
By leveraging a CMS’ power, news sites can stay ahead of the curve and continue to provide their readers with the latest and most relevant news content.
There are a few things that set the best content management systems (CMSs) apart from the crowd. These are speed, reliability, feature integration such as omnichannel distribution, automation, modular elements, SEO and scalability.
Let’s briefly look at each of these below before moving on to our list.
How fast a page loads is important because it can determine its ranking within search engine results pages (SERPs) and it impacts its bounce rate.
According to Google, bounce rates climb by 32% after just three seconds of page loading. In five seconds, that number rises to 90%. Those statistics alone showcase just how important site speed is in this digital era.
Since page speed is a key aspect of core web vitals (CWVs), it can also impact a page’s position in search rankings.
Social media is becoming one of the leading sources of news, with nearly one-third of all Americans receiving news from Facebook alone. With such a large portion of readers spread across multiple platforms, it is important for publishers to be able to publish content across multiple media channels simultaneously.
It is an important feature, then, for a CMS to be able to streamline this process down to a single push of a button.
Being able to automate several newsroom functions is another key thing to look for when choosing a CMS. Being able to create personalized article templates can dramatically increase productivity levels.
The less a content creator has to worry about coding, the more productive they can be. Modular block elements can reduce the amount of effort required for both an article’s design and interactivity.
Modular elements can take the stress out of trying to embed rich media, with images, audio and videos easily added with just a few clicks
A CMS should automate some aspects of SEO for publishers and be able to make suggestions on how to optimize their content.
As a publication steadily grows traffic, the CMS should be able to adapt to that growth without tripping over. Moreover, additional staff members may need to work on the backend as the site expands, and a good CMS should be able to scale here as well.
Our ratings for the CMS Platforms are as follows for different checkpoints:
| Tool/Platform | Editorial Workflow | Performance & Scalability | SEO and Audience Engagement | Monetization | Customization & Design | Content Formats & Multimedia | Technical Support & Updates | Security & Compliance | Cost & Licensing | Integration Capabilities | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress VIP Plus | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 4.8 |
| Rebelmouse | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 4.7 |
| Drupal | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4.7 |
| Contentful | 4 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 4.1 |
| Ghost | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4.1 |
| BLOX Digital | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Glide | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 3.9 |
| Quintype | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3.9 |
| Superdesk | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3.9 |
| Labrador CMS | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3.8 |
| Publisher Plus | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3.8 |
| PubLive | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3.6 |
| Wehaa | 3 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3.4 |
| Hocalwire | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3.1 |
| Newsifier | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3.1 |
| PurplePublish | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3.1 |
| Arc XP | 3 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 3 |
WordPress is by far the most popular CMS on this list — and for good reason. Headless WordPress websites make up one-third of all websites on the internet, and WordPress VIP Plus is used by popular brands and companies such as Meta, Salesforce and CNN.
WordPress is a modular-based CMS, meaning it offers many block-like elements that publishers can arrange as they desire. This system is designed to be easy to use and can boost the productivity of contributors by simplifying the construction of design and structure elements. WordPress VIP Plus even allows publishers to create their own “blocks”, adding an extra layer of customization or automation.
WordPress VIP Plus boasts an average four-fold return on investment. The platform also offers omnichannel distribution, allowing for content to be automatically posted across multiple media channels and platforms from within the CMS. Because WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS, it tends to be one of the first ones supported by emerging technologies as well.
WordPress VIP Plus’ price starts at $25,000 per year. This price is variable, however, as the actual price is based on the number of HTTPS requests — or page views — a site receives.
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Rebelmouse is dedicated to optimizing user experience and SEO for publishers by generating some of the fastest load times for sites. A variety of companies use Rebelmouse, including Upworthy, Indy100, OZ and Market News, and the platform serves an audience of 120 million users a month.
This CMS automatically adjusts publishers’ content to match the ever-changing guidelines of SEO. It is a completely version-less CMS, receiving automatic updates that are applied by the developers behind the scenes. Rebelmouse also guarantees a 99.99% uptime for the site making it a reliable CMS for keeping a site online and generating views.
Rebelmouse claims to create the fastest sites on the web, with its first input delay (FID) a tenth of that of a traditional CMS. This makes Rebelmouse a strong contender for sites that generate a high amount of traffic, as speeds will stay consistent across a wide range of readers.
Rebelmouse has a price tag of $5,000 per month, which makes it one of the more expensive CMSs on this list. As such, its a more obvious choice for large publishers who stand to gain the most with its improved page speeds and reach.
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Drupal is a decoupled CMS with a malleable front end. While Drupal’s content management process is an easy-to-use, simple experience for publishers, there is an extensive amount of customization available to an experienced developer. Drupal is used by companies such as Viacom, Walt Disney and Twenty First Century Fox.
Drupal is integrated with a content delivery network (CDN) which, alongside other performance-enhancing features, ensures that sites hosted via drupal load quickly. The site performance also works alongside sites with high-burst traffic, such as during the GRAMMY awards, and scales upwards to handle the stress. Drupal also features a seamless translation of various languages.
One thing to be wary of is that Drupal has experienced multiple security breaches previously — including a breach where the information of more than 1 million accounts was leaked. Although this particular data breach was in 2013, Drupal continues to experience some critical flaws.
Drupal has a pricing structure that scales with the size of a company. This means smaller companies can experience relatively low costs. For a larger company, a standard Drupal project with minimal custom development initially takes between 6-8 weeks to build might cost between $30,000 and $40,000 on average, although this is a figure put forward by competitor Zesty.
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Contentful is a CMS that hosts more than 30,000 websites with over 400,000 community members. The CMS has been employed by companies such as Intercom, Vodafone, and Scotiabank.
Contentful, similar to others on this list, provides a multichannel publishing solution. Contentful’s UX is entirely customizable and able to be shaped to a publisher’s need with no prior coding experience. Contentful also guarantees a 99.99% website uptime whilst maintaining compliance and security standards.
The CMS has several strategies to optimize site load times to reduce bounce rates. These strategies include advanced caching techniques that use external content delivery networks to reach load times below 100ms. The CMS also supports the AVIF format for images to further reduce the load time.
Contentful has a base option that is completely free, which is useful for smaller publishers and for larger ones that wish to test out its features. The team version of Contentful starts at $300 per month and allows upgrade to Medium for an additional $350 per month. For major publications, the higher tier of features may be a necessity, as the mid-tier option is limited to only a few projects and a single team.
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Unlike other CMSs on this list, Ghost’s business model markets towards individual, independent journalists and blogging platforms more than large media publications and newsrooms. The CMS features independent publications such as The Lever by David Sirota and Tangle by Isaac Saul.
Ghost’s strength lies in its simple UX. The CMS is designed for making detailed, professional-looking articles with uncomplicated, easy-to-use tools. Ghost provides a set of free themes for journalists to keep their style consistent, while also allowing them to craft their own.
Ghost has a built-in distribution method via email and newsletter, and offers journalists the ability to segment their audiences to send articles based on user preference, keeping audiences engaged with the content they want to see. Ghost also provides journalists with an integrated monetization system in the form of paywall content with native analytics to provide insights into audience engagement.
Ghost offers four pricing options that vary based on the size of the audience. This system allows Ghost to be affordable for small-scale publications. The prices below pertain to a 500-member audience:
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BLOX Digital, formerly TownNews, powers more than 2,000 media and news sites across the US and Canada and handles almost 7 billion pageviews per year. It has attracted the likes of The Canadian Press, The Post and Courier and KTBS-TV as clients.
The CMS offers a multichannel publishing solution, meaning publishers can distribute content across websites, apps, e-Editions, over-the-top (OTT) media, social media, email newsletters and third-party platforms via a unified web-based user interface (UI).
BLOX also offers its clients a smarter paywall/metering solution that can create custom visitor journeys. The software allows publishers to tailor their offers around visitor behavior to better convert casual visitors into paying subscribers.
Another notable feature is BLOX’s turnkey managed programmatic advertising solution, which enables publishers to automate the sale of ad inventory. BLOX claims its solution “delivers guaranteed rates”.
BLOX doesn’t disclose pricing on its website, meaning publishers need to contact the solution provider’s sales team directly to discuss their needs.
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Glide is a next-gen, cloud-native publishing platform built on the back of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Glide is also signed off on the highest level of Amazon certificate, making it one of the most agile CMSs. It is used by the news website The Sunday Times, as well as Daily Mail and Hello!.
There is no back-end in Glide — using the CMS requires absolutely no development knowledge. Glide is entirely cloud-based, meaning that the product is also version-less. Updates happen regularly with no disturbance to workflow.
With its wide range of editorial tools, Glide boasts an impressive 75% increase in production. Glide utilizes APIs and automation to cut down on unnecessary elements of content creation. Third-party essential software — such as Slack, Zephyr and Getty Images — can be easily integrated by publishers, making Glide a universal tool for all aspects of content creation.
Currently, the trial build of Glide costs $7,500 per month.
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Quintype’s Bold is a headless CMS designed to help distribute and monetize content, and it is one of the cheaper ones on this list. Quintype is employed by companies such as the Sakal Media Group, Karjalainen and the Free Press Journal.
Despite the lower costs, this CMS can still perform all of a typical CMS’ standard functions. Quintype can provide a live preview of content before it’s published, provides omnichannel distribution and is also integrated into Google AMP, ensuring faster load times for sites.
One of the most interesting features that Quintype provides is a machine learning algorithm, which the CMS uses to tailor publishers’ content to their audiences, as well as a suite of analytical tools that can be used to measure performance.
The pricing for Quintype depends on the specific products that users decide to subscribe to. For instance, if users opt for Pagebuilder and Ahead in addition to the Bold CMS, the pricing will begin at $100. The overall cost will vary depending on how many features a publisher needs. However, Quintype is one of the cheapest options on this list.
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Superdesk functions as a digital workspace, set to automate all the functions of a newsroom. It is used by various press agencies such as the Australian Associated Press, Belga Press and the Canadian Press and serves up to 80 million users per month.
Superdesk has a modular, API-centric design. Features can be built, re-used and templatized to fit a publisher’s needs. The modular design enhances workflow productivity and ensures consistency throughout articles and content.
Superdesk has been built alongside journalists, making sure the CMS has been created to their specifications. The CMS allows individual journalists and editors to customize their workspaces and dictionaries and allows them to rapidly update stories to reflect breaking news changes.
There are three different options when it comes to pricing. There is a lite version that allows up to 25 concurrent users and costs €250 (~$245) per month. There is also a Pro version that allows up to 100 users and costs up €2,990 (~$2,915) per month. If a publisher needs more, they can contact Superdesk directly for a quote.
For a closer look at Superdesk’s various features and how they work, check out our deep dive with the digital newsroom platform.
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Labrador CMS is a cloud-based solution designed with publishers in mind and used by more than 250 sites. Its clientele includes companies such as the Swedish arm of Elle, Børsen and TV 2.
The CMS has all the usual tools expected from such a system, including custom layouts, image storage, editing tools and a paywall. Its editing suite, however, allows users to alter text and images within the layout, removing the need to switch between different tools. Moreover, all of its layouts are mobile responsive, ensuring a quality user experience (UX) regardless of the visitor’s device.
While the company does offer access to ad, print and paywall systems, it also offers some third-party integrations plug-ins, such as the Piano and Infosoft paywalls. However, it’s worth noting that the range isn’t extensive and Labrador itself describes these as “essential plugins”.
Labrador uses a scalable pricing model, charging based on the number of people using the product as well as the number visits a publication receives each month rather than the number of features needed.
Labrador’s Small subscription costs 1,058 euros (~$1,130) per month and targets publications with teams of up to five and which receive up to 5 million visits per month. The Medium subscription ups the team count to 15 and costs 2,116 euros (~$2,260) per month. The Large package increases the team size to 30 and costs 3,174 euros (~$3,390) per month.
The company also offers Enterprise packages to companies with teams of 300 and with up to 300 million and 1 billion views per month, which cost 7,933 euros (~$8,480) per month and 21,160 euros (~$22,610) per month respectively.
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Publisher Plus is a CMS with deep social integration for social media marketing — a singular platform publishers can use to post across multiple media channels. Companies such as Business Post, JOE and the Irish Post use the platform.
With tools such as image and video management, content tagging and categorization, Publisher Plus serves as a competent media indexation tool. Publisher Plus also has an Adobe InDesign plugin that can help enhance content and tailor it to targeted audiences.
Publisher Plus also has an advanced level of statistics available to its clients. The CMS can provide data on bounce rates, session duration and social shares, which help to measure audience engagement.
Publisher Plus supports several different ways to monetize content. The CMS is fully integrated with Google Adsense, and also helps to connect with various ad tech partners, such as supply-side platforms (SSPs) and ad block monetization providers.
Publisher Plus also includes a customizable online newspaper subscription service with their Paywall Plus, which includes secure payment methods through a custom portal.
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PubLive describes itself as an AI-powered CMS that aims to help its users expand their audiences faster and with fewer resources. The company has attracted a range of publishers and brands, including NewsDrum, TICE and SheThePeople.
PubLive’s flagship feature is its AI assistant, which can help with content creation and repurposing. For example, the assistant can convert articles into Web Stories, videos, social media posts and newsletters, reducing the amount of time and resources it takes publishers to extend their audience reach. The AI can also make content suggestions, provide TL;DR panels for articles and improve on-page SEO.
PubLive uses AWS as the backbone of its hosting infrastructure to ensure publishers’ site performance remains stable even during traffic spikes.
The CMS is also one of the few on this list to include a programmatic advertising solution. This means publishers can manage their editorial and advertising strategies in a centralized hub. PubLive’s programmatic solution covers display, native and video ad inventory.
PubLive doesn’t provide information about its pricing structure, meaning interested publishers must contact the company’s sales team directly to discuss their needs.
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The mobile-based CMS, Wehaa, has been manufactured to optimize site speed and SEO for mobile devices. Companies that use it include the likes of The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and Black Press Media.
As a mobile-friendly CMS, Wehaa is a particularly strong option for publishers with audience segments who usually browse their content through mobile devices. The ad placement on Wehaa has been optimized for mobile screens, meaning more ad revenue for publishers from mobile users. This includes an option for a featured banner that provides exposure for a publisher’s sponsor.
The CMS also specializes in certain industries, such as the real estate and automobile industries, with programs that can showcase guides and contests. Particularly of interest to some marketers, especially those that deal with listings, is Wehaa’s search engine, which can direct customers to valuable listings through the use of keywords.
Wehaa also includes features dedicated to election coverage, with interactive elements to track outcomes in an engaging format. This alone makes it a strong contender for publishers who deal with political news.
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Hocalwire is a digital newsroom platform and CMS used by more than 70 newsrooms globally and is dedicated as a single-point reporter module that sports more than 1 million users.
Hocalwire provides a seamless, automated workflow for newsroom processes such as monitoring, gathering, creating and packaging, distribution and monetization, while also helping to cut costs. The CMS also claims to be one of the fastest-loading systems on this list with a load time it says is four times faster than the average CMS.
Hocalwire has two different purchasing options: a basic plan that costs around $500 per month and a more advanced plan — that offers more third-party integrations, custom schema support and an advanced SEO package — that costs around $1,500 per month.
Publishers can add additional features to the basic plan to create a custom price. There is also a one-time onboarding fee based on the amount of data and website design.
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Newsifier is an AI-powered headless CMS designed especially for online news publishers. It is a no-code CMS platform that anyone can use to publish and edit articles and multimedia content, as well as manage the design of their website. Additionally, Newsifier provides a scaled hosting service that automatically adjusts to traffic peaks and troughs.
Newsifier also enables publishers to launch Android and iOS mobile apps that are connected to the CMS software.
The dashboard’s drag-and-drop interface allows publishers to move things around on their website’s menu just by clicking on a menu item and dragging it to where they want. All changes instantly reflect on the front end.
Newsifier offers a tiered pricing model based on a publisher’s monthly page views, starting with the Basic plan at €199/month ($214) for websites with up to 500,000 monthly pageviews.
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PurplePublish is a CMS that is particularly strong in creating articles for both news sites and entertainment. The CMS is used by corporations such as NewsCorp, National Geographic and Vogue.
One unique feature of PurplePublish is its use of AI automation for various features that enhance contributor workflow. These features include automated article linking, a recommendation engine and a system that allows publishers to find up-to-date news. This is all bundled together in a modular creation system that provides a substantial boost to content generation.
PurplePublish includes several unique interactive elements within its CMS that can be used to create a unique reading environment, such as a survey in the form of a value-based slider and videos.
The system has an annual subscription payment method based on the projected amount of page impressions a site generates. However, alongside the annual subscription, publishers also incur a one-time customer transfer fee when they onboard their customer data for use in email lists, newsletters and account generation.
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Arc XP is an industry-leading CMS that pushes an agile content creation strategy. It is used by well-known corporations and groups such as Graham Media Group, BP and the Golden State Warriors.
The CMS presents a streamlined workflow for editors by including rich text editing software and the ability to templatize content. Arc XP is a centralized management tool for digital assets and can be used to distribute content across a variety of platforms such as social media sites and off-site platforms such as Apple News.
Arc XP has many built-in features that can be used to engage readers through interactive elements, such as a video player, and a built-in subscription service allowing for an easy-to-set-up paywall and other monetization methods. The CMS also offers inbuilt identity resolution features such as account generation and bit filtering such as CAPTCHA.
The CMS comes in at around $9,000 per month, but also includes a variable cost depending on the amount of traffic a publisher’s site generates.
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There are three CMSs whose load times beat the rest: Rebelmouse, PubLive and Ghost. While the core web vitals (CWVs) of sites using Rebelmouse have been consistently above competitor solutions, PubLive comes a close second with Ghost securing third place.
Rebelmouse has shaved its load times down to milliseconds by rigorously following Google’s guidelines, and constantly evolving its specifications to match. Rebelmouse’s code has been simplified to speed up load times but is still able to run rich media.
In a competitive digital landscape, a CMS has become a necessary tool for publishers to streamline their editorial workflows and produce content that stands out. They can be an important factor when it comes to determining search engine rankings for a publisher’s site — especially when it comes to loading times.
While there are some standouts from a speed perspective — such as Rebelmouse and WordPress VIP Plus — choosing the best one is ultimately determined by publishers’ specific needs.
Although a CMS can enhance the efficiency of the editorial workflow, it is only the tip of the iceberg. Consider checking out our guide on how to develop and optimize editorial workflows.
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