Why should I purchase CMS Bulder over free options?

I'd love the answer as well as I am looking for a CMS for all our network sites and we already have a number of licenses for products from here and so are interested in more.

We're specifically looking for a CMS that will handle our membership accounts - which all come with their own blogs, forums, galleries, shoutbox, chat, ims, groups, galleries and email lists.. all which are served by a free cms that we like, but again, we are in the upgrade process and this is very timely.

My specific questions are:

Memberships? is there availability for membership management?

SPAM - the main issue we have on all the sites is UNRELENTING bot spam - signup attempts, attempts to access the contact features etc.. are there safeguards in place?

Blogs - multiple blogs for anyone or just one?

Community features - are there any or is this more geared toward individual users?

CMS Builder is better because it's easier to use for clients, and faster to learn and setup for you.

You can "build" a new editor menu (for Articles, Blogs, etc) in just a minute or two (probably without even reading the docs), and it generates really clean simple PHP code for you to drop in your pages.

And that's not forcing you into a predefined blog or article site. You can create a custom CMS (or many) with whatever fields you want. You can add validation rules to limit what data is acceptable, all with just a few clicks.

It's worth the money because of time you save not having to read docs, wondering if you'll get a reply in a community forum, figure out how to configure some add-on, learn somebodies template language, etc.

We made this one as simple and fast as we could for developers to implement.

Give it a try, if you don't think it's worth the time it saves you, we'll give you your money back. :)

Hi kimberleyb,

CMS Builder is more of a general content management tool. It doesn't have the community/portal features that you've mentioned (forums, chat, ims, email list) and isn't the right fit for that site.

It would be more of a fit for a company website where you had lots of sections (News Releases, Bios, Products, events, etc).

Thanks Dave.

Just a couple of further questions ;)

Does this allow members/clients to log in?

If not, then sadly it seems a little limited, as many sites like to involve users.

If it does, then would it allow members to create blogs (one feature that you mentioned)

I just wondered what it would give clients/customers over and above AM2

Thanks.

It's not really intended for that kind of site. You can have unlimited users, and you can limit them to specific menus, but there is no automated user sign up system. Users can be limited to menus, but not articles like in Article Manager (if you can access a menu you can access all the records in that menu).

The other main difference between this and Article Manager is Article Manager just has an "Articles" section. This can let you create as many sections or menus as you need.

CMS Builder is designed for the situation where you have a group or organization that runs a site that has different sections. It's not intended to be a community/portal site system. Say you were building a website for a client's company and you wanted to give them the ability to update it easily. This would be a good tool for that.

I give you the best reason of all. Support.
Open source = No phone support. Sure you can go to a message board and try to find the answer. Good luck!
If you are working for a paying customer, you must choose a product that has a support staff. If your project is a personal hobby, maybe you can go open source.
However, If something goes wrong and a customer is breathing down your neck. You better have a good support staff to back you up.
Interactive Tools provides this.

Web Designer and Loyal Interactive Tools Customer.