All-in-One Website CMS vs. Plugin-Based Website Builder: Which Is Right for Your Brand?
For organizations of all scales, selecting a platform to run and manage your website is a significant decision. From security and consistency to user-friendliness, there are countless considerations that can make or break your brand’s online presence.
With such an important choice ahead, it’s essential to understand the two main types of website solutions: all-in-one platforms and plugin-based builders. While both keep your site online, these content management systems (CMS) have very different use cases—and distinct advantages and disadvantages for your organization.
What is a CMS?
A CMS is a platform that creates, manages, and stores content for a website without requiring advanced technical skills. Relying on templates and pre-approved themes, a content management system empowers non-technical contributors to draft, edit, and publish on the web without development support.
Instead of handling files to create a directory for site layout, a CMS organizes content such as pages, posts, categories, and tags together in a clean, user-friendly interface. This top-down view increases the navigation and searchability of everything your brand publishes on the web and offers greater visibility into your online footprint.
These platforms streamline operations and improve collaboration for your larger team by using role permissions to manage content creation and publishing access. You can assign contributors in the CMS, where you can give certain levels of authority for contributors to make changes throughout the site. Role permissions enable you to assign drafting, reviewing, and publishing permissions based on each person’s role or seniority in your organization.
With these guardrails, a CMS empowers the right team members to review content before it goes live while giving contributors the keys to build pages safely and securely. This can improve time to market and the consistency and accuracy of your content.
All-in-one CMS vs. plugin-based builder
While all content management systems improve contributor management, visibility, and more, they come in two distinct solutions: all-in-one CMS and plugin-based builders. All-in-one CMS platforms provide complete built-in features, whereas plugin-based options offer basic capabilities with the ability to add features as needed—but there’s much more to the story than that.
Here’s what sets them apart:
All-in-one CMS
An all-in-one CMS is feature-forward and often comes with a complete suite of tools for creating, managing, and publishing digital content. Along with standard user management and templates, they typically feature a drag-and-drop website builder and robust, flexible customization options.
An all-in-one CMS incorporates most features in its core system, making it scalable depending on your needs. Unlike plugin-based builders, which rely heavily on external software for added features, an all-in-one CMS comes pre-packaged with the tools to react to change, like unexpected influxes of traffic or expanding content needs.
Pros:
User-friendly interface
All-in-one content management systems have streamlined navigation to simplify drafting, editing, and publishing. They also improve visibility into low-level items like menus, themes, and more.
Editable code blocks
These platforms provide access to the website’s code in simplified blocks, enabling quick style or theming adjustments on the fly. This helps you securely customize your website without relying on other tools.
Streamlined security, maintenance, and support
An all-in-one CMS comes with core features from the start, making regular updates and support for items like security or performance more holistic and manageable. All-in-one platforms like Squarespace Enterprise monitor security regularly and routinely provide updates and patches.
Cons:
Harder to customize for complex uses:
Because they come pre-built with core features, it can be difficult to use an all-in-one CMS for certain custom applications. Organizations that require elaborate databases or highly specialized designs may find it difficult to build their site to detailed specs with an all-in-one CMS.
Squarespace Enterprise packages our CMS with design-forward templates to give your brand a strong foundation to build your visual identity. For other tweaks, manually editable code blocks empower more customization options.
Plugin-based builder
Designed to be modular, plugin-based builders heavily rely on third-party add-ons to bring functionality to sites. Though sparse when first installed, they're openly customizable for virtually any use case.
To meet the needs of their users, plugin-based builders depend on the developer community to create applications. These plugins are available on a marketplace for site owners to download and install on their platforms whenever they require a new feature.
Pros:
Highly customizable
Because plugin-based builders have an open-source code base, developers can build bespoke solutions and implement them on the site. Whether you’re looking to integrate with an obscure third-party API or create a unique widget just for your brand, resources can bring the project to life.
Many free plugin options
With active developer communities, plugin-based builders have thousands of plugins available for free on their marketplace. Oftentimes, there are competing plugin options, providing multiple solutions to a single feature gap.
Cons:
Oversaturated plugin market
Because of the crowded plugin marketplace, it can be time-consuming and taxing to find the right solution for your site. Browsing options, reading reviews, uploading to staging, and thoroughly testing compatibility is tedious for plugin-based CMS managers.
Best plugins are paid
While many plugins are available for free, high-quality options usually come with an associated cost—either a one-time or monthly fee. This can drive up your total website operating expenses and eat into corporate budgets.
Potential security vulnerabilities
With every plugin coming from a different third-party developer, each addition creates new potential openings for malicious actors to exploit. Many sites need a dozen or more plugins to function, exponentially increasing security risks for complex sites.
Difficult updates, bug fixes, and support
Plugins come from different developers working on varied schedules, making for inconsistent updates and infrequent bug fixes across plugin-based sites. If a plugin breaks, there can be ripple effects throughout your web property that require more developer work. There is also no guarantee that a plugin or extension will even be updated.
Support also varies depending on the plugin
Many developers field bug reports and support tickets using a forum for the entire community. It can take time for them to answer queries based on their team’s size and activity.
Selecting the right platform for your site
Between an all-in-one CMS and plugin-based builder, choosing the best platform for your brand comes down to your organization’s goals. While both systems empower non-technical users to create web content, improve visibility, and streamline operations, each has a distinct use case.
With robust out-of-the-box functionality and a user-friendly interface, an all-in-one CMS provides the autonomy, support, and safety needed to launch a high-design site without the added dependencies of third-party developers or hidden costs. While it can’t meet every complex, bespoke feature request, an all-in-one CMS is a solid, customizable foundation to establish your brand’s online footprint.
On the other hand, plugin-based builders offer the endless customization of ad-hoc feature installation and a large marketplace of third-party options. While many of these plugins are paid and may introduce third-party security vulnerabilities, their open-source codebase is great for brands with large existing development teams or high-specialized, detailed use cases.
To make the decision, consider your site’s needs, budget, and development resources. Armed with that data and your wireframes, you can determine which option is best for your organization.