Webvanta vs. the Alternatives

Your First Dimension of Choice: SaaS or Self-Hosted

Choosing a CMS is a complex and challenging task.

Start by narrowing the field by choosing which approach fits you best: a hosted (SaaS) CMS, or software that you install and manage yourself.

Most hosted content management systems, such as WordPress.com, LightCMS, and SquareSpace, are limited to simple sites.

Webvanta is one of the few hosted systems that can meet the needs of larger, more complex sites, with custom data structures and database-driven content.

The Challenges of a Self-Hosted CMS

The open-source CMS platforms, WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla!, are enormously popular. For sites that fit their "sweet spots", they can be a great fit. (See each of the comparison pages listed on the right for details.)

Running your own CMS is a complicated business, however, to do well.

A generic web host, which provides such cheap hosting, isn't going to help much. It's up to you to make sure that the file system and database are both kept back up, security patches are applied promptly, and the site is monitored for trouble conditions.

Then, just when things are settling down, you need to upgrade the core software, and all the modules that you've added, and update the ones you've modified.

Our customers save money, whether comparing us with "free" open-source software or other commercial offerings, because of the value we deliver and the hassles we eliminate.

A Managed Layer with an Open-Source Foundation

We are big believers in open-source software. Nearly everything we do is based on it.

By providing a supported, managed, and hosted software layer on top of an assortment of open-source systems, we get to worry about all the upgrades, compatibility issues, poor documentation, and general chaos of most open-source environments. We get to amortize this investment in time across hundreds of sites, so we, to be frank, do a much better job at it than most of our customers could do themselves.