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.

Getting the Best Value from Open Source

Webvanta is built on a foundation of open-source software: Ruby on Rails, Linux, MySQL, Nginx, Blueprint CSS, jQuery, and dozens of smaller packages.

Webvanta's system builds upon these open-source tools to give you a fully integrated, supported environment that abstracts away all the complexity of those technologies. Read more about our technology stack.

When working with an open-source content management system, such as Wordpress or Drupal, designers can benefit from a large community and thousands of extensions.

This cornocopia of choice has its drawbacks, however:

• When the core software gets updated, compatibility with existing extensions is sometimes compromised.
• There's often no support available for extensions, and you're on your own to make sure all the pieces work together.
• You're on your own to keep up with security patches, make sure your database is frequently backed up, and keep everything running 24/7.

Read more about how Webvanta compares with open-source content management systems.