A Quick Review of the 7 Best ASP.NET Content Management Systems
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PHP may be king of the web, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for some stellar ASP .NET CMSs that can not only give you the power you need to develop gorgeous, high-concept websites with a strong backbone but will also give you experience working with the ever-popular .NET platform used in business. Whether you're looking for a commercial solution or something born out of the open source community, these top seven ASP .NET CMSes can give you the functionality and the support you need to get the job done.
Top 7 ASP.NET CMSs
1. DotNetNuke
Of all the ASP .NET CMSes out there, DotNetNuke is probably the most well known and popular. One of the reasons for the popularity of this CMS is due to its multiple versions which allow for the flexibility to accommodate a beginning web developer, a small to medium sized business, or even a large enterprise. It has enjoyed a busy development since before 2003 that continues to this day.
For those that don't need much support other than what the open source community can provide, there's the DotNetNuke Community Edition offered under the BSD License. It contains most of the features which comprise the other editions, but the support is left up to the community. The Professional Edition gives you support from the DotNetNuke Corporation along with a few more features, and for a (much) increased price, the Enterprise Edition gives you a few more features along with phone support.
This CMS has been around for a while, so it's very stable and there's a plethora of add-ons in the community, so it's definitely the first stop if you're looking for something that's proven.
2. Orchard
Provided under the New BSD License, Orchard CMS is Microsoft's hand in the open source world. The Orchard Project is based on a community, backed by full-time developers from Microsoft, that develop components and scripts that are open tools for developers to create applications, and their primary focus at the time is Orchard CMS. Despite some slow development in the beginning, Orchard has struck a chord with the open source community, and the number of contributors is growing every day.
While some of the things you'd expect in a more robust CMS might be missing, there's several fantastic back-end features which will delight anyone who is looking for a young project to support that has a great prospect of growing in the future.
3. Kentico
Another CMS offering multiple licensing options is the Kentico CMS. The free license requires you to keep the logo and copyright information on your page, but the commercial versions offer support and allow you to work without the branding. It's designed to be easy to use for even novice users, so web development should go fast with someone who is experienced.
Kentico's focus lies in three areas: Content Management, E-Commerce, and Social Networking. That broad base makes it an excellent choice for a wide variety of technology ventures. If the company's success, showing a three year growth of 553%, is any indication, this is a CMS to keep an eye on.
4. Umbraco
As an open source project, Umbraco isn't going to break your budget, and it has really come alive over the past few years. It was first released in 2004 but it took a little while for it to gain traction. Lately, though, it has become very popular with designers due to the open templating system and ability to build in guidelines that automatically format the content writers provide. Also, it uses ASP .NET “master pages” and XSLT, so you won't have to work with a heaped-together templating format. It's written in C# and is happy to work with a variety of databases, so hosting shouldn't be a problem for you.
In 2009, CMS Wire dubbed Umbraco as one of the best open-source .NET CMS options available. In 2011, it was averaging close to 1000 downloads a day via Codeplex and is highly ranked amongst top downloads via the Microsoft Installer.
5. mojoPortal
mojoPortal is another open source CMS option based upon the .NET framework. It has a very active developer group and is consistently being updated. While it is free to download and use, there are a number of commercial add-ons that are used to help fund the project. When it comes to developing your own applications, many people prefer mojoPortal because it can act as a starter kit for advanced .NET sites or portals.
mojoPortal is also considered to be very strong as a standalone CMS. It is easy to learn and very simple to use. It includes a variety of different tools such as blogs, photo galleries, chat, newsletters, pools, forums, and much more. It also has a very strong community which makes troubleshooting extremely simple.
6. Sitefinity
Sitefinity is a commercial .NET content management system with 5 available license editions ranging from free for personal use, to $499 for small businesses up to $19,999 for enterprise use. The license will last for 1 year and during this time, you will get every update and free technical support with paid licenses. Once the year is up, you can still use Sitefinity to run your sites, however you will no longer receive free support or software updates. It is also important to note that the standard license is only good for one domain.
Currently Sitefinity is responsible for powering more than 200 government websites as well as large companies. Some of their most prominent government websites include: The White House Federal Credit Union, United States Courts, Downtown Fort Worth, and the Canadian Securities Transition Office. Additional customers include: Toyota, Vogue, IKEA, Chevron, Bayer, and Coca-Cola. With the price tag as high as it is, you'll want to be sure you're happy with it before you buy it by trying it first, but if the big boys are paying nearly $20,000 a year for it, you know the customer service is going to be top notch.
7. Composite C1
A relative newcomer to the ASP.NET market, Composite C1 was originally sold as a commercial CMS in Northern Europe until September 2010. Now, it's a free and open source CMS in version 3.0 that's offered under the Mozilla Public License. It's focus is for web developers working on corporate websites, so its learning curve is most likely too steep for the neonate. The 3.0 version, released in December 2011, was only downloaded a little over 1000 times from codeplex, but despite it's dark horse status, it continues to be a well designed CMS for the more experienced developer that wants their CMS to be more functional than it is beautiful.
There are enough free community and commercial add-ons for you to plug in the functionality you need quickly, so Composite C1 is worth checking out if you want to get your hands dirty.
ASP.NET seems to have more and more quality options regarding extensible content management systems with each passing year. Depending on your needs, there are excellent options available both with commercial licenses or open source code. In order to determine which one is best you, it entirely dependent on what features you want included. While there are other options available, these Top 7 ASP.NET CMS options are all excellent choices.
About the author: Roko Nastic is writer and editor at WebmasterFormat. Feel free to contact him and follow on Twitter.
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Good Comparison
Thanks for this nice comparison...Personally I like DotNetNuke..You have amazingly carried out the pros and cons of others also so that it becomes easy for the customers to select the one for them.
giving Orchard a try
Nice selection. I think about giving Orchard a try.
PHP vs ASP.NET CMS
There is much greater choice of quality free CMSs in PHP than ASP.NET. The best ASP.NET CMSs DotNetNuke and Kentico have free options but with limitations. The rest lags behind in functionality. There is no real ASP.NET counterpart to big three: Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress
firebird
What about firebird - http://www.firebirdcms.com/default.aspx? Any review of it?
I use Orchard.
I haven't had much success with sitefinity, used it for few months and now I use Orchard.
The community is very friendly and helpful.
asp.net developer
I am an asp.net developer and have tried several content management systems built on it. recently I started learning PHP so I can focus on Drupal. I am pretty amazed with it after studying it for some time.
DotNetNuke rules
DotNetNuke rules! The best CMS I have ever tried!
Here is another free one
After trying Sitefinity, DotNetNuke and Kentico and decided that we cannot justify thousands of dollars in license fees (look at their prices for unlimited number of site instances) we settled for a lesser known ASP.NET CMS called MonoX: http://monox.mono-software.com. It is totally free, uses standard Web parts framework and has a lot of neat social networking modules.
orchard vs. dotnetnuke
orchard vs. dotnetnuke (free)? which one to choose? I would like to create blog with some editorial features, members should be able to submit articles for a review and editor (me) would then approve them or deny. There would be need for profile pages with possibilites for users to upload their avatars. Uploading images for posts should also be possible. And AddToAny or similar integration.
I'd say dotnetnuke
If you are considering orchard and dotnetnuke, I'd say dotnetnuke. Orchard is tsill in beta and I don't think it has that features. with dotnetnuke you are on the great path.
CMS
You haven't mentioned Sitecore. In our understanding Sitecore is the leading CMS. Please comment if I am wrong.
Also, Ektron CMS is not in the list.
Does that mean they are not in top 7.
Another question:
If there are free CMS in the market in PHP world like Joomla/Drupal, and has many free addons like Magento, Wordpress, Virtuemart to create a full fledged CMS website with shop and blog, etc. why people still are paying 10000+ for .NET CMS to get the same benefit with more development cost, etc.?
If I choose .NET, I pay for CMS, see if shop system is included or not, blog, etc. and all is paid + developer pays.
If would be great to hear from you about it.
Sitecore and Ektron are both great CMSs
Sitecore and Ektron are both great CMSs. The problem with Top XX lists is they can always be criticized in a way "why this item isn't included, it should be here".
Regarding your second question, I'm not aware of any completely free .NET content management system that could offer the functionality and flexibility of Drupal or Joomla. Kentico and DotNetNuke could do the job, but their free versions have too much limitations. The main reason why so many people choose .NET CMSs, with all the costs that usually go with that choice, are often existing .NET intranets and or existing employed .NET developers and programmers. Another important aspect for corporations is support, if you want to have quality and always available support, willing to solve your requests promptly, you'll have to pay for it no matter which platform you choose.
Composite C1, .NET 4 CMS, new option on Free Open Source market
if you didn't seen- check it out on CodePlex http://compositec1.codeplex.com/
more info here http://docs.composite.net/C1/Getting-started.aspx
in short: free, open source, .net 4, xslt, linq, XML or SQL based.
Kooboo CMS?
Hello,
Thanks for this useful discussion.
Has anyone looked at Kooboo CMS? It is built on top of ASP.NET MVC. Are there any reviews about it? I found it on Google today, but never heard anything about it before.
Appreciate your feedback.
Regards
Bilal
better designed than Dotnetnuke
Design wise, Orchard is much better designed than Dotnetnuke.
Jaenovation ASP.NET All in
Jaenovation ASP.NET All in one CMS solution allows your more than CMS features such as marketing and campaign modules, order management modules, blog, forum, announcement management, scheduler much more..
There are cloud and standard version.
if you didn't seen- check it out on www.jaenovationcms.com
asp.net 4, linq, entity framework, cloud asp.net cms, XML or SQL based.
Umbraco rules
I worked with DotNetNiuke for about two years. And while I was able to delever interactive and multifunctional websites, I got frustrated with the difficulty to customize them.
Skinning a DotNetNuke site is pretty hard because lot's of code and markup gets injected in the content pages.
Also extending a DotNetNuke site with custom functionality is hard, because all functionality has to be integrated through modules. Programming a module is not the easiest thing to do.
That's why I moved to Umbraco. In Umbraco one has full control over the html markup. This is very important, SEO-wise.
Another big advantage of Umbraco over DotNetNuke to me, is that the backoffice for content administrators is very clean and simple. As an administrator, one has also very granular control over what content administrators can access and use in the backoffice.
What DotNetNuke is lacking in that sense, is a simplified backoffice for content administrators. My experience with customers, whas that it's very hard to explain them the content management in DotNetNuke, because as administrators they have access to the full administrative backoffice in DotNetNuke, which is very overwhelming.
To conclude this, projects that needs to get up and running fast, and where there is little need for customisation I could recommend DotNetNuke.
Projects however where customization and control of the html markup and code is very important, I would definitly recommend Umbraco.
I like Atomic CMS system.
I like Atomic CMS which is very good content management system for small websites.
http://atomiccms.com/
Though the above CMS are best but fast growing Framework is
SageFrame :
SageFrame is an open source web development framework developed on the top ASP.NET 3.5 with service pack 1 (sp1) technology, provided by SageFrame. The SageFrame is a Leading web content management framework for Microsoft asp.net.
The SageFrame is not only a framework with a set of classes but it also creates an abstraction layer in which the programmer is concerned only with the code. The programmer needs not to worry about HOW the result will be presented, but HOW to produce the information.
Users can now relax about various elements such as database, security (with multiple roles), file system, etc because all the elements are dealt with within the framework. Native support for internationalization, multiple sites, templates (based on CSS), integrated security and login with single sign-in, possibility to modify the templates of SageFrame and customize it according to your needs.
http://www.sageframe.com/
You guys should have given Sageframe a mention here.
DNN is very very dynamic in terms of functionality, features and security. There's is nothing like it. However there are a few drawbacks that i felt while using it. But you guys should have given Sageframe a mention here.
The biggest drawback in my opinion is the response time of a DNN using sites. The code itself is very obsolete and you need to lock yourself and scour on each and every coding details before using DNN. One more is the URL dependency, if you need to change your domain name to another your old database will be of no use.
There are a lot of new promising CMS extension in Dot NET market and Sageframe, in my opinion, is the best of them. I've downloaded this component from codeplex and have been using it for quite a time now and am very much fascinated by the features it exhibits. Truly a masterpiece !!
Sageframe CMS
Hi Nimesh, thank you for stopping by and for your comment.
Sageframe does look like an interesting content management system, we will explore it a bit more. Cheers!
Another good .NET CMS is
Another good .NET CMS is http://www.auctori.com/
Check it out!
This post helped me a lot
This post helped me a lot to know many options of CMS and try many of them. As I'm working with limitations now, with a shared host server, I guess the best way is to work with Orchard. Orchard won't supply all my necessities, cause I need a social networking with communities and everything else. Friends, followers, wall, comments, etc. And I need it in a very special way, so I need a framework where I can control the source code development. Anyway, if someone has a suggestion of module or app to work WITH Orchard, I'll be very thankful.
Thank you a lot,
Rubia
mojoPortal
Hi, what do you think about mojoPortal? Any ideas?
Joomla/Drupal rules! :D its
Joomla/Drupal rules! :D its simple! :D
There is no real ASP.NET
There is no real ASP.NET counterpart to big three: Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress
All about ASP.NET
There's nothing more powerful than asp.net cms in this case i mean umbraco.
It's robust very fast and you can extend it in a way you never dreamt off.
Worked with all the "Big bosses" in PHP business: Typo, Joomla, ExpressionEngine, Drupal & Joomla.
None of thore gives me the freedom to create what i need to create for my clients without doing nasty hacks to the core.
In umbraco i split up my content and put it out so that's it being displayed the way it should be.
So nobody should tell that there's no counterpart to the php frameworks. That's absolutely bullshit.
If you worked that much and that deep we've done, than you know what's good for you and your clients.
DNN is SO easy
DNN is SO easy .. WYSIWYG .. great modules .. super easy interface. You hardly need any website skills to make a DNN site look great
You should have a look at Webnodes CMS!
I recommend anyone looking for an ASP.NET CMS to try out Webnodes. It supports the semantic formats Microdata with schema.org and OData. See how Microsoft is using Webnodes in one of their own demos: Webnodes at MIX 2011
I work in Webnodes, so I'm not neutral, but we have had several partners that have switched from several of the systems mentioned here to our CMS.
Try it out, no license is required for local installations!
Ole
Webnodes is my favourite
I have been working with DotNetNuke for a couple of big projects and honestly I don't like it. Very old style coding and since we needed very specific requirements we ended up building all the modules.
Then I found Webnodes and I was really amazed by its features. True CMS system and very easy for understand and extend.
I would recommend to try it.
Free Open Source ASP.net Web Pages CMS
r@zorC.net installs quickly and it is very simple. Love it for small sites that need CMS
Composite C1
The best rated CMS on Codeplex - http://www.composite.net/
http://www.codeplex.com/site/search?query=&sortBy=CurrentReleaseRating&tagName=%2cCMS%2c&licenses=|&refinedSearch=true
So far we used only mojo
So far we used only mojo portal, though we tried many other CMS. we prefer mojoportal as it is coded in C#, which is our main language of programming.
sitefinity coding issue
I have created two pages in sitefinity cms3.7 but I am unable to find where the code perform . Please help me now I am new for sitefinity cms3.7
Thanks && Regards
Kaushal K Rathore
9179155817
Integration of existing ASP.net Project with CMS
I want to Integrate of existing ASP.net Project with CMS. Any body can plz help which one is the best for that pupose.
Ehh... No mention of N2CMS?
Just how can you not mention N2CMS when you talk about .net CMS systems? Any search on .net and cms is full with links to n2.
It's fully open source (not like in free scaled-down version of the real thing), supports both webforms and mvc versions of asp.net and is extremely developer-friendly. It's more of a cms framework.
And including DNN in anything with "best" in the same meaning? Have you seen any site bilt with dnn that is actually good looking and/or well built? Web standards and accessibility are not really primary concerns for those guys as much as I can remember.
Anyway, go check out N2CMS if you want a good .net cms to workwith.
Sitefinity is unrealitically
Sitefinity is unrealitically expensive and limited, + closed source
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