Open-source .Net CMSs overview: DotNetNuke, Kentico, Umbraco, N2, Orchard, Sitefinity

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 our blog, we have already tried to gather information about PHP and Java web frameworks, and in this article I`m going to present you a list of open-source CMS for .Net that, in our opinion, are worth taking a look at.

DotNetNuke (DNN for short)

If you are looking for something stable, DDN will be the answer. This CMS has been around for a while and DNN is probably the most well known and popular of all the .NET CMSs presented in my list. It is a web content management platform used to quickly develop and deploy interactive and dynamic web sites, intranets, extranets and web applications. It’s available in a free Community and subscription-based Professional, Elite and Elite Premier Editions. Community edition 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.

Kentico

Another Asp.net based 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. This CMS allows building dynamic web sites, online shopping carts, intranets and web 2.0 community sites. Kentico CMS is designed to be easy to use for even novice users, so web development should go fast with someone who is experienced. It has powerful content editing interface – Kentico CMS Desk, which allows a user to edit content and preview it before publishing, also it`s easy to organize content into a tree hierarchy of documents (pages). The hierarchy (content tree) represents the site map and the navigation structure.

Umbraco

Umbraco CMS is free and open source Web CMS built on the Microsoft .NET Framework. It provides a full-featured web content management system that is easy to use, simple to customize and robust enough to run the largest sites such as wired.co.uk and asp.net. Umbraco CMS has recently become very popular with designers and web developers 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 there is no necessity 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.

N2 CMS

N2 CMS is an open source lightweight CMS to create simple and user friendly website. N2 CMS contains a package of functional templates with News, Wiki, Photo Galleries, FAQs, RSS, Data Entry, Polls and more. Features include full control of content and nodes, drag&drop, versioning, wizards, export/import, security, globalization and more.

Orchard

Orchard CMS is Microsoft’s hand in the open source world. Its community focused and is supported by full-time developers from Microsoft, that develop components and scripts that are open tools for developers to create applications. With the help of Orchard CMSO, it’s possible to create content-driven Websites. While this CMS may be a bit slow and some of the things you’d expect in a more robust CMS might be missing, there’s several fantastic back-end features and it`s a CMS that is worth considering when choosing a technology for your project.

Sitefinity

Sitefinity is the most modern .NET web content management platform available on the market today. It offers many enterprise features, and simple, easy-to-use online administration tools for managing your website. The new revolutionary User Interface is very task oriented and simplifies the user interaction with the system. Sitefinity has 6 available license editions ranging from free for personal use, to $499 for small businesses, and custom pricing for the Enterprise and Multi-Site Editions. Currently Sitefinity is responsible for powering thousands of websites. 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. Other customers include: Toyota, Vogue, IKEA, Chevron, Bayer, and Coca-Cola.

Certainly the list of CMSs can go further and further and every CMS has its advantages and disadvantages. I`ll highly appreciate if your share your opinions and experience on using these CMSs and adding your favourite CMSs to the list.