Sitecore’s CMS flexibility, scalability and security make it an enterprise favorite, powering more than 32,000 websites around the world from financial powerhouses like American Express to some of the largest international sporting tournaments like Barclays ATP World Tour Finals. Let’s try to find out why Sitecore is so popular nowadays especially among companies which have got high traffic sites.
What is Sitecore and why it is a choice for so many companies and businesses?
From the start, Sitecore’s architecture is able to meet every unique business need with speed, flexibility and dependability. The large variety of organizations are using Sitecore’s CMS solutions – companies (more than 3,000 of the world’s leading brands such as Experian, Toshiba, Canon, Nestlé, American Express, Carnival Cruise Lines, easyJet, Heineken, and Microsoft), schools, and government agencies all over the world in every vertical sector are leveraging from Sitecore CMS to create business advantage and online success.
Sitecore is one of the leading enterprise-level content management systems built on ASP.NET, enabling web content editors and marketers to have full control over all aspects of their website from social integration and blog posts to advanced personalization, e-commerce and more. Launched in 2001, Sitecore has used the .NET platform from the beginning of the language itself, and has been growing in popularity over the last few years. Nowadays Sitecore is a quite popular CMS in the U.S.A. and Western Europe.
Sitecore CMS brings the power of personalization and conversation management right in the hands of your marketers and business users. The CMS incorporates a powerful desktop interface that is controlled by a fully-customizable role-based system. This desktop is very similar in look and feel to a Windows desktop, which makes it easy for users new to Sitecore to pick up and learn the system. Developers will find Sitecore’s powerful technology platform and open API architecture provides them the flexibility and scalability they need.
10 main reasons why companies should use Sitecore CMS
Some of the top features of Sitecore CMS include solutions that offer better insight to website user behavior as well as tools to increase site visitors:
1) Insight to Website Traffic Conversion;
2) Targeted Content Based on User Behavior;
3) Repurpose Content for Different Devices;
4) Easily Integrate with Third Party Tools;
5) Improved Search Engine Optimization (SEO);
6) Fast Integration with Microsoft Technology;
7) Highly Scalable;
8) Intuitive and User-Friendly Design;
9) Optimize Web Experience with Multivariate Testing;
10) Web 2.0 and Social Media Integration.
.NET-based CMSs: Sitecore, SharePoint, Umbraco – how to choose the right one for your business?
Comparing Sitecore and SharePoint
Firstly, let’s look at SharePoint and Sitecore, as it is often asked about the possibility of using Sitecore for an intranet or SharePoint for a public-facing website. While the idea of using one technology solution to solve both problems sounds promising, there are many things you should consider before limiting yourself.
Here are some thoughts in which cases you should choose Sitecore CMS for your projects and in when it is better to stick to SharePoint (these points are based on experts’ views as well as on Altabel’s own experience):
- it is better to use Sitecore for a platform to customize the web user experience based on non-authenticated users;
- choose Sitecore for a marketing driven platform;
- for an external content focus, choose Sitecore;
- choose SharePoint for an IT driven platform;
- it makes sense to choose SharePoint for a collaboration platform;
- for an internal content focus with enterprise level security requirements, choose SharePoint.
Following the beaten path, many companies continue using SharePoint for creating public facing sites – they are well familiar with it and have already invested a lot of time, money, and knowledge in SharePoint. But actually it should be kept in mind that SharePoint was not developed for such sites so it’s worth adopting another CMS to develop them. There are some advantages Sitecore offers over SharePoint as a CMS for a public facing website:
- Sitecore allows high flexibility for content editors and a logical hierarchical structure;
- SharePoint is very limited to List Viewsfor content entry;
- Sitecore’s Web Forms for Marketers makes building forms and triggering goals simple;
- Frontend development for SharePoint is restricted and requires a lot of customized work, Sitecore on the other hand, is free of restrictions and able to do anything you want;
- Sitecore offers fantastic technical support;
- Sitecore offers easy multilingual configuration;
- A/B testing is included with Sitecore, a must for a modern website. SharePoint does not come with any kind of A/B testing;
- Sitecore’s DMS (Digital Marketing Suite) – SharePoint has nothing like this. Any website that has marketing in mind can greatly benefit from this tool included with Sitecore;
- Sitecore is developer-friendly – Development in Sitecore is much easier and requires a lot less specific knowledge. More developers are able to produce a better solution, faster, cheaper;
- Sitecore has a clear line between data and presentation making content easier to manage.
The bottom line is simple: If you’re looking to build a public internet site on the Microsoft platform, SharePoint makes sense if you meet a certain set of criteria. But Sitecore provides an extremely compelling alternative that, from a business owner’s perspective, offers superior tools for engaging with the customer.
Comparing Sitecore and Umbraco
Sitecore CMS and Umbraco CMS are two leading content management systems based upon Microsoft’s ASP.NET framework. Their flexibility, functionality, integration capabilities and ease of use is why many have chosen to focus their technical expertise on these systems.
Let’s have a look at the similarities between Sitecore CMS and Umbraco CMS:
- Easy integration with Microsoft Office;
- Endless expansion possibilities;
- Easy-to use User Interfaces (UI);
- Design layouts are separated from the content;
- Due to the large open-source Umbraco community and the expert development teams within the Sitecore network both CMS platforms are constantly evolving at a rapid pace;
- Easily scalable and customizable through modules (Sitecore) or packages (Umbraco);
- Can be integrated with your internal systems like ERP and CRM;
- Comprehensive documentation and online help & guidance.
And now let’s get acquainted with the differences between these two CMS:
- Sitecore is an enterprise solution whereas Umbraco is suited to small-medium sized businesses;
Sitecore is a license-based product. This means a license fee is paid to acquire it. Licensing options can be chosen, taking in consideration a number of factors, making it possible to use Sitecore in a variety of projects: from small non-profits, with websites running on a single server, to big corporations with millions of visits per day;
Umbraco is an open-source product, meaning there is no license fee;
In both North America and Europe, you can easily find an existing Sitecore customer. This is very helpful to further increase adoption as it means that new customers have some experience they can tap into. In addition, Sitecore has many government references where Umbraco has almost none;
Sitecore 7.1/7.2 has advanced feature set;
Sitecore is an established global player; much more so than Umbraco. Sitecore is in particular strong in the important and highly competitive US and UK markets.
Our opinion is that if you do a proper CMS vendor evaluation, you will probably find that the license cost is only a fraction of the overall project costs. Your criteria should really be to look at which system will meet your requirements most efficiently.
Conclusion
If you are looking for a .NET-based CMS, all these products will work – but right now, at Altabel we would lean toward Sitecore when looking for a pure CMS that provides fast development time, stable platform and ease of use for non-technical content creators.
Of course, each organization is different, and it makes sense to check out the products and run them through your technology selection process to determine which is best for you.
Hope you have found the article interesting and helpful for you.
Also it would be nice to hear your opinion and practical experience. What CMSs do you use and for what kind of projects? What is your favorite CMS and why?
Thank you for your attention and looking forward to your comments.

Marina Karabanova
Business Development Manager
I fundamentally that Umbraco is generally less enterprise, but I don’t see it as a competitor, here is why http://wp.me/p4MqmH-7M
What about compare Sitecore with CMS that is more suitable match, for example EPiServer ?
Hi Marina,
Nice post.
SiteCore and Umbraco aren’t Web Content Management Tool ? So WCMS instead of CMS ?
Have you some link that uses Sitecore or Umbraco ?
Thanks,
Daniel.
Agreed to somewhat extent that it is getting popular in Fortune’s companies. But as far I know as a developer that two thing that emphasize the organization to use Sitecore which are:
1) When application is going to be used as internet site.
2) Its licence is too cheap in comparison to SharePoint license i.e. 1/3rd of it.
I am a SharePoint developer, still say that SharePoint is best choice for Fortune’s companies as they need to manage their data internally 90% and for that SharePoint is best choice.
It is tightly integrated with office that any other cms.
So, SharePoint is best for intranet development.
Yes, that is agreeable that SharePoint will be costly and heavy for internet based site.
I’ve worked with SharePoint for over 7 years, but later switched to Sitecore and happy with it ever since. It’s much more flexible and friendly to end-user. I see it as my customers adopt the system lot faster. I mean the user learning time is much shorter, and post-launch support and leaning is way easier.
Second, our template designer’s love it too!
It may seem bit curvy learning path at the beginning for developers, but for business side it’s more perspective.
Rofl. Nice BS mate. “Enterprise”?
http://www.asp.net runs Umbraco with Alexa ranking of 4k. azure.microsoft.com run Umbraco with Alexa ranking of 10k.
What does sitecore have? Oh that’s right, nothing that barely scratch anywhere in Alexa 100k. Fortune 500 means fuck all really when you dealing with millions of users and 100’s of thousands of req per min. Ever dug through Sitecore’s assembly with reflector? It’s good for shits and giggles serving some corporate home page no one looks at.
No wonder the industry’s filled junk and shit. What’s next? HP’s insight hub is better than Hadoop? ROFLOLOLOLOL
What abt EPiserver ?
Really great article, Sitecore customers are increasing day by day.
And it has huge impact in Digital market as well.
Sitecore will not long last more than 5 years , very difficult for setup , unnecessary cost increase with multiple server, time consuming, less support in google and stack overflow. Every developer are forced to go training just to get username & password for community/sdn credentials.
Sitecore releases version of their product very frequently like 7.1,7.2 , 8.0,8.1,8.3 etc but don’t have proper documentation for every version . Unlike umbraco can easily integrate with visual studio stand alone solution, sitecore need separate solutions . DLL hell is the biggest problem in sitecore , debugging becomes huge time consuming .
We support Umbraco instead of sitecore , complete solution can be developed on core architecture , learning time is very few, very simple like normal stand alone asp.net web application . Umbraco support is more and robust , if a developer facing a problem searching in google can able to get lots if resource in this,
Sitecore is just roaring nothing else .
The primary reason not to choose sitecore is because it is close sourced. This means it is hard to find a developer, and if and when you do you are at the mercy of said developer till you get rid of sitecore. Secondly you cannot trail sitecore, as a developer you cannot just download it and install it in a test environment, everything you do you have to pay for you even have to pay to get a trail version of sitecore or become a ‘certified’ sitecore developer through paid training to even get access to sitecore installation medium (even there’s its’ only for a certain period). Lastly the documentation is sparse and the reference material such as books are extremely lacking.
Never get sucked into the sitecore trap. Go open source, you’ll find better documentation, easier access to developers with skillset and you pay for the expertise, not for the product.