In plain terms
A website is files on a server. Without a CMS, changing a price means editing a file and uploading it, which means a developer. A CMS puts a login in front of those files: you type the new price into a form, press save, and the page updates. Everything else about a CMS is detail on top of that.
It is one of the most-searched questions about websites, and advertisers pay to answer it, which tells you the people asking are business owners reading quotes rather than students. Every quote mentions a CMS because it decides most of what happens after launch.
The four kinds you will be offered
| Kind | Examples | You own the site? | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open-source, self-hosted | WordPress (with WooCommerce for shops), Drupal, Joomla | Yes, entirely | Most businesses; anything that must be found in search or grow | Needs updates and backups; plugin bloat slows it |
| Hosted builder | Wix, Squarespace, Webflow | No; you licence it on their platform | Brochure sites you edit yourself | Cannot be moved; monthly fee for ever; platform code you cannot remove |
| Hosted commerce | Shopify, BigCommerce | No; you licence it | Shops that want the simplest possible operation | Monthly fee plus transaction fees; limits on customisation; leaving is a migration |
| Headless | Sanity, Contentful, Strapi, a database such as Supabase, feeding a custom front end | Yes | Custom platforms and apps where the front end must be bespoke | A developer for everything visual; overkill for a brochure |
Source: Cybrial, from building on all four kinds. This site itself runs on a headless setup: content in Supabase feeding a Next.js front end.
WordPress, which most businesses end up on
WordPress runs around two-fifths of all websites. It is free software you install on hosting you choose, so you own the whole thing and can move it to any host or any developer. It handles brochure sites, blogs, bookings and, with WooCommerce, shops of any size: a Rochdale sweet shop runs 1,000 product lines and a pick-and-mix builder on it; a 17,000-product bed retailer runs on it and went from 672 to 7,781 organic clicks a month once its structure was fixed.
Its weakness is that it needs looking after. Updates, backups and security are the owner’s responsibility or the host’s, and a site left to itself with thirty plugins gets slow and eventually gets hacked. That is what a hosting and care fee is for, and why ours lists what it covers.
Shopify, for shops that want it simple
Shopify is a CMS built for one job. Products, payments, shipping, taxes and the checkout are handled for you, updates are invisible, and it is very hard to break. You pay a monthly plan fee and, unless you use their payment gateway, a transaction fee; you cannot change the checkout much; and if you leave, you export products and rebuild. For a shop with a small team and no developer it is often the right call, and we say so on the Shopify page.
Builders, for brochures you edit yourself
Wix and Squarespace bundle the CMS, the hosting and the design tool into one subscription. Nothing to maintain, easy to edit, and the site only exists on their platform. Right for a brochure site with no ambitions in search; wrong for a business whose site is how customers find it, because the day it outgrows the builder is the day you start again. The Wix versus WordPress guide has the full comparison.
Headless, for when the front end must be bespoke
A headless CMS stores content and hands it to a front end built separately, usually in a framework such as Next.js. It is how custom platforms are built. This site is one: its case studies, pricing and guides live in a database and render through hand-built pages. The front end is as fast as the developer makes it (this site’s pages paint in well under a second) and there is no plugin ecosystem to bloat it. The cost is that every visual change is a developer’s job. For a brochure or a standard shop it is the wrong tool; for a product, it is the right one.
How to choose: three questions
- Who will edit the site, and how often? Daily edits by non-technical staff favour WordPress or a builder. Rare edits with a developer on call open up headless.
- Does it sell things? A shop with a small team leans Shopify; a shop that wants no platform fees, unlimited products or a custom buying journey leans WooCommerce.
- Do you want to own it outright and be able to leave any supplier? Then it is WordPress or headless, and not a builder or hosted commerce.
