About dotCMS

dotCMS is a content management system that blends visual content editing with API-first flexibility to help global enterprises who have sophisticated content requirements create, manage and deliver digital content anywhere. Content is one of the primary ways in which customers & prospects interact with brands. Enterprises are increasingly under pressure to engage with their customers and prospects across channels, and provide them with content and experiences that are unique and relevant to them. Many companies are finding it difficult to grow and adapt their content strategy while using costly and cumbersome legacy systems. These systems are often managed primarily by developers, which makes it difficult for content creators and marketers to manage content and make critical changes in a world where content is at the forefront of their business strategy. The dotCMS platform is best suited for global organizations across industries who manage multiple brands, websites and content types across multiple languages, and need a solution that is secure and scalable for a development team to work with, but also puts power into the hands of the content & marketing teams who regularly need to make content changes. Brands such as Dairy Queen, Newell, Greensky, RBC and Telus have chosen dotCMS as their primary platform to scale their content operations and empower their marketing teams so they can reduce developer dependency, enabling teams to go-to-market faster, without sacrificing the flexibility and security of their CMS. We are dedicated to continuing the development of a platform that makes it easy for both developers and business users to create, manage and deliver content to any digital channel. dotCMS is also SOC2 and ISO 27001 certified. Not all organizations have the in-house resources they need to execute their digital strategy. To ensure the success of every dotCMS customer, we provide unparalleled support and dedicated customer experience teams. Our global partner network can help with everything from strategy to complete implementation, and we offer additional professional services packages for ongoing maintenance and consulting.
dotCMS Software - Dashboard
dotCMS Software - Content type
dotCMS Software - Edit mode 1
dotCMS Software - Edit mode 2
dotCMS Software - File browser
dotCMS Software - Workflows steps
dotCMS video
dotCMS Software - Dashboard - thumbnail
dotCMS Software - Content type - thumbnail
dotCMS Software - Edit mode 1 - thumbnail
dotCMS Software - Edit mode 2 - thumbnail
dotCMS Software - File browser - thumbnail

dotCMS pricing

dotCMS has a free version and does not offer a free trial. dotCMS paid version starts at USD 3,750.00/month.

Starting Price:
USD 3,750.00/month
Free Version:
Yes
Free trial:
No

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dotCMS Reviews

Feature rating

Value for Money
4.2
Functionality
4.1
Ease of Use
3.7
Customer Support
4.1
5 reviews of 41 View all reviews
Christopher
Christopher
  • Industry: Human Resources
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Features
5
Ease of Use
3
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 17/12/2018

dotCMS, a great java-based, enterprise-level CMS

I've used dotCMS since their early years (something like 15 years now). They have come a long way and created a great product that I would highly recommend for any team that needs an enterprise-level CMS and is wants a product they can mold and shape into exactly what they need to deliver either just their content or their content and their websites.

Pros

dotCMS is a developer's sandbox with lots of toys in it. It has a lot of built-in features and the custom content types and flexibility. There has been nothing we've wanted to do that we could not do using dotCMS.

Cons

With great flexibility comes great complexity. There are examples of how to do everything, but in the end you have to build out your own stuff. It doesn't theme, it doesn't one-click upgrade. You have to have a competent development wrapped around it.

James
James
  • Industry: Higher Education
  • Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Features
4
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
5

4
Reviewed on 12/07/2019

Solid cloud-hosted CMS for the Enterprise

My experience overall has been very good. We use their enterprise cloud-hosted service so we pay one reasonable fee for the annual license, support and hosting. It is advisable to purchase some sort of training package to get started. Otherwise, you may spend extra time figuring out how to ideally work within the system. For instance, you need to become familiar with the Velocity language that is related to Apache/Tomcat/Java.

Pros

This is an ideal CMS for an enterprise environment that needs a product that is flexible, highly customizable and reasonably priced.

Cons

There are bugs at times that are identified and either resolved via a hotfix or held for resolution in the next iteration. I have received emails saying that a bug was identified and proactively already fixed. However, other times I notice an issue that is documented as a feature yet doesn't work and you must wait until the next iteration is released. One example is an automatic sitemap generator tool. While the configuration of the module is in the documentation there are known reports that not all of the features work. Rather than prioritize it as a hotfix, it is idle until the next release. In the meantime, I have to defer to a third-party sitemap tool.

Bill
  • Industry: Higher Education
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
3
Features
4
Ease of Use
2
Customer Support
2

3
Reviewed on 14/12/2018

DotCMS (hosted/Enterprise edition) might be perfect for you – but it wasn't for us

I think the biggest problem over the years (we are no longer clients) was the lack of a good, consistent working relationship. As a result, we missed years of updates and then had a very painful period where everything seemed to break while, version by version, we got our system up to date. During this time our stakeholders lost faith in DotCMS, so when it came time for a site redesign, there was no question that we would move to another platform even though the capabilities of the updated software were solid.

Pros

The ability to create widgets and place them in any container on the page allows for a ton of flexibility for pulling in and displaying content. The interface for content editors was generally easy enough for them to use effectively.

Cons

If you're not a developer who already knows the language, there's a long learning curve before you're able to code Velocity to do what you want. Also, some things that require little or no setup in other systems require customization. (Example: generating friendly URLs, which is automatic in something like Wordpress.) We also didn't like the strange URLs auto-generated for file assets. Permissions were buggy, partly because some of our files were so old ("legacy" assets).

Response from dotCMS

Hey Bill,

We completely understand your frustrations and valued having Oberlin College as a customer

This feedback is representative of the why behind our investment in customer experience and customer success. We've built out a customer centric program over the last two years to ensure more optimal customer experiences.

Since your departure, we've also built out a much more intuitive and business friendly UI with the launch of the dotCMS 5 series. This release has a cleaner UI, new drag-and-drop features, and an added reporting module. dotCMS 5.0 follows our `NoCode¿ initiative, offering non-technical users, editors, and marketers the autonomy they need.

We're happy to walk you through any of the latest enhancements.

Please feel free to contact me with any additional suggestions or feedback at [email protected]. We're always striving to move forward with the voice of our customers in mind.

Kristina Couchon
Director of Customer Success

Replied 16/01/2019
Verified Reviewer
  • Industry: Wireless
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source
Value for Money
0
Features
3
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
4

4
Reviewed on 03/01/2019

dotCMS gave us the freedom we were looking for.

Overall this platform has opened doors to us that were previous closed. I'm generally very happy with the freedom this software has given my team.

Pros

We appreciated that we could make tweaks and changes that we needed to get the platform to do what we need. Thanks to dotCMS, we are able to give our front end users an easy way to edit and add content to their pages no matter what their skill levels are. We also have the freedom to push to production without having to involve the System Administrators which gives us AMAZING turn around time. If there is a problem in production, we can fix it in minuted, which makes our client very happy and lowers their impact to revenue.

Cons

Sometimes it feels like the software falls short in some instances. Some UI bugs that we have encountered frustrate us as they seem to simple that with some UI/UX focus, shouldn't have occurred. Better documentation could also help us in leaps and bounds. When we have issues, it can be so frustrating to find the correct way to do things, or how to fix our problem. It is often found to be out of date or inaccurate.

Will
Will
  • Industry: Higher Education
  • Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
  • Used Weekly for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
0
Features
4
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
5

4
Reviewed on 18/12/2018

Great CMS for the non-techy

My background is in web development, with most of my experience in frameworks and content management systems like Drupal, WordPress, and Laravel; one organization that I work for specializes in web development.

However, another organization that I work for (the one that uses dotCMS) does not specialize in web development. This organization does want each of its employees to be able to add content to the website on a routine basis, though, and dotCMS fits this use case perfectly - its familiar concepts and simple interface make dotCMS an easy tool to learn and get comfortable with.

Pros

dotCMS uses concepts familiar to the average computer user, such as files and folder, so it's easy for people who know nothing in particular about web development to add and maintain content.
Support is very courteous and responsive.

Cons

Not very developer-friendly: On the job, the main thing I do in dotCMS is write code for templates, detail pages, etc. I often end up copying and pasting code back and forth between dotCMS' interface and a text editor like Notepad++ because I find the built-in code editor fields too small. While dotCMS has WebDAV support, I have never been able to get it to work - and I've tried about a dozen times on a dozen different computers. The closest I've come to getting WebDAV to work is getting a list of all folders in the dotCMS installation -- but no files.

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