dotCMS Reviews & Product Details

dotCMS is a visual headless content management system (CMS) designed to assist compliance-led organizations in the creation, management, and publication of digital content across various sites, brands, and channels from a unified platform. This innovative solution combines the flexibility of a headless CMS with a user-friendly visual editing interface, making it suitable for both developers and content teams. The platform is particularly relevant for organizations that prioritize governance and compliance, such as those in financial services, healthcare, government, telecom, and manufacturing. It is ideal for use cases that involve managing multi-site brand and regional websites, intranets, customer portals, product and marketing sites, and localized content. By providing a centralized system, dotCMS allows users to maintain control over their content while ensuring that it meets regulatory requirements. Key features of dotCMS include its API-first design, which supports GraphQL, REST, and Page API, enabling developers to integrate with various front-end technologies like React, Next.js, and Angular. This flexibility allows for seamless integration with other systems, such as commerce, digital asset management (DAM), and product information management (PIM). Content editors benefit from a visual interface that includes drag-and-drop functionality and live preview capabilities, streamlining the content creation process. Governance and compliance are at the forefront of dotCMS's offerings, with built-in workflows, approval processes, audit trails, granular permissions, and version history. This ensures that organizations can maintain oversight of their content operations, with configurable roles and multi-step approval processes that enhance accountability. Furthermore, dotCMS is aligned with enterprise security and compliance standards, such as SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001, providing peace of mind for organizations handling sensitive information. Organizations like BNP Paribas, Telus, and various regional health systems utilize dotCMS to consolidate their content platforms, standardize governance practices, and reduce operational overhead. The platform is tailored for teams that require both content flexibility and stringent control over publishing processes, making it a robust solution for managing digital content in a compliant manner.

Product Website

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dotCMS

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dotCMS Community

Languages Supported

Danish, German, English, French, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish

Overview by

Victoria Burt

Pricing

Pricing provided by dotCMS.

Community (Business Source License)

Free

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dotCMS Integrations

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Verified by dotCMS

dotCMS Media

Collect, organize, and act on data and analytics to deliver a relevant customer experience

Hybrid features and an SPA editor (Edit Mode Anywhere) for managing an omnichannel experience

Arrange and manage content in-context across for all channels.

Drag-and-drop to design custom layouts and templates that can be used across channels and devices.

Build rich content structures that can be used across sites and channels.

Fully customizable workflows and permissions allow simple yet secure governance of content and digital assets.

Simplify content creation and delivery to save costs and grow revenue. dotCMS goes beyond headless, allowing developers and content teams to consolidate digital experiences across channels.

Your content management needs are complicated, but your CMS doesn't have to be.

Hear from Nollymar Longa, dotCMS Team Lead in R&D, on how the dotCMS product has evolved over the last seven years.

Whether your site and content need to be optimized for performance or you’re going through a redesign, dotCMS's Experiments Feature can help you take the guesswork out of your business-critical content using real-life user data.

dotCMS Vice President of Product Preston So explores the future of CMS and discusses an industry-wide shift to the Universal CMS.

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Verified User in Entertainment

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

2/12/2021

"Development with dotCMS has been largely seamless, but like any software has its flaws"

3.5/5

What do you like best about dotCMS?

We use dotCMS as an intermediary between our internal systems and our outward facing website. It's not a completely headless build, but more of a hybrid. We appreciate the fluidity of the product in being a hybrid model.

The API that the team at dotCMS is great. As a hybrid model, we're able to write and receive data to and from dotCMS with little effort.

The support we receive has also been a highlight of using this product. The team at dotCMS is quick and very knowledgeable of the product they're developing. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about dotCMS?

The backend can be unintuitive and unresponsive at times and the core software is missing some support for what we would consider standard user features. The documentation is outdated or incomplete in some respects. This wouldn't be a huge issue, but there also isn't a whole lot of organic support via other users building and sharing their experiences. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is dotCMS solving and how is that benefiting you?

We used dotCMS to rebuild our affiliate site. It's primary function is make marketing materials for content we provide them with available. It also allows users at our affiliate to download and view company and industry-specific information. The benefit of using dotCMS for us was how much is already built into the core and how easy it is to communicate with the API in order to get our customers access to data that lives outside of the dotCMS build. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Jim C.

Executive Director of Digital Marketing and Communications

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

2/12/2021

"Best kept secret in enterprise class CMS systems"

5/5

What do you like best about dotCMS?

dotCMS is continuously improving to provide its customers with a best-in-class website design and development experience. It is extremely convenient to take advantage of their cloud offering so all you have to concentrate on is your actual website - they do the maintenance, hosting, etc. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about dotCMS?

Occasionally response times to reported issues are slower than I like. In reality, they are probably fine, but we live in an instantaneous gratification world. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Retail

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

2/12/2021

"content author - site manager review"

3.5/5

What do you like best about dotCMS?

Bulk uploading - is a pretty neat feature that helped us launch bigger pieces of content. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about dotCMS?

our design system and having to build widgets from scratch. There are a lot more intuitive features in a WordPress or square space site manager that are not enabled. Would love to have focal point focusing on the end-user.

We struggled big-time with issues during the main content creation - with our widgets and pieces of content disappearing when we launched. That was super frustrating.

We have also had issues with images not loading - and have had to re-load images 4+ times to get them to show up on the homepage. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Patrick M.

Operations Manager

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

3/24/2021

"The Perfect Content Management Tool"

4.5/5

What do you like best about dotCMS?

I like dotCMS is very affordable and comes with best features as an enterprise content manager

The tool is very secure and makes content collaboration a breeze. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about dotCMS?

No single dislike that I can think about because dotCMS has always worked as expected. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering dotCMS:

dotCMS is one of the best when it comes to business content management. It encompasses all the important features and it is very secure as well. I recommend it Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is dotCMS solving and how is that benefiting you?

We use dotCMS as a content management tool. So far it has delivered and I cannot complain. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Higher Education

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

2/14/2021

"There have been up and downs with backend help but the basic user experience is good."

3.5/5

What do you like best about dotCMS?

What I like best is that typical users experience something similar to MS Word. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about dotCMS?

What I dislike is that when we have backend issues that it is sometimes challenging to get quality service early on in the process. Sometimes we have to go up the management chain to get help. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Financial Services

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

2/15/2021

"Great CMS system!"

4/5

What do you like best about dotCMS?

I like the flexibility that dotCMS provides. We use dotCMS both headless as well as the 'traditional' way. We had some trouble setting it up, because of our specific enterprise setup, but the customer service did a great job assisting us. We use dotCMS for several years now and we manage over 30 websites. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about dotCMS?

It was really challenging for us to update and I think it's because we do not have an out-of-the-box setup and requires some manually configuration. But again we always got the right support! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Kelvin E.

Agile Delivery Manager

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

8/12/2020

"Easy to create very flexible website and headless content"

4/5

What do you like best about dotCMS?

DotCMS made possible to build very flexible websites with reusable components and templates which enables our content managers and designers to compose pages with different dynamic components in no time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about dotCMS?

Some of the DotCMS entinties cannot be deployed through the pipelines which makes impossible to have a continues delivery, however, the push publishing helps on this process. The support and RCA in case of incidents can be improved further as it is already improved in the past year. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering dotCMS:

It is a very flexible CMS and you might start with the comunity version to try it out Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is dotCMS solving and how is that benefiting you?

Creating headless content for mobile/desktop apps and flexible websites where content managers and designers can compose and create pages themself. DotCMS facilitates the review and publishing of new versions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Stephen E.

Agile Development Manager

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

2/15/2021

"dotCMS is a strong enterprise CMS. Not for everyone, helps to have an internal tech team."

4/5

What do you like best about dotCMS?

Its flexibility. We can custom develop nearly anything we need. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about dotCMS?

Difficulty and time spent on upgrades. Not a straight-forward process. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Nafi H.

Senior Software Engineer

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

2/17/2021

Business partner of the seller or seller's competitor, not included in G2 scores.

"Backend content management"

3.5/5

What do you like best about dotCMS?

Organization of content and search capability Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about dotCMS?

Inconsistent user experience while viewing/managing content Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Verified User in Telecommunications

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

8/19/2020

"Awesome CMS platform"

4.5/5

What do you like best about dotCMS?

i love the flexibility it provides. we chose our desired Front End technology, and after the initial implementation it is very straightforward to use by no-code users. another plus is about the speed to deliver into production new pages. we managed to launch an entire video streaming platform based on dotcms in only 10 days. it is easy to integrate with other platforms due to API based features. on the other hand, features as push-publish, persona and widgets are really great to use Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about dotCMS?

The learning curve is quite long. we depend quite much on the vendor to learn to use the product at its best. but the best part here is that they are very committed in supporting us. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering dotCMS:

it takes a bit of time to find the best set up (if you are doing it on-prem) but it's worth the effort Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is dotCMS solving and how is that benefiting you?

page editing by non-technical users. fast integration with other sources of data. fast delivery content pages on our site and easy way to modify afterwards, without depending on Developers for the slightest update Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Questions about dotCMS? Ask real users or explore answers from the community

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Kelvin Ekonomi

•

Last activity over 5 years ago

I didn't check last versions so it might be already there. When dotCMS will fully support all the entities (containers, templates, pages, etc) and content to be deployable through APIs? Is that in the roadmap and for when?

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Verified User

•

Last activity almost 6 years ago

How is dotCMS priced?

2 Upvotes

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