At the end of February, .eduGuru set out to begin another round of
research on a trend in higher ed web development. This time, we took a
look at the CMSs being used from school to school. Which CMS to use for a
university is a question that lingers in forums and on mailing lists
frequently, and it’s our hope that you will find the following
information helpful in deciding which system will be best for you.
Additionally, we’ll be following up with a series of guest articles over
the next couple months that will discuss their experience using the top
CMSs from this list for their school’s web site. This post will be
fairly long in order to review all the data. If you want, you can
download the data
now and review it on your own (this data has been edited to provide
anonymity to the contributors. Additionally, this research is released
under a
by-sa Creative Commons 3.0 License. It is provided as a zip file with .xls, .pdf, .csv, and .ods formats for your convenience).
There
were 144 responses over the first two weeks of March. There are
4146(ish) colleges and universities in the US, however there currently
is no metric for how many of those are already using a CMS. Consider the
results specific to the US, as even though there were a couple
international entries, it was not statistically significant. See the
chart below for a break down on campus size.
“This
is one of the more political and important decisions a university
makes. Every system has its benefits and drawbacks, but it is almost
impossible to compare systems. This is especially true since you really
don’t know the system until you’ve been using it for years, and at that
point it is too late to switch or be able to evaluate other products.”
~ Survey comment
The
golden question: Which CMS should I use? Well, as you can expect,
that’s not a simple thing to answer. As you can see in the chart below,
the top four (excluding in house solutions), is spread pretty evenly.
OmniUpdate comes out at the top of the list, which isn’t surprising
given the length of time they’ve been around, and the fact that they
have produced a higher ed targeted, feature rich CMS. The other three –
dotCMS, Cascade, and Drupal – run neck and neck, which is interesting,
since these three systems are all
quite different. But, that
does emphasize the point that different schools will have different
needs, and will choose a CMS to fit those needs. Always take the time to
properly identify what needs and requirements you have before selecting
a CMS.
![[Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage [Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage](http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chtt=CMS+Higher+Ed+Market+Share&chts=000000,12&chs=540x300&chf=bg,s,ffffff&cht=p&chd=t:12.50,9.02,8.33,8.33,7.63,4.86,4.86,3.47,2.77,2.77,35.41&chl=OmniUpdate+[18]%7CCustom/Homegrown+[13]%7CdotCMS+[12]%7CCascade+[12]%7CDrupal+[11]%7CEktron+[7]%7CContribute+[7]%7CReason+[5]%7CPlone+[4]%7CDotNetNuke+[4]%7COther+[51]&chco=0000ff,ff0000,00ff00,ffff00,ff00ff,00ffff,339900,ff99ff,ff9900,663300,cccccc)
PHP
and Java rule the roost as programming language, with PHP just barely
leading. Together, they make up more than half of what is being used in
higher ed. This is good news for those looking to staff up on
programmers, since these two languages are also generally in the
top four most popular programming languages
in general (along with C and C++), meaning applicant pools should be
bigger for them. I realized I made a mistake and left Ruby on Rails off
the survey, but it turns out that it has definitely not hit the radar,
and was written in by only one school. Note: some survey entries were
modified for uniformity and to correct incorrect platform language
identification.
![[Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage [Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage](http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chtt=Core+Programming+Language&chts=000000,12&chs=540x300&chf=bg,s,ffffff%7Cc,s,ffffff&chxt=x,y&chxl=0:%7CLanguage%7C1:%7C0%7C10%7C19%7C28%7C38&cht=bvg&chd=t:100.00%7C94.73%7C52.63%7C26.31%7C21.05%7C15.78%7C7.89%7C60.52&chdl=PHP+[38]%7CJava+[36]%7C.Net+[20]%7CASP+[10]%7CCold+Fusion+[8]%7CPython+[6]%7CPerl+[3]%7COther+[23]&chco=0000ff,ff0000,ffff00,00ff00,ff00ff,00ffff,ff9900,999999&chbh=45)
Schools
were fairly evenly split in whether or not they had more than one CMS
available on campus. Larger schools, with good reason, were more likely
to offer multiple CMSs as opposed to small schools. WordPress was one of
the most popular secondary CMSs, probably as it sees significant use as
a blogging platform, rather than primary site CMS. In fact, the
secondary CMS reports showed additional penetration by other open source
CMSs as well, like Joomla and Drupal. These systems will generally
prove easier to deploy in a supplementary capacity since they usually
have shallower learning curves and quicker turnaround times.
![[Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage [Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage](http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chtt=More+Than+One+CMS+By+School+Size&chts=000000,12&chs=540x130&chf=bg,s,ffffff%7Cc,s,ffffff&chxt=x,y&chxl=1:%7C%7C0:%7C30%%7C44%%7C59%&cht=bhg&chd=t:27.58%7C100.00%7C51.72&chdl=%3C10,000+Students+[38%]%7C%3E10,000+Students+[59%]%7CAverage+[45%]&chco=33ccff,cccc00,cccccc&chbh=25)
By
and large, schools host their own CMS. I believe this is perfectly
reasonable, since we normally have access to heavy iron more than
capable of hosting a web server, and we’re connected to pipes with
equally available bandwidth. The largest exception was OmniUpdate, which
was mainly hosted by the vendor. They made up 75% of the responses that
said they were hosted by their vendor. Of OmniUpdate users
specifically, only one-third host it themselves. It should be noted,
however, that this is intentional on their part.
![[Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage [Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage](http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chtt=How+is+Your+CMS+Hosted?&chts=000000,12&chs=540x200&chf=bg,s,ffffff&cht=p3&chd=t:81.94,11.11,4.86,2.08&chl=You+Host+[118]%7CVendor+Hosts+[16]%7C3rd+Party+Hosted+[7]%7COther+[3]&chco=000066,000099,0000cc,0000ff)
Over
half the schools (53%, 58% when unknowns are excluded) host only 5,000
or fewer pages. There was significant dropoff after 100,000 pages. This
data roughly mirrors the demographics of survey respondents – 65% were
from schools of 10,000 students or less. Small schools are more likely
to have fewer pages, 75% have 10,000 pages or fewer versus 51% of large
schools.
![[Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage [Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage](http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chtt=Percentage+of+Schools+Under+10,000+Pages+By+School+Size&chts=000000,12&chs=540x130&chf=bg,s,ffffff%7Cc,s,ffffff&chxt=x,y&chxl=1:%7C%7C0:%7C25%%7C50%%7C75%&cht=bhg&chd=t:100.00%7C52.00%7C56.00&chdl=%3C10,000+Students+[75%]%7C%3E10,000+Students+[51%]%7CAverage+[53%]&chco=33ccff,cccc00,cccccc&chbh=25)
High
traffic sites might be concerned about the number of pages they can
serve without taxing their hosting resources. Surprisingly, if you serve
over one million pageviews in a month, you are in the minority of
universities. Note that some systems, such as Cascade, do push
publishing to a second server, or others might have something like a
Squid proxy running, so the CMS itself isn’t necessarily responsible for
serving pages to a visitor. These statistics do not take that
difference into account. Also of note, nobody serving over one million
pages a month reported using WordPress
or Drupal (correction: three different respondents reported using Drupal in cases over 1,000,000 pageviews).
![[Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage [Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage](http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chtt=Monthly+Pageviews+Served+from+CMS&chts=000000,12&chs=540x365&chf=bg,s,ffffff%7Cc,s,ffffff&chxt=x,y&chxl=1:%7C%7C0:%7C0%7C7%7C15%7C22%7C29&cht=bhg&chd=t:100.00%7C72.41%7C44.82%7C62.06%7C82.75%7C41.37%7C34.48%7C0.00%7C6.89%7C51.72&chdl=%3C50,000+[29]%7C50,001-100,000+[21]%7C100,001-250,000+[13]%7C250,001-500,000+[18]%7C500,001-1,000,000+[24]%7C1,000,001-2,000,000+[12]%7C2,000,001-5,000,000+[10]%7C5,000,001-10,000,000+[0]%7C%3E10,000,000+[2]%7CUnknown+[15]&chco=003300,009900,00ff66,00ff00,006600,00ff99,00ffcc,0099ff,00ffff,00ff33&chbh=25)
One
quarter of respondents don’t make usage of their CMS mandatory. About
half (47%) do, with another 28% having flexible rules. It would seem the
trend definitely is towards trying to get people to use a central
system. A slightly higher percentage, 35%, of larger schools don’t make
CMS usage mandatory. Otherwise, statistics between large and small
schools are relatively similar.
![[Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage [Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage](http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chtt=Is+CMS+Usage+Mandatory?&chts=000000,12&chs=540x200&chf=bg,s,ffffff&cht=p3&chd=t:47.22,24.30,28.47&chl=Yes+[68]%7CNo+[35]%7CVaries+[41]&chco=ff0000,ff6666,ff3333)
An
interesting result, there appears to be relative consistency in the
number of contributors schools have at each level, with a peak between
101 and 250 users. Only seven systems were being reportedly used with
more than 500 users (each with only one vote): Contribute, Luminis,
Plone, OpenText, Cascade, Ironpoint, and Drupal. The average
satisfaction with a CMS appears to drop over 500 users as well, dropping
by half a point among those users.
“Choosing and
implementing a CMS can be done within a small organization like ours.
However, getting the culture to change to accept distributed ownership
of web content is much tougher!”
~ Survey comment
![[Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage [Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage](http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chtt=Satisfaction+Level+By+User+Population&chts=000000,12&chs=540x130&chf=bg,s,ffffff%7Cc,s,ffffff&chxt=x,y&chxl=1:%7C%7C0:%7C6.0%7C6.66%7C7.33&cht=bhg&chd=t:100.00%7C42.10%7C78.19&chdl=%3C500+Users+[7.33]%7C%3E500+Users+[6.56]%7CAverage+[7.04]&chco=33ccff,cccc00,cccccc&chbh=25)
Regardless
of the reason why, almost three quarters of users surveyed said they’d
use the same system again, whether because they just liked it, or
because it would be better than risking a switch to a worse system. The
rest would either switch because they want a better system, or because
options now are better then when they first deployed their current CMS.
This metric didn’t take into account those who might be on the fence as
to what they would do. Large schools were more likely than both small
schools and the average to reuse the same system. Users of Contribute
and custom/homegrown CMSs were most likely to want to change (71% and
62% respectively). That doesn’t include Serena Collage users, all of
whom would change for obvious reasons (the product is no longer being
supported).
“The real answer to the question about
whether we would choose the same platform again from us would be: We’d
do another analysis before concluding anything. Since we haven’t done
that in ~4 years, for now we’d stick with what we have, but if we were
really considering things again, we’d spend several months on a market
analysis before concluding anything.”
~ Survey comment
![[Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage [Results] Higher Ed CMS Usage](http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chtt=Would+Use+CMS+Again+By+School+Size&chts=000000,12&chs=540x130&chf=bg,s,ffffff%7Cc,s,ffffff&chxt=x,y&chxl=1:%7C%7C0:%7C60%%7C65%%7C70%%7C75%&cht=bhg&chd=t:44.89%7C100.00%7C76.87&chdl=%3C10,000+Students+[67%]%7C%3E10,000+Students+[75%]%7CAverage+[71%]&chco=33ccff,cccc00,cccccc&chbh=25)
Overall
satisfaction was rated on a scale of 1 to 10. No conditions were set on
how to rate the satisfaction, so this is very qualitative. The average
score was 7.04. Contribute failed miserably out of all the CMSs (based
on a minimum of five schools reporting usage). OmniUpdate took the
crown, doing better than a 9 overall. Reason, a PHP based open source
CMS developed out of Carleton College, came in second at 8.6, and dotCMS
took third at 8.08. Schools using custom or homegrown solutions were
more than a point under average, falling below a 6. Smaller schools were
more likely to give higher marks to their CMS, though the total average
score swing between large and small schools was only about a quarter
point.
Top three paid CMSs*:
- OmniUpdate
- Hannon Hill Cascade
- Ektron
* Based on reported satisfaction, minimum 5 ratings
Top three open source CMSs*:
- Reason
- dotCMS^
- Drupal
* Based on reported satisfaction, minimum 5 ratings
^ dotCMS does offer a paid enterprise branch
Top three used CMSs*:
- OmniUpdate
- dotCMS
- Cascade
* Based on number of surveyed schools using them, excluding custom and homegrown CMSs
If you
download the raw data,
you can read all the comments, pros, and cons people listed with each
system. For the sake of brevity, I only included a couple here. This
article will be followed up in the coming weeks by several guest posts
discussing all the top used CMSs to give you a look inside other
people’s experiences. In those posts, we’ll include some of the specific
pros and cons that survey respondents submitted. Direct your thoughts
and questions in the comments below, and we can continue discussing any
of the metrics you’d like to.
The content of this post is licensed:

About the author
Michael
joined Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, KS (NOT Pennsylvania,
they spell it wrong anyway) in 2006 and is currently the Director of Web
Marketing. He is also CTO for the
interactive map provider nuCloud.
Web development's role in interpersonal communication is a principle
focus of his efforts to improve and enhance higher ed web commodities.
He is an active supporter of the dotCMS community, accessibility
advocate, freelance consultant, frequent speaker at web events, and
general purpose geek who wears many hats.
Read his complete bio.