Vaishnav Vivek Prabhu

PRN - 122 Div - D

BCA - Semester II

INTRO TO
CMS
Assignment - 1

 Open Source CMS VS Proprietary CMS

Question 1. List the differences between open source CMS and Proprietary CMS.

Open Source CMS Proprietary CMS

- An open source CMS allows the source code to be seen - A proprietary CMS keeps the source code closed to the
and modi ed by anyone on the internet public

- Open source CMS can help keep the business - Proprietary CMS are usually offered at a price and are not
expenditure down as they are often offered for free free

- Open source CMS has a better user base as compared to - Proprietary CMS do not have a wide user base like Open
proprietary CMS source CMSs’

- Maintainability cost is very less but is sometimes, time - Maintainability cost is high but the time is saved as it is
consuming done solely for pro t motive

- Security for Open source CMS is high as they are - Proprietary CMS is usually low in security as only some
developed and tested by millions of users around the people that are associated with the company have access
globe to the code

- Example - Drupal, Wordpress, Magento etc - Example - Kentico, Sitecore, EVOQ etc

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 Open Source CMS <-> Proprietary CMS

Question 2. What are the advantages and limitations of open source CMS and proprietary CMS?

Open Source CMS

Advantages
• Open source CMS are Frequently Updated

• These CMS are cost effective which means that there is no licensing fee which results in open source CMS being affordable.
In other words, the total cost of ownership comes down to almost $0.

• Since the CMS code is provided to you, you can integrate anything you want with it which makes it exible

• Open source CMS are often familiar to many developers so you can work with multiple developers at different points of
time and they can work on it without any special training

Limitations
• Since the code is available to everyone on the internet, while it can be said that a lot of being see the code and improve it
in terms of security, some may also misuse the vulnerabilities inside the CMS and perform malicious activities

• Since these projects are sometimes managed by a single developer, the build quality can be inconsistent.

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 Proprietary CMS

Advantages
• These CMS platforms usually provide a 24/7 customer support

• Since these CMS platforms are backed by big companies, the builds are usually consistent in terms of quality

• Since Proprietary CMS are meant for end users, the setup, install and con guration is very easy and can be done by anyone

Limitations
• If any function isn’t supported by the company, you wont be able to manually include it using your own code as the
complete code wont be provided to you

• The average ownership cost for a proprietary CMS is usually high

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 When to choose Open source or Proprietary CMS

Question 3. When would you choose an open source CMS or a proprietary CMS?

I would choose Open Source CMS if I were to start or help a small scale
business which earns below $1 Million as their annual revenue.

As the business value goes higher, there would be more money with the
business to spend it. Also including the fact that as the business value goes
higher, the reliability of the business has to be better so investing in a
proprietary CMS will be an apt decision for the company