What is Sitecore CMS?
If you visit the Sitecore website, you’ll notice they refer to Sitecore as an experience platform. And that’s what Sitecore has evolved into now: a digital experience platform (also called a DXP).
Sitecore Experiment Platform—or XP— is a composable digital experience platform. Depending on your needs, you can choose from its different components to compose your own digital experience platform:
- XM Cloud (Sitecore’s content management solution)
- Search (Sitecore’s search and discovery solution)
- CDP (Sitecore’s customer data management solution)
- Personalize (Sitecore’s personalization and testing solution)
- Content Hub (Sitecore’s DAM solution)
- Connect (Sitecore’s integration solution)
So why does Sitecore come up so many times as a CMS solution? That’s because when Sitecore launched in 2001, it was a content management solution.
Over time, as digital experiences and marketing needs evolved, Sitecore expanded its offerings beyond a traditional CMS, adding solutions for personalization, customer data management, and media management, among others.
That said, even now, it offers a standalone CMS solution. Sitecore’s CMS solution is called Sitecore Experience Manager.
Sitecore also offers its CMS as a fully managed cloud solution called Sitecore XM Cloud.
In addition to Sitecore Experience Manager and Sitecore XM Cloud, Sitecore also offers a headless-only CMS solution called Content Hub ONE.
As you can see, Sitecore offers several CMS options. But the future seems to be leaning toward Sitecore XM Cloud. Given Sitecore’s very complex upgrades, XM Cloud stands out as a future-proof choice (since all upgrades are handled by Sitecore).
So what is Sitecore used for generally (given its so many solutions)?
Sitecore is primarily used for managing and delivering personalized digital experiences at scale across multiple channels. As a DXP suite, Sitecore is an excellent option. However, ending up with its full DXP suite (or with most of its solutions) when you only need a scalable CMS with personalization support is an overkill for most businesses.
In general, if you’re evaluating a digital experience platform for your business, you’ll consider Sitecore Experiment Platform, but if you’re only looking for a CMS, you’ll be looking at Sitecore XM Cloud.
Sitecore XM Cloud is, in many ways, comparable to a solution like WordPress VIP. Both are fully managed, cloud-based CMS solutions specifically designed for enterprise-level content management. The main consideration in the Sitecore CMS vs WordPress discussion is how each CMS approaches architecture. Sitecore XM Cloud is a headless-only CMS, while WordPress can be used in a headless architecture, a trend that many businesses are increasingly adopting.
