Should you go with a Portal or Web CMS?

This is the most common question that my colleagues and I encounter from our customers who are in the process of evaluating options for building a web property.

The reason is not difficult to find.

Many Portal tools have built some basic capabilities for managing content. In the same way, many Web Content Management tools have built capabilities for managing web site experience and thus evolving into what we term as Web Content and Experience Management (WXCM) offerings.

Because of this convergence (at least in terms of broad features), there are cases you could employ either a portal tool such as IBM WebSphere, Liferay, Microsoft SharePoint or many of the tools we evaluate in our Portals and Content Integration stream, as well as use a WXCM tool such as Oracle Fatwire, Adobe Day, Sitecore or one of the other 42 tools we evaluate in our WXCM stream.

Nevertheless, while it may be theoretically possible to swap a portal or a WCXM tool, usually one offers a better fit than the other. You must consider the subtle differences between these two types of technologies, since each one provides a different approach to building and managing digital environments. You should also understand that there are rare occasions when you may need both a portal and WCXM platform.

In our recently released advisory briefing,"Portal or Web CMS: Which One Makes Sense for Your Use Case?," we explore this very topic and provide some guidance on when to use which approach. The table of contents for the advisory is as follows:

  • Key Takeaways
  • Introduction
  • Example Dilemma: A Self-Service Employee Intranet
  • When to Use Portal Technology
  • When to Use a WCXM System
  • Summary
  • Additional Notes

The advisory briefing is available to our Portal and Web CMS research stream subscribers.

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