When to Choose a Hosted Versus Open Source CMS

Deciding what content management system (CMS) to choose for your website can be a critical decision for the future of your business.  The limitations of a platform can either force you to rebuild or require you to spend an inadequate amount of time managing your website and online presence relative to the value it should be generating.
So how do you decide what platform to choose, and whether you should go with a hosted versus open source platform? Well, there are several things that you should consider. First you must consider the time and resources you will have to manage your site internally. Additionally, you should consider how much time you will have you to manage and spend on a third party to help you with your website on a consistent basis. Chances are you cannot do everything from design to development, from graphics to copy. You will most likely need someone to help you with one area of those things even if you are a web developer.

How Much Time and Money Do You Have To Invest In Your Website?

If the answers to those questions are not a lot of time and not a lot of money to spend, then a hosted option is probably your best choice. Although an open source CMS seems like a better option as far as lowering costs, it will actually cost more in time and money to manage and update the software, because the software must be manually updated.  Therefore if you are not technically inclined and cannot afford the time or money to pay someone to update or improve your Open Source site, it would make more sense to go with a hosted solution.
WordPress is the easiest open source solution to update and maintain. If you do want to save the hosted CMS fee and update it yourself, that would most likely be your best choice.
Once you have answered those questions. The next questions to ask are:

How complex will your website be?

How complex & what type of features will you need in the future?

If you do not need any complex features like eCommerce, parallax scrolling, custom page templates, appointment scheduling, subscriptions, galleries, or any other type of complex dynamic content, than a hosted option should absolutely be on the table for consideration.
One of the biggest advantages of open source software is that you can customize the software to do more than what the core functionality entails with plugins and extensions, or even pay developers to build custom extensions / plugins to meet your needs. Therefore, if your functionality needs, now and in the future, are low, it does not make sense to invest in an open source platform when the basic features of a hosted CMS will suffice.
However, if you expect your site to become more and more complex requiring heavy customization work by your internal team or an outside agency / freelancer, open source software would make a lot more sense. There are still some well designed hosted CMS platforms that have enterprise flexibility, but those solutions may come at an extremely high cost. If you know your site will be complex, you will want to look at the native features of both open source platforms and a hosted option. A hosted option will be difficult to expand the native features if you need something that your hosted CMS does not offer, whereas you will have more flexibility to add new features to an open source CMS that does not have that functionality natively.

Advantages of Hosted:

• Upgrades to software are built in
• Hosting is taken care of
• 100% up time / customer support
• Lower maintenance costs

Advantages of Non Hosted:

• Increased flexility / scalability
• More integration options
• Open source / free licensing
• More extensions to choose from

Here are some open source and hosted CMS options to consider when building a new website.

Leading Open Source CMS Options:

WordPress – 70 million websites use WordPress.
Drupal – 1 million websites use Drupal.
Joomla – 3 million websites use Joomla.
Expression Engine – 100,000 use Expression Engine.

Leading Open Source eCommerce CMS Options:

Magento – 250,000 + eCommerce sites use Magento
WooCommerce – 400,000 + eCommerce sites use wooCommerce.
UberCart – 35,000 eCommerce sites use UberCart.
PrestaShop – 173,000 eCommerce sites use PrestaShop.
osCommerce – 103,000 eCommerce sites use osCommerce.
Zencart – 144,594 eCommerce sites use ZenCart.
OpenCart – 236,930 eCommerce sites use OpenCart.

Leading Hosted CMS Options:

SquareSpace – 88,000 websites use SquareSpace.
Weebly – Has been used by over 20,000,000 people in 150 countries.
Wix – 51,000,000 users have signed up for Wix.
Web.com – (cant find reliable data)
Business Catalyst – 62,628 websites use Adobe Business Catalyst.
LightCMS – 7084 websites use LightCMS.
HiFi – (cant find reliable data)
Webpop – (cant find reliable data)

Leading Hosted eCommerce CMS Options:

Shopify – 100,000 eCommerce stores use Shopify.
Yahoo Store – 19,133 eCommerce sites use Yahoo Store.
Demandware (enterprise) – 900 websites use Demandware.
NetSuite (enterprise) – 20,000 businesses use NetSuite eCommerce / ERP / CRM
IBM WebSphere (enterprise) – 12,254 eCommerce websites use IBM.
Volusion – 28,305 eCommerce sites use Volusion.
Highwire eCommerce – (cant find reliable data)
BigCommerce – 48,941 eCommerce sites use Big Commerce.
Miva Merchant – 13,500 eCommerce sites use Miva Merchant.