I'm wondering what you guys would answer when you are asked this question.
What key features would you address to make sure your clients want to buy Umbraco from you?
Customizability was the first thing I could come up with. Being able to adjust an installation in a way that fits the clients needs in an easy cost effective way is a major selling point imo.
Enables SEO friendly sites to be created, it creates clean HTML (assuming you as developer write clean HTML).
If you can do it with .Net or XSLT then you can do it with Umbraco, so very flexible.
I am working with another CMS at the moment that uses usercontrols for all of the output, so you have to wait for the site to restart after every change to a control - I am missing working with XSLT!
-Very good performance, i did never touch any caching settings since they are even without caching fast enough to run high performance sites
-Very friendly API, the abbility to use the API in combination with custom usercontrols works really nice, it only takes a few lines of code to create new content or users.
-Developers without .net knowledge can use the system very quick.
-Easy install, it takes less than 5 minutes to be keep up and running
-Very active community, when you post a question on the forum, mostly within 15 minutes you got a good answer.
The fear that alot of my clients have with regard to CMS's is that it won't be able to deliver that one key feature they may need. Umbraco is completely unrestrictive as anything you can code in .NET you can code in Umbraco.
I love the fact that as a developer, I can look at any design and not worry about how i'll be able to implement it. No constraints whatsoever, if you can do it in ASP.NET you can do it in Umbraco.
The lack of any proprietary templating syntax is a big plus too - it can all be done in reusable controls and XSLT.
Ditto on all above points (especially the templating engine which uses ASP.NET Masterpages. Super flexible.
My biggest reason for loving Umbraco is it's ability to transform from a CMS to a flexible, extensible development framework for custom applications that require content management. By this I mean to say, the core functionality of the application that you're building may be to manage a product list and sell items online. So, the primary Content Management is to manage individual product items as opposed to pages. Umbraco provides a teriffic platform for you as a developer to du just that (and more). The backend is easy to customize with sections, trees and menus. On top of this, the licensing and PRO versions are cheap to aquire for your big projects that might require branding and support.
Although developers love Umbraco, this isn't it's main selling point.
Developers love it cause it makes meeting the requirements of the Client very easy and possible.
Clients and site designers don't need to concern themselves with 'can the CMS achieve a certain feature'. I've yet to meet a problem that Umbraco can't directly solve, or that can't custom code be seemlessly integrated.
The unique selling point is that Clients, Designers and Developers have no restrictions imposed on their website design or functionality by Umbraco.
Well, the others pretty much said it. The reason why I like Umbraco is its simplicity on the outside, and its power inside. Back in 2005 when I first had the opportunity to try umbraco I didn't realise its potential, but as I kept playing with it, I found it to be much funnier to build websites, than any other CMS I've worked with. The reason was that I felt that I was in control over the CMS and not the other way around. Once you've grasped the concept of how data types relate to document types, and a bit of XSLT, well, then you're ready to become the next umbraco webpage guru.
In many competing CMS' a whole bunch of features is thrown at your face the moment you login to the backend, but my bet is that you're not going to use 80-90% of those features, so why bother to show them? It causes confusion and makes it more difficult to use the CMS. I have a personal theory that some CMS vendors think that many features (screen clutter) == quality cms. But it isn't the case. A CMS' has to a adapt to your or your clients needs and that's what Umbraco does so brilliantly.
Umbraco is basically designed the same way as BMW designs its cars - the ultimate driving experience through technical and design innovations. But never, ever, ever without compromising the main goal, getting you from A to B all while enjoying a fun but safe journey.
Some car makers choose to mask their horrible constructed vehicles by adding a zillion extras. CMS vendors are no different. It might be harder to sell without all the bling, but once you've experienced the "real" thing, you'd never go back.
The main difference between Umbraco and a BMW is the price point and the lack of iDrive. I see that as an added bonus ;-)
What makes Umbraco unique?
I'm wondering what you guys would answer when you are asked this question.
What key features would you address to make sure your clients want to buy Umbraco from you?
Customizability was the first thing I could come up with. Being able to adjust an installation in a way that fits the clients needs in an easy cost effective way is a major selling point imo.
The backend of Umbraco is fantastic, its very easy to use and clients love it.
Extremely Fast.
easy to develop external components for umbraco ..
easy setup ..
Setup: smooth installation through web pi
Design: Flexibility, no layout limitations, user friendly/intuitive backend system
Development: highly extensible through custom code and great public api/webservices, fully compatible with latest asp.net 3.5
/Dirk
Oh, and if that makes a great marketing point: a stunning community!
Enables SEO friendly sites to be created, it creates clean HTML (assuming you as developer write clean HTML).
If you can do it with .Net or XSLT then you can do it with Umbraco, so very flexible.
I am working with another CMS at the moment that uses usercontrols for all of the output, so you have to wait for the site to restart after every change to a control - I am missing working with XSLT!
-Very good performance, i did never touch any caching settings since they are even without caching fast enough to run high performance sites
-Very friendly API, the abbility to use the API in combination with custom usercontrols works really nice, it only takes a few lines of code to create new content or users.
-Developers without .net knowledge can use the system very quick.
-Easy install, it takes less than 5 minutes to be keep up and running
-Very active community, when you post a question on the forum, mostly within 15 minutes you got a good answer.
For me it seems a lot more intuitive to use at the back end, for content editors, as well as developers. The Community is really unique too...
The fear that alot of my clients have with regard to CMS's is that it won't be able to deliver that one key feature they may need. Umbraco is completely unrestrictive as anything you can code in .NET you can code in Umbraco.
This is a great selling point IMHO.
Our Clients think it's easy to use and LOVE the navigation in back end.
IMO as developer the a key feature is that Umbraco is really easy to customize and extend in many ways - you don't have to rely on existing addons.
I love the fact that as a developer, I can look at any design and not worry about how i'll be able to implement it. No constraints whatsoever, if you can do it in ASP.NET you can do it in Umbraco.
The lack of any proprietary templating syntax is a big plus too - it can all be done in reusable controls and XSLT.
Ditto on all above points (especially the templating engine which uses ASP.NET Masterpages. Super flexible.
My biggest reason for loving Umbraco is it's ability to transform from a CMS to a flexible, extensible development framework for custom applications that require content management. By this I mean to say, the core functionality of the application that you're building may be to manage a product list and sell items online. So, the primary Content Management is to manage individual product items as opposed to pages. Umbraco provides a teriffic platform for you as a developer to du just that (and more). The backend is easy to customize with sections, trees and menus. On top of this, the licensing and PRO versions are cheap to aquire for your big projects that might require branding and support.
Love it....
Thanks for all the replies so far everyone! It seems like easy development is a key selling point for you lazy devvers :)
Although developers love Umbraco, this isn't it's main selling point.
Developers love it cause it makes meeting the requirements of the Client very easy and possible.
Clients and site designers don't need to concern themselves with 'can the CMS achieve a certain feature'. I've yet to meet a problem that Umbraco can't directly solve, or that can't custom code be seemlessly integrated.
The unique selling point is that Clients, Designers and Developers have no restrictions imposed on their website design or functionality by Umbraco.
Chris
Well, the others pretty much said it. The reason why I like Umbraco is its simplicity on the outside, and its power inside. Back in 2005 when I first had the opportunity to try umbraco I didn't realise its potential, but as I kept playing with it, I found it to be much funnier to build websites, than any other CMS I've worked with. The reason was that I felt that I was in control over the CMS and not the other way around. Once you've grasped the concept of how data types relate to document types, and a bit of XSLT, well, then you're ready to become the next umbraco webpage guru.
In many competing CMS' a whole bunch of features is thrown at your face the moment you login to the backend, but my bet is that you're not going to use 80-90% of those features, so why bother to show them? It causes confusion and makes it more difficult to use the CMS. I have a personal theory that some CMS vendors think that many features (screen clutter) == quality cms. But it isn't the case. A CMS' has to a adapt to your or your clients needs and that's what Umbraco does so brilliantly.
Umbraco is basically designed the same way as BMW designs its cars - the ultimate driving experience through technical and design innovations. But never, ever, ever without compromising the main goal, getting you from A to B all while enjoying a fun but safe journey.
Some car makers choose to mask their horrible constructed vehicles by adding a zillion extras. CMS vendors are no different. It might be harder to sell without all the bling, but once you've experienced the "real" thing, you'd never go back.
The main difference between Umbraco and a BMW is the price point and the lack of iDrive. I see that as an added bonus ;-)
is working on a reply...