An education CMS needs to work for the people maintaining the platform as well as the people using it. Before comparing products, establish who will publish content, what information changes regularly and whether important information is managed in other systems.
Content management
Editors should be able to update pages, create campaign content and reuse approved components without needing developers for routine changes.
The authoring experience should be appropriate for the people using it, whether content is managed by a central digital team or distributed across locations, departments and service areas.
Governance and publishing controls
Where multiple teams contribute content, the CMS should provide:
- Role-based permissions
- Approval workflows
- Publishing controls
- Content ownership and review processes
- Reusable templates and components
- Audit and version histories
These capabilities allow teams to contribute content while maintaining organisational standards.
Integration capabilities
The CMS may need to connect with systems such as:
- Student or learning management systems
- CRMs and marketing platforms
- Registries and databases
- Identity providers
- Payment or application platforms
- Internal business applications
If another system owns particular information, the CMS should be able to present it without creating competing copies that staff must maintain manually.