Ektron CMS400.NET (version 8.5 as of this writing) is targeted at Microsoft-oriented IT shops & developers building marketing-oriented sites. The company makes a determined effort to have some type of widget for everything under the sun, from document management to group spaces to calendar widgets to e-commerce & order processing, and on and on (with varying levels of depth & sophistication).
Features
Like Sitecore CMS, Ektron is a solidly Microsoft-based solution. Its primary approach is to provide a platform for incorporation & use of a rich library of re-usable .NET widgets to enable marketing organizations to build websites & web pages with minimal developer involvement (after initial developer-led site creation, setup & template creation). Unlike Sitecore, Ektron is a more out-of-the-box solution.
CMS400.NET is a multi-tier architecture, separating data, application logic & presentation. (I think you could say Drupal does the same thing, but the distinctions Ektron makes aren't yet clear to the author of this wiki page...) It also has a development, staging & production sync capability (via a sync application of some sort).
Note that for each instance shown in this diagram, a customer must buy a new server instance (with some exceptions), with associated cost implications.
In addition, Ektron bundles core CMS features separately from its "Marketing Optimization Suite", its "Social Software Suite", and its "eCommerce Suite".
CMS features
The main features are as follows. (Note that this list is longer than other CMS' reviewed in this Drupal group for two reasons: a) Ektron has a lot of features, and b) they simply take the time to list more on their website than their competitors do, IMHO). Because of this long list, I've done the "Drupal equivalent" in a slightly different way than the other CMS': I've put the Drupal Equivalent in italics at the end of the entry for each item.
- Coding-free page layouts. The system provides site builders to create templates that establish basic site look & feel, then enables content creators to build custom pages based on that template.
(This entry is out of alpha order intentionally.)
Drupal: There are several similar initiatives on d.o, though none (yet) pull together all this capability in one cohesive set. For page layout, see:- Panels
- Context (particularly when combined with boxes and other complementary components)
- Display Suite
- Broken link Checker Drupal: Link checker module (though no D7 version yet)
- Calendars, as in showing events in a calendar view.
Drupal: Lots o' power via the Calendar module, with its wonderful integration into CCK & Views
- "Content governance & compliance", which appears to mean the ability to create templates & CSS styles that content creators can (must) use to enforce brand & styling. Drupal: Simply enforced by being present in the Theme, because Drupal "works differently".
- Content staging, via an eSync function that appears to be able to move content from development to staging server to production server - and vice-versa. Drupal: Currently Drupal encourages you to use workflow for this. There is no classic content staging in Drupal. This is an area being worked on for D8.
- Content scheduling: content goes live, and goes offline, at specific dates/times. Drupal: the Scheduler module
- Document management, including workflow, versioning, permissions, etc. Drupal: Look at the File Depot module, or use an external document CMS, and use the cmis module to talk to it.
- Form builder. Drupal: Form builder module
- Geolocation, which can be used to deliver personalized content. E.g. deliver a personalized promotion for visitors viewing site within a certain distance of the retail location of the site owner. Drupal: Drupal has a bunch of modules that have to do with geolocation: IP to locale, IP to country, geo ip, Geo user, host IP, IP to nation, and then lets the developer decide what they want to do with this info. (E.g. delivering a personalized promotion is done using other Drupal coding methods.)
- Geomapping, for integrating with Google or Bing maps. Drupal: TONS of stuff
- In-context editing. As an alternative to a page/form-based edit, users can also make content edits directly in-page (/in-block). Drupal: No equivalent
- LDAP integration for editorial users. (Anecdotal information suggests it's not as strong as competitors.) Drupal: Several, including LDAP integration and LDAP.
- Lead scoring. Similar to functionality provided by vendors like Manticore (see Drupal link below), visitor page visits can be "scored", and stored as a value that can be used to trigger a future action - e.g. pushing contact info to a CRM system when the cumulative score exceeds a threshold. This can be used to increase lead volume & sales efficiency. Drupal: Manticore (and Eloqua ?)
- Metadata support, permitting the definition of arbitrary fields. Metadata & fields can be part of the content approval workflow. Drupal: See Nodewords module for D6 and Metatag in D7, which will be much more powerful than either Nodewords or Ektron's Metadata support.
- Mobile Device Detection; works in combination with Mobile device categorization. Drupal: WURFL module
- Mobile device categorization; ability to group devices based on device characteristics (so users can specify handling for all devices with similar characteristics). Uses WURFL. Drupal: I don't think there's an equivalent in Drupal yet.
- Mobile preview. Content authors can preview content against device templates. See also Mobile Templates. Drupal: This is a bit immature yet in Drupal, but watch progress at jQuery Mobile UI and jQuery Mobile Module.
- Mobile templates. (I think) Siite builders can create mobile templates for categorized devices and then preview page content in a popup for these various devices. Drupal: See above
- Multilingual content. Drupal: TONS of stuff help make Drupal sites multilingual. It's maybe industry-leading in this respect.
- Multisite, though it's not clear how extensive this is. Drupal: Drupal "just does it."
- Personal dashboards for content creators to organize their content creation activity. Drupal: I'm not sure, but I think workbench gets close.
- Role / permission system, similar to Drupal.
- Site search, based on Microsoft's search technology. Drupal: Lots. Drupal core has search, but see also solr and even Acquia's Solr search as a service
- Social & timeline navigation. Highest (community) rated content floats to the top. And timeline navigation saves a clickstream and displays it to users to let them find where they previously visited. Drupal: none.
- Taxonomy. Duh. But can also be applied to search results to filter results. Drupal: in core
- URL aliasing.. Duh (again). Drupal: A bunch of things are useful, but the path redirect module page gives a lot of summary help.
- User profiles. Duh (again). Drupal: in core
- Wikis. Odd, but this isn't shown as part of the Social Suite; I'd have thought it would be (given how they package everything else), but it's not. Drupal: Wikis are just another content type; input filters can be set to enable various wiki syntax.
- Workflows for content creation. Drupal: Workflow is traditionally done in Drupal with the Workflow module in D6 and below, and there are a couple of sophisticated workflow management tools for Drupal 7 available like Maestro and Workbench.
- WYSIWYG editor. Ektron's original business was selling a browser-based WYSIWYG editor. While the technology has gone from IE-only to cross-browser, it remains a strong emphasis of Ektron. Drupal: The WYSIWYG module, plus an external library, such as CKeditor.
- 508 Compliance - specifically enabling all functions to be performed via menus (vs. requiring mouse clicks), 508-compliant data tables 9e.g. caption element, summary attribute, headings).
Note: Functionality of the system is exposed via SOAP interfaces for integration with external applications.
Marketing Optimization Suite
- Activity Streams / microblogging
- Content targeting
- Multivariate testing, enabling sites to create pages with differing layout, imagery, copy & call to action. The site presents analytical data to determine which has the highest conversion rate (e.g. which ones have the best success in the call to action).
- SEO-friendly via URL aliases, keyword tools, etc., plus a built-in SEO grader.
Social Software Suite
- Blogs
- In-context analytics
- Forums / message boards
- Groups, similar to Drupal Organic Groups.
- Polls / surveys
- Ratings / reviews
- Share This buttons to post to social sites.
- "Social CRM" (in quotes because I can't exactly figure out what it does..)
- Subscriptions, which appear to be the ability to subscribe to email alerts about (something - I'm not sure what..).
- Tag clouds
eCommerce Suite
- Shopping carts, of course, including wishlists & registries. Administrators can view "open" baskets.
- Coupons, taxes, pricing
- In-context analytics
- Order processing, such as simple processing within the CMS itself or connecting to a CRM or ERP to process the order (with round-trip notification to the CMS of order status, which in turn can be used to keep online information about inventory up to date).
- Third-party payment gateway support, a presumably necessary option for any eCommerce suite
- Shipping management, e.g. ways to set shipping policy for ordering.
Other information
Company: Ektron
License: Proprietary
Language: C#/.NET
Download: http://ektron.com/Trial-Version/ (registration required)
Online Demo: http://ektron.com/about-ektron/request-a-demo/ (registration & talking to sales required)