Kentico CMS for ASP.Net — Free for the Taking

Kentico Software, a web CMS vendor, is now providing a free version of Kentico CMS for commercial and personal projects. Four years after creating Kentico, the company wants to encourage more developers and site owners to embrace the Kentico CMS. We here at CMSWire can’t argue with receiving free software!

Why the Free Version?

If people are thinking that Kentico is giving away their flagship product because it isn't worth it -- those people would be sorely mistaken. The reasoning is very simple. Kentico Software believes that a free edition would allow more people to benefit from the Kentico CMS: “After four successful years on delivering our content management solution to hundreds of businesses, we decided to offer a free edition to allow more developers and site owners to benefit from our powerful content management platform.” In other words, the company is giving it away with the hope of drawing more customers to their paid products -- there is nothing wrong with that. It is a trend that is continuing to pick up support. The best thing is that this trend is beneficial to everyone.

Kentico CMS Free Edition Features

The free edition has a number of features, including: * WYSIWYG editing environment * Built-in search engine optimization * Support for news stories, blog entries, and polls * Built-in image galleries * Product catalog with shopping cart * Newsletter support * Forum module * Online forms support After giving Kentico CMS Free Edition a spin, I was extremely impressed with the interface design and editing environment in particular. The ability to simply click on an item and edit it immediately in the WYSIWYG environment is great. The interface -- while typical of many other CMSs -- works well without making things complicated. Its familiarity will probably be welcomed by users of other CMSs.

Kentico CMS Free Edition
The Kentico web CMS is split into four separate tabbed sections: Content, My Desk, Tools, and Administration. Within these four sections, the owner can edit and create content, manage site documents, access additional functionality, and perform site administration.

What’s the Catch?

There are -- of course -- a few stipulations to using the Kentico CMS Free Edition: * 1 administrator user per install * 1 editor per Website * 1000 documents/pages per Website * 100 site members per Website * “Powered by Kentico CMS” logo required within the site’s footer * Support available through forums only Beyond those few details, a majority of the functionality within the paid versions of Kentico CMS remain available in the free version. The feature set should be more than adequate for small to medium sized Websites. The Kentico CMS usually costs around US$ 749 to US$ 1499, but the free version is virtually a steal. If Kentico has interested you, check out Kentico's Website.