Sitefinity Review: Features, Marketplace, and Pricing

Sunday, February 24, 2019
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Sitefinity Review: Features, Marketplace, and Pricing

This article is part of a series of blog post dedicated to the best .NET e-commerce platforms - nopCommerce, Virto Commerce, DNN, Umbraco, Kentico, Sitecore, and Sitefinity.

So far, we have discussed 6 of these platforms - nopCommerce, Virto Commerce, DNN, Umbraco, Kentico, and Sitecore.

Today, we will talk about Sitefinity. We will discuss Sitefinity's background, architecture, features, marketplace, ecosystem and pricing plans.

Sitefinity is a digital experience platform based on WebForms and .NET 4.7. It powers more than 10K websites worldwide. Developers working with Sitefinity can also use ASP.NET MVC 5 to develop custom features but this comes with a few caveats which we are going to discuss in the architecture section.

Among other things, Sitefinity offers an integrated and scalable digital commerce solution.

Sitefinity History

Sitefinity CMS and Sitefinity Digital Experience Cloud are web experience management products that are part of the Progress portfolio.

Progress Software was founded in 1981. From 1981 to 1984 the company was called Data Language Corporation (DLC). In 1984 the company rebranded as Progress.

In 2004 the company rebranded as OpenEdge, and in 2006 - as Progress (once again).

Over the years Progress acquired many companies including eXcelon Corporation (2002), DataDirect Technologies (2003), Apama (2005), Neon Systems (2006), IONA Technologies (2008), Savvion Inc. (2010), BravePoint and Telerik (2014), and more.

As a result, Progress offers a wide range of products and services - from .NET application development and e-commerce integration, to machine-learning and AI.

The acquisition of Telerik was an aggressive move by Progress to modernize its sort of legacy product portfolio. As a result Progress acquired Telerik’s cutting edge .NET tools among which was the Sitefinity CMS.

Sitefinity Architecture

  • WebForms
  • ASP.NET 4.7 support
  • REST API
  • Headless CMS
  • Microsoft Azure integration
  • Microsoft Dynamics Portal Connector
  • Visual Studio Support (Sitefinity VSIX)

Sitefinty is based on WebForms but it also supports ASP.NET MVC 4.7 development. When working with ASP.NET MVC on Sitefinity you have three options:

  • Develop your own separate MVC controllers and views and register their routes in the CMS system
  • Develop MVC controllers and views as widgets and use these on a Sitefinity CMS page
  • Mix MVC widgets and WebForms on the same page

It is important to note that the Sitefinity Forum and Ecommerce widgets only support the third option. In other words as a developer you cannot work in a pure ASP.NET MVC mode if you are to extend or customize the Forum or any of the e-commerce widgets. You will also have to take into account a few WebForm paradigms like the ViewState, BeginForm method, etc.

Sitefinity Features

  • Multi-store support
  • Multilingual support
  • Multi-currency support
  • Customer tracking
  • 360-degree customer profiles
  • Customer segmentation
  • Drag-and-drop email builder
  • CMS features including inline editing, drag-and-drop design layouts, drag-and-drop form builder, digital asset management, built-in content personalization tools, integrated SEO tools, etc.
  • Multichannel publishing (content delivery). You can deliver valuable content across multiple channels. Thus, you can create meaningful and consistent customer experiences.
  • Product catalog management. You can manage catalogs for single stores, multiple stores, and more.
  • Promotions management. You can create and schedule promotions and have full control over them.
  • Order management. You can manage online and offline orders and order statuses. You can also monitor sales, manage inventory, and more.
  • Single management platform gives you a unified view of all stores, products, catalogs, customers, orders, etc.
  • Multiple payment gateways
  • Google Analytics integration
  • Integration with third-party CRMs, ERPs, RSS feeds, etc.

Sitefinity Themes

The Light backend theme is the default Sitefinity theme. It is also the only theme Sitefinity offers.

If you want to add another theme to your e-commerce website, you will either have to build a custom theme in-house, or outsource its development to a third-party software company.

The best part about building a custom theme, is the fact that you can add custom features to it, and customize its color, style, and more.

Once you’ve built your theme, you will have to register it in your website’s back-end. Then, you will have to assign it to your website, or a specific page template.

Click here for more information on Sitefinity themes and custom theme development.

Sitefinity Plugins

The Sitefinity Marketplace consists of 2 categories:

  • Integrations - This category consists of 3 products:
    • Ucommerce integration. Similar to Umbraco, Kentico, and Sitecore, Sitefinity integrates with Ucommerce. Ucommerce for Sitefinity enables you to deliver consistent and highly personalized shopping experiences across multiple channels. The price is €6.999 per year per production server. Read more here
    • ROC Commerce integration. ROC Commerce for Sitefinity takes into account current trends, order history, and more, so that you can create highly personalized offers. Ultimately, it enables you to deliver shopping experiences tailored to each individual customer. Read more here
    • Siteimprove integration. Siteimprove scans your website in order to fix errors, bugs, optimize content, etc.
  • Add-ons - This category consists of 11 language packs: German, Italian, French, Dutch, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Turkish, Russian, and Portuguese.

Sitefinity Partners & Community

Progress has 355 partners. You can filter the partners by area of interest, industry, product, country, and name.

This means that you can easily filter all partner companies that can work on Sitefinity projects. Currently, there are 164 such companies.

They offer a wide range of services including custom website development, design, custom theme and plugin development, mobile development, app development, and more. They also offer digital consulting, marketing solutions, cloud solutions, IoT solutions, hosting, etc.

Ultimately, you can easily find a partner that will do an outstanding job on any e-commerce project.

Aside from its partners, Progress is strongly supported by its online community as well. There are more than 50 forums on the Progress Community Website. This is because many countries have their own Progress forum. In addition, there are separate forums for different Progress products, forums for technical discussions, forums for general discussions, and much more.

There are over 2000 results for Sitefinity (questions, discussions, groups, etc.) on the Progress Community Website.

Sitefinity Pricing

Sitefinity has 3 editions:

  • Professional edition
  • Online marketing edition
  • Enterprise edition

If you’re interested in purchasing one of the Sitefinity editions, you will have to contact the Sitefinity sales team for pricing. You can do this by clicking on one of the 'Contact us' buttons on this page.

Wrap-up

We hope this article gave you a better idea of what Sitefinity can offer!

Stay tuned for the last article of the series dedicated to the best .NET e-commerce platforms - The Ultimate Guide to the Best .NET E-commerce Platforms for 2019!