Content management systems manage websites and digital content: traditional page-based systems, headless CMSs that deliver content through APIs, and broader digital experience platforms. Organisations use them for public websites, intranets, campaigns and multichannel publishing, often with many editors and approval steps.
A CMS stores more than text. User accounts, form submissions, newsletter sign-ups and editorial history live in its database, and plugins or marketplace extensions run with access to all of it. Whether the system is SaaS or self-hosted therefore changes who operates the stack and who patches it. Open-source CMSs let you choose your host and read the code, but the extension ecosystem is a recurring supply-chain risk; the Cyber Resilience Act sets vulnerability-handling duties for products with digital elements, which shapes expectations for how components are maintained. Lock-in is mostly about content models: structured content, templates and media can be exported, but front-end logic usually cannot.
When choosing a European option, check whether you can self-host and who maintains security updates, how content is exported in structured formats, whether editorial workflow and roles fit your organisation, how extensions are vetted, and whether multilingual content and accessibility are supported natively.