Your Voice, Your Choice: Nominations are Open for the 2024 CMS Critic Awards
From CMS to DXP to the best AI solution, tell us what platforms really made the grade last year. Be part of our 13th annual CMS Critic “People’s Choice” Awards!
There's no denying that 2024's Wicked is an Oscar-worthy flick. In fact, it's already been shortlisted for multiple categories.
But hey, we think CMS is pretty wicked, too. And there are a few platforms that might be spellbinding enough for a trophy or two.
Of course, it’s not up to us – at least not during the annual CMS Critic Awards. During this contest, we put you in the judge’s seat, so you can tell us what CMS and related DX tools really defied gravity in 2024.
Keep scrolling for more background and the house rules, but here's how it works: Make your nominations at www.cmscritic.com/nominate. We take the top five contenders across a range of categories, open that up to general voting, and announce the victors in late February.
Hollywood can have its glam and glitz, but it doesn’t hold a candle to schema and workflows. Content is the real star of this musical, and the CMS Critic Awards is an opportunity for you to sing the praises of the platforms that power your digital experiences.
It's all about community
If you’re not familiar, the CMS Critic Awards is an institution in the content management industry. It unites rabid fans across the globe to rally around the tools they love – no small feat in today’s fleeting technology landscape.
But CMS is its own sort of bewitching ecosystem. With well-established enterprise vendors and a plethora of open source platforms, CMS enjoys some of the most loyal user communities in the tech pantheon. That’s why we’ve had such incredible participation over the past 12 years, making ours one of the longest-running awards programs in our industry (you can check out all the previous winners here).
While CMS is our Emerald City, we also make space for the expanded ecosystem of products. Over the last decade, we've seen the tornadic rise of digital experience technologies, from pure-play to fully integrated. To that end, we include categories for e-commerce, digital asset management, and even product information management. If it's a system that manages content, we want to celebrate it.
In a land where technology can feel like it’s riding a broomstick, the CMS Critic Awards is proof that loyalty still lives – and people make all the difference.
What to expect with this year’s categories
2024. Man, what a whirlwind.
This was the year WordPress turned open source upside down. The drama surrounding Matt Mullenweg’s contentious and public battle with WP Engine took the tech world by storm, and the future feels decidedly unsettled.
That said, WordPress still represents a crucial part of the market, and we want to know what your favorite tools are in this category, from Drupal to proprietary platforms with free and open source versions of their software.
This was also the year that many platforms “moved to the middle.” Traditionally headless players like Contentstack introduced visual builders and preview capabilities, evolving into composable CMSes and DXPs. Meanwhile, pre-composed DXPs continued adding headless capabilities and SaaS options to become… well, more composable. From a category perspective, 2024 was a critical tipping point – and one that created more features and greater flexibility for buyers and customers.
What does this mean for this year’s Awards categories? When nominating, the spectrum for “Best Headless CMS” can certainly be applied to more than just the pure play platforms – and likewise, a DXP can be inclusive of previous headless players that have advanced their feature sets. Tell us what you think.
There were also a lot of moves in the DAM world, with Canto gobbling up Image Relay and Cloudinary adding more AI-powered capabilities. Still, there are DXPs with built-in DAMs that can hold their own – and now with greater composable flexibility (think Acquia’s acquisition of Widen). To that end, you can nominate your favorite pure play or composed solution. And we’ve even made space for your top PIM picks, whether they’re part of a combined DAM/PIM solution or a standalone product.
CMS and DXP platforms offer multiple features and capabilities. As always, if you feel a single vendor can live in more than one category, it’s your choice to nominate it.
During last year's CMS Critic Awards, we had a huge showing in our “Best Composable Solution” and “Best AI Solution” categories. They're back again, so feel free to nominate any vendor in our space that delivered the most innovative composable or generative AI experience.
A note about integrity
The CMS Critic Awards are intended to be fun and friendly. But they do, at times, get a little fiery.
Every year, we receive thousands of ballots. Users come together like wolfpacks, championing the platforms they love. We also intercept a number of, shall we say, “passionate” pleas, demanding to know why certain platforms were in a specific category, or why their tool wasn’t in the running.
As always, we try to operate in a space of respect and integrity. Obviously, if a platform isn’t truly open source, it won’t be considered for “Best Open Source CMS.” But now more than ever, we're blurring the proverbial lines – and let’s face it, the analysts are also compounding the problem. So, our editorial team endeavors to stay out of the nominating process. As a reminder, we only take the top five in each category by nomination count, so anything below that won’t be featured in the final voting.
How to make your nominations for the 2024 CMS Critic Awards
Drum roll… nominations for the 2024 CMS Critic Awards are officially open! Here’s how you can participate:
- Visit www.cmscritic.com/nominate
- Fill out the required fields and enter the names of your nominees in each category. You don't have to include a nomination for every category – only complete the fields that you care about, and your ballot will be counted. Remember that you can nominate the same vendor in multiple categories.
- Once completed, click the “Submit” button at the bottom of the form.
- You can only nominate once, and companies or brands that offer incentives of any kind will be disqualified.
- Spread the word! Remember to share and encourage others to participate, especially across your social channels.
Nominations close on January 24, 2025, so get out there and rally your communities! Once we tabulate the results, we’ll announce the top five for general voting in early February via email and social.
Don’t be green with envy. Show us how wicked your communities really are – and make your nominations today!
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