Managing a website is great when everything's in sync, but one misstep can cause major issues. For web strategists and digital leaders, the right website management tools can streamline the many processes they’re in charge of and prevent errors from impacting website performance.
In brief:
- We’ll cover the top website management tools across ten categories.
- You’ll learn how tools for content management, security, and performance can streamline your online presence.
- Find out how automation and collaboration tools can make your team more efficient.
Top Website Management Tools
Keeping a website running smoothly involves security, performance optimization, SEO, and continuous analytics.
Let's dive into the top website management tools in each category to help you build a great website that keeps users coming back.
1. Content Management Systems (CMS)
A reliable CMS provides you with a simple way to create, organize, and publish content without getting bogged down. Here are some options to consider:
- Strapi – Strapi is an open-source headless CMS that offers flexibility and customization for developers. Built with JavaScript, it integrates with any front-end framework or library, enabling developers to craft custom solutions tailored to their specific needs. It uses both RESTful and GraphQL APIs, and provides developers the freedom to choose how they interact with the content. Its plugin system and customizable API make it a favorite among developers who want to avoid being confined by rigid frameworks. The community around Strapi is active and growing, offering a wealth of resources and support. Whether you're building a blog, an ecommerce site, or a mobile app, Strapi can handle complex content structures with ease.
- Sanity – Sanity offers real-time collaboration with a structured data approach, which makes content management seamless for teams. Its GROQ query language and customizable backend provide developers with the tools to handle large, dynamic datasets. Sanity's portable text editor allows for rich text editing and content modeling, giving you control over the presentation and organization of your content. The platform also offers hosted backend services, including a globally distributed CDN, image pipelines, and asset management. With Sanity, you can customize the editing environment to suit your needs, and the active community and comprehensive documentation make it easier to get started and troubleshoot issues.
- WordPress – WordPress is the world's most popular CMS. It's an open-source platform that provides an easy-to-use content management system suitable for beginners and experts alike. WordPress offers a vast ecosystem of themes and plugins, which lets users customize their websites extensively without needing to code. For developers, WordPress provides an API, and with the introduction of the REST API, it can also be used as a headless CMS. Its large community provides regular updates, security patches, and abundant resources for troubleshooting and learning.
Note that as your website grows, you’ll probably need to migrate from WordPress onto a more scalable CMS.
2. Security and Backup Tools for Website Management
No one wants their site compromised by hackers or malware. These tools provide your website with defense layers and reliable backups.
- Cloudflare – Cloudflare guards against DDoS attacks with a Web Application Firewall (WAF). It also functions as a CDN, reducing latency by delivering cached content from servers closer to your audience. Cloudflare's security suite includes SSL encryption, bot mitigation, and protection against SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks. Its easy-to-use dashboard provides insights into your site's traffic and threats, allowing you to monitor and respond to issues promptly. It also includes additional features like DNS management and performance optimization tools.
- Sucuri – Sucuri delivers comprehensive malware scanning and threat detection. Its WAF blocks exploits like SQL injection and cross-site scripting before they reach your server. Sucuri continuously monitors your website for security anomalies, blacklist status, and DDoS attacks. In the event of a security breach, Sucuri's incident response team can step in to clean up your site and restore it to a secure state. With detailed security reports and proactive protection measures, Sucuri is a great tool for maintaining the integrity and availability of your website. Additionally, its CDN services improve site performance by caching content globally.
- UpdraftPlus – UpdraftPlus is a WordPress backup plugin offering automated schedules and quick restore options. You can store backups in various remote locations like Amazon S3, Dropbox, or Google Drive. UpdraftPlus simplifies site migration and cloning, and its user-friendly interface allows you to manage backups directly from your WordPress dashboard. With options for encrypted backups and database encryption, it adds an extra layer of security to your website management strategy.
3. Performance and Speed Optimization Tools
A sluggish website is a surefire way to lose visitors. These tools identify what's slowing you down and how to speed things up.
- Google PageSpeed Insights – Google PageSpeed Insights evaluates your site's performance on mobile and desktop, suggesting ways to compress images, reduce script overload, and more. It analyzes your site's Core Web Vitals, providing insights into metrics like loading, interactivity, and visual stability. By following the recommendations, you can improve the user experience and your search engine rankings, as page speed is a known ranking factor.
- GTmetrix – GTmetrix provides deep insights into server response times and render-blocking resources, combining Google Lighthouse and Core Web Vitals for a comprehensive check-up. It generates detailed reports with actionable recommendations, waterfall charts, and the ability to test your site from multiple regions. GTmetrix also allows you to simulate devices and connection speeds, helping you understand how different users experience your site.
- Cloudflare's CDN – Cloudflare's CDN speeds up content delivery by caching static content on a global server network, cutting bandwidth costs and improving security along the way. By delivering content from servers closer to your visitors, it reduces latency and improves load times. Cloudflare's CDN supports HTTP/2 and HTTP/3, for faster and more secure connections.
4. SEO and Analytics Tools
Climbing the search rankings doesn't happen by chance. SEO and analytics tools shed light on your site's search performance and areas needing attention, and help you build an SEO-friendly website structure.
- Google Search Console – Google Search Console monitors clicks, impressions, and keyword positions while flagging indexing issues. It provides insights into your site's search traffic and performance, which allows you to understand how Google perceives your site. You can submit sitemaps, monitor backlink profiles, and receive alerts on security issues.
- Ahrefs – Ahrefs offers an extensive keyword database and a vast backlink index, along with rank tracking and competitor analysis. Its Site Explorer tool allows you to see the organic search traffic and backlink profile of any website, while the Keywords Explorer helps you discover content ideas and rank for relevant keywords. Ahrefs also provides a Content Explorer to find top-performing content in your niche and a Site Audit tool to identify technical SEO issues on your site.
- Screaming Frog – Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider crawls your site to uncover broken links, duplicate content, and meta tag problems, integrating with Google Analytics and Search Console for a complete SEO picture. It helps you perform in-depth technical audits, analyze page titles and metadata, generate XML sitemaps, and review directives like robots.txt and canonical tags.
5. Website Monitoring and Uptime Tracking Tools
When your site goes down, you need to know ASAP. These tools keep tabs on availability and alert you at the first sign of trouble.
- UptimeRobot – UptimeRobot checks your site every five minutes (or more frequently on premium plans), sending alerts via email, SMS, or integrations when downtime hits. It monitors HTTP(s), ping, keywords, and ports, providing response time reports and maintenance windows. UptimeRobot's simple interface and efficient alert system help you react quickly to any issues affecting your site's availability.
- Pingdom – Pingdom monitors from various global locations, providing actionable data on page speed, downtime, and user experience. It offers real user monitoring to gather insights from actual visitors, synthetic interaction testing, and detailed performance reports. Pingdom's alerts can be customized based on severity and integrated with tools like Slack or PagerDuty.
- New Relic – New Relic delivers advanced analytics on server health, application performance, and real user monitoring. It provides end-to-end visibility across your stack, including infrastructure, applications, and customer experience. With distributed tracing and AI-powered alerts, New Relic helps you identify bottlenecks, troubleshoot issues, and optimize performance.
6. Website Hosting and Domain Management Tools
To avoid downtime or slow load times, you need a dependable hosting provider. These platforms handle traffic spikes with ease.
- Vercel – Vercel is perfect for Next.js and other JavaScript frameworks, offering auto-scaling, serverless functions, and a global CDN. It emphasizes a seamless developer experience with features like preview deployments for every code change and integrations with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket. Vercel's edge network enables low latency and high availability, making it ideal for modern web applications.
- Netlify – Netlify is ideal for JAMstack builds, automating deployments from Git and offering instant rollbacks if something breaks, all while providing a global CDN. It simplifies the deployment process with continuous integration and delivery, serverless functions, and form handling. Netlify's collaborative workspace also allows teams to share updates and feedback.
- Cloudways – Cloudways manages cloud servers across providers like AWS, Google Cloud, and DigitalOcean, with security features like firewalls and automated backups. It offers a user-friendly platform with one-click installs, managed security, and performance optimization through advanced caching mechanisms. Cloudways provides 24/7 support and easy scalability, making it suitable for businesses looking for flexible cloud hosting solutions.
- cPanel – cPanel is often included with hosting plans, providing a user-friendly interface for essential server tasks, simplifying domain management, email setup, and file organization. With cPanel, you can manage databases, install SSL certificates, set up cron jobs, and use tools like Softaculous for one-click application installs. Its intuitive dashboard makes server administration accessible even for those without extensive technical expertise.
7. Website Builders and Low-Code Platforms
Not everyone wants or knows how to code from the ground up. These platforms make site creation accessible and efficient.
- Framer – Framer focuses on visual design for interactive websites, with drag-and-drop editing and real-time collaboration that let you work on the user experience without diving into complex code. It's ideal for designers who want to create responsive layouts, animations, and prototypes that can be directly turned into production-ready websites. Framer integrates with design tools like Sketch and Figma, bridging the gap between design and development.
- Carrd – Carrd is great for quick one-page sites, offering templates and a straightforward interface to build anything from biographies to landing pages with minimal fuss. It's highly affordable and doesn't require any coding knowledge, so it’s accessible for personal projects, portfolios, or simple business sites. Carrd supports custom domains, forms, and even payments.
8. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and UX Analysis Tools
Attracting visitors is only half the battle. You also need to convert them. CRO and UX tools give you insights into how people interact with your site and where you can make improvements.
- Hotjar – Hotjar generates heatmaps, session recordings, and user feedback so you can see where clicks happen and where frustration sets in. It combines analysis and feedback tools to provide a holistic view of user behavior. Hotjar's surveys and polls help you gather direct input from visitors, while conversion funnels highlight where users drop off in the journey.
- Crazy Egg – Crazy Egg provides scroll maps, click tracking, and A/B testing, with a "Confetti" view that segments clicks by source or device to help focus your design adjustments. It offers snapshot reports to visualize user interactions and identifies areas that receive little engagement. Crazy Egg's A/B testing tools let you test variations of your pages to optimize for conversions without the need for coding.
- FullStory – FullStory records entire user sessions, allowing you to trace stumbling points and see how users navigate each step, with granular filters to pinpoint specific behaviors. Its powerful search and segmentation capabilities enable you to identify patterns, troubleshoot issues, and understand the user experience at a deeper level. FullStory also detects "rage clicks" and other signs of user frustration.
9. Website Automation and Integrations
Tools for website automation help you complete tasks such as sharing social media updates in a fraction of the time it takes to do so manually.
- Zapier – Zapier connects thousands of apps, and allows you to automate tasks without coding. Streamline workflows like syncing form entries with your CRM or sharing blog updates on social media. Zapier's "Zaps" allow for multi-step automations with conditional logic, delays, and formatting tools.
- Make (formerly Integromat) – Make is known for visual "scenarios" that integrate multiple apps, perfect for advanced automation even if you're not a programmer. It offers powerful data transformation tools, error handling, and the ability to create complex workflows involving multiple services. Make supports APIs and webhooks, so you can integrate with virtually any online service and automate intricate business processes.
- IFTTT – IFTTT is short for "If This Then That," and it links events across different services. It supports a wide range of smart devices, apps, and services, enabling you to create "Applets" that automate everyday tasks.
10. Collaboration and Project Management Tools
Managing a website is a team effort with numerous stakeholders. These tools coordinate tasks, share updates, and keep everyone on the same page.
- Trello – Trello uses cards and boards for a clear, visual approach to task management, with integrations for Slack, Google Drive, and more. It's flexible and easy to use, accommodating various project management styles. You can create checklists, assign due dates, and attach files to cards. Trello's Power-Ups allow you to add advanced features like calendar views, custom fields, and automation.
- ClickUp – ClickUp combines tasks, documents, and chat in one platform, highly customizable to suit agile sprints or traditional workflows. It offers multiple views like list, board, and Gantt charts. ClickUp includes features like time tracking, goals, dependencies, and custom statuses.
- Notion – Notion merges note-taking, task lists, and wikis, ideal for teams seeking a flexible, all-in-one solution for documentation and collaboration. Its block-based content system allows you to create pages with text, images, databases, and embedded content. Notion's databases can function as spreadsheets, kanban boards, calendars, and galleries. With real-time collaboration and commenting, teams can work together and centralize all project information.
The Next Step
To pick the right website management tools, identify what your team needs—whether it's an intuitive CMS or seamless integrations. Use free trials and demos to find tools that fit your workflow.
And if you're switching from a traditional CMS to a headless CMS, download our headless CMS implementation checklist that will guide you through the process step by step.
