What's the alternative?
(Although it has it share of cons too, it can do many of the items on the list. Some require coercing, but doable.)
edit, in progress:
- Document management- No, not Word, Excel files etc. but can do revisions/diffs on site content, and manage files to some degree.
- Workflow management- http://drupal.org/project/workflow
- Digital asset management- http://drupal.org/project/media
- Link management - http://drupal.org/project/pathauto and others... not sure what you need here.
- User management - Default may do what you need, can do more.
- ESI Caching / CDN ability. - (no esi in drupal 7) / http://drupal.org/project/cdn
- WYSIWYG editing- Many options but sometimes flaky.
- Single Sign-on- http://drupal.org/project/bakery
- Multi-side Admin - Not sure. Different user groups can have different access.
- Publishing options - Quite a few. what do you need?
- Access Management - http://drupal.org/project/acl and more.
- Application - ?
- Multi-lingual - http://drupal.org/project/i18n
- n-to-n content sharing- user to user sharing?
- Reporting - what kind?
Disclaimer: I've used it for a few projects; More experience than word-press or joomla.
I think every single CMS/platform/framework can be criticized or even demonized if you search well.
I would love to check it out; but if I don't like it or it won't work for my clients it's a total hassle.
It would not take much for them to setup a personal sandbox demo just like spree commerce does ( http://spreecommerce.com/demo )
It can't be that they don't want people to think the product is too complicated before purchase, as their after purchase help docs are limited and they have no personal follow up or checkin.
EE is pretty powerful in enabling you to get a site with multiple customized CRUD data up and running quick. Though the makers of EE need to do some serious work on documentation, as it took me about a week to fully understand how all the parts fit together (Our designer is having major issues wrapping her head around it). As with most any other CMS, when you hit the limit of EE, it is a hassle to add that one small item you need.
There is an active 3rd party plugin community. With quite a few being paid plugins.
The overall license charge and additional plugins are just a drop for any major project. It is exciting to know there are a few 3rd party folks making some good money on small EE plugins. I may just write a few of my own.
In general the plugins / addons create much less problems than the Drupal equivalents. Also, from what I heard is that it's now easier to hack EE through its CodeIgniter base.
Prce is an issue, but really, what is 200USD if you're billing thousands for the whole project? Lack of a demo, no excuse for that if it really is the case.
Our aim is to get close to the power of something like Drupal with a simple and usable interface that's a joy to use. All fully hosted, requiring no maintenance.
We're the only hosted system that is also truly extendible (you can build extensions in server-side javascript) and we're seeing both tiny one-pages and large content driven pages being built with our product by now.
It's not free software but from my biased perspective its by far the best CMS I've ever used and my clients love it.
Demo here: http://demo.wheelhousecms.com
I agree with others above that the author could have mentioned alternatives.
Ease of install and being able to run on a $3/mo hosting plan is not the game CMSes play.
PS: I was thinking more £30 to £100/month with someone else handling the platform...
Mostly because as a first-time poster, no-one knows you here and it would be good to see some impartiality or at least a critical argument about what sets concrete5 apart in respect to addressing the concerns of the article.