The platform you select will impact your team’s ability to do everything from safely managing data to engaging with patients to optimizing operational efficiency. Picking a CMS that aligns correctly with your team’s needs will streamline workflows, improve data security, ensure compliance with industry regulations like HIPAA, and grow with you into the future.

Before You Start, a Word About HIPAA

If your organization collects, stores, processes, displays, and/or transmits electronic medical records (EMR), electronic health records (EHR) and/or protected health information (PHI), you will not only need to select a CMS that adheres to HIPAA regulations, but you’ll also need to choose a compliant web hosting service (like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or TrueVault).

In addition, you’ll want to ensure that your chosen platform requires Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) from all of their technology provider partners. These legally binding relationships ensure complete HIPAA compliance across the CMS’s digital ecosphere.

Remember that, at the end of the day, your organization is ultimately responsible for ensuring the full compliance of all tech solutions and partners that you employ.

The 5 Best Healthcare CMS Options by Use Case

Short on time? Here’s a quick comparison of the top platform features and use cases.

	WORDPRESS	DRUPAL	SITECORE DXP	KENTICO XPERIENCE	ADOBE EXPERIENCE MANAGER
Best Use Cases	Small-medium hospitals, practices & clinics	Large hospitals, health systems & academic medical centers	Enterprise .orgs with a marketing focus	Medium-large healthcare systems & .orgs	Large/multi-site enterprise .orgs with a marketing focus
Complexity of Use	Low-Medium	Medium	Very High	Medium-High	High
HIPAA Compliant Out of the Box?
Customization Availability	High	Very High	Very High	High	Very High
Base Cost	Very Low	Low	Medium	High	Very High

Let’s take a closer look at each option.

WordPress

Best Healthcare Use Cases
Small- to mid-sized practices or hospitals that need flexibility

Select Advantages

• It is the most popular software for building websites, currently powering 43+% of all sites on the internet, according to W3Techs.
• As an open source platform, it’s free, it’s flexible, and it has abundant developer community support.
• Its user-friendly interface and intuitive content creation tools make it easy to use for individuals with little to no technical experience.
• Extensive themes and healthcare plugins are available to customize to your team’s needs for features like provider profiles, appointment booking, telehealth solutions, patient portals, custom forms, and more.

Primary Drawbacks

• This platform is not HIPAA-compliant out of the box. Making it so requires significant effort, technical expertise, and strict control over your hosting environment, plugins, and data flows. This can require custom development and/or third-party integrations that increase the cost and complexity of your project.
• It is not purpose-built for healthcare needs like patient portals and EHR integrations. If your site requires extensive customization, implementation costs can add up due to fee-based module additions.
• The platform is a popular target for hackers; your team will need to be diligent about regularly updating the platform core, plugins, and themes to protect against threats.

Who Uses It?

WordPress is used for some internal and external websites at high-profile healthcare and advocacy organizations like the American Academy of Family Physicians and the Mayo Clinic.

Drupal

Best Healthcare Use Cases

Large hospitals, health systems, and academic medical centers with complex information architecture

Select Advantages

• Like WordPress, Drupal is an open source platform, so it offers the same benefits of being free, flexible, and strongly supported by its dev community.
• It offers advanced security features — including user permissions controls — and multilingual support out of the box.
• It’s highly customizable and scalable, thanks to modular architecture, custom themes, and features that allow your team to adapt to changing workflows, design needs, and content requirements over time.

Primary Drawbacks

• While Drupal is considered a secure CMS when configured properly, it is not HIPAA-compliant out of the box. To meet requirements, you’ll need to employ additional encryption and access controls, store PHI via external compliant APIs, and ensure all third-party tools and workflows meet HIPAA standards.
• It requires more development support than some other CMS options for implementing customization, complex features, and ongoing maintenance.
• It has a steeper learning curve for non-technical users than platforms like WordPress.

Who Uses It?

Drupal is trusted by the world-class healthcare experts at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Sitecore DXP

Best Healthcare Use Cases

Enterprise-level healthcare organizations with complex digital marketing needs

Select Advantages

• This is an all-in-one platform that consolidates powerful content management, personalization, and analytics functions.
• It offers powerful security — meeting HIPAA compliance requirements out of the box — and impressive scalability.
• Provides low-code integration capabilities with third-party EHR platforms and marketing technology apps.
• AI-assisted content creation and on-site search helps you create and deliver relevant information quickly to your users.

Primary Drawbacks

• Solutions come with a steep pricetag driven by the complexity of your project, the size and expected traffic volume of your site, and the specific features required.
• Its deep complexity requires a dedicated dev team for implementation and ongoing maintenance.

Who Uses It?

Sitecore is the CMS of choice for global leaders in healthcare like The British Red Cross and Cochlear Ltd.

Kentico

Best Healthcare Use Cases

Mid-to-large healthcare systems, insurance providers, and health-adjacent organizations

Select Advantages

• This is a robust all-in-one CMS, digital marketing, and ecommerce solution.
• Its hybrid headless architecture allows for fast implementation and future scalability.
• Its relatively easy-to-use platform offers a variety of low- or no-code tools, features, and extensions that are ready to use out of the box.
• Offers powerful information architecture modeling and personalization tools.

Primary Drawbacks

• This platform is not HIPAA-compliant out of the box, and it does not officially offer BAAs. This introduces risks for storing, processing, and/or transmitting PHI without extensive custom security and compliance measures.
• Requires a steep learning curve for some users, particularly those who are non-technical.
• Interface clutter can become an issue when scaling for sites with large infrastructures.
• Analytics tools are limited compared to competitors.
• Requires a yearly licensing fee on top of implementation and upgrade costs, a pricing structure that can be a significant barrier for smaller organizations looking for cost-effective solutions.

Who Uses It?

Kentico Xperience supports the digital experiences of esteemed provider organizations like Freedom Health Insurance and the Canadian Red Cross.

Adobe Experience Manager

Best Healthcare Use Cases

Large/multi-site enterprises with complex content structures, especially those that need integration with Adobe’s digital marketing tools. Ideal for building complex membership-driven sites, portals, directories, and multilingual websites.

Select Advantages

• This HIPAA-compliant solution is one of the most customizable CMS platforms on the market, thanks to a wide variety of flexible templates and modular components.
• Offers easy integration with all Adobe products (e.g., Analytics, Target, Campaign, and Commerce), as well as third-party APIs like Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Digital Asset Management (DAM), and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), payment gateways, and more.
• Provides AI-driven insights from audience behavior and preference data to inform interactions with patients, members, and customers.
• Lets you set customized workflows and granular user permissions across your organization.

Primary Drawbacks

• Licensing and implementation costs are high — for that reason, it’s rarely used outside of large corporations with big budgets.
• Requires a dedicated dev team with the technical skill to handle its complexity and ongoing maintenance needs.

Who Uses It?

Esteemed healthcare and biopharma giants like CVS Health, GE Healthcare, and Pfizer trust their CMS needs to Adobe Experience Manager.

How Eastern Standard Can Help

Need support in choosing and implementing a new CMS or upgrade for your own health-related website? Let’s work together.