Built-in Applications:  

In this category on our side-by-side matrix, “costs extra” means you can upgrade to the Pro or Enterprise accounts for a price that includes a wider array of built-in functionality such as database reports, chat capability, events calendar.

Otherwise, more than half of our list of built-in items are included in a free account or as free plugins to your MT site.

Themes are available and they are lovely, but there are few of them. Another main criticism of the MT content management system software is the image uploading is complicated even with a plugin. If you’re planning an image-heavy site, this may not be the best fit for you.

Some users criticize the way MT publishes – by republishing everything when you make a design change (this is considered ‘static’). Others consider this a great piece of flexibility – the static publishing means the CMS has an able cache program “out of the box” so if your database server goes down, these static files still work. In reality, MT is capable of static, dynamic and background publishing, with the default set to static. This can be changed.

Security:  

This is a category where you could benefit from paying for the Enterprise account level just for the LDAP (or NIS, NTLM or SMB) authentication. It is, after all, the internet security standard.

SSL compatibility is standard with the free account as are SSL logins and pages. This is important when you’re dealing with confidential information such as e-commerce (personal info, credit card numbers, etc.).

Management:  

If you want advertising management, workflow engine or web-based translation management with your Movable Type CMS, you will need to upgrade to the Pro or Enterprise account levels. Otherwise, everything on our list is built-in to MT.