UNA CMS Reviews

First and foremost, this product clearly reflects the years of dedication and hard work put in by its founder, and I'm confident it provides exceptional results for many advanced users who have full time developers dedicated to their CMS.

I successfully launched my own instance on AWS Lightsail ($10 per month). I've installed all essential premium modules and implemented customizations tailored to my brand and community structure.

My experience was really disappointing, as I am used to smoothly working products on Appsumo:

- The step-by-step installation tutorial deserves to be more detailed. 95% of users are probably stopping at that step, but maybe that's done on purpose to filter out their ideal customer.

- This is NOT a user-friendly, ready-to-use product; this is just a skeleton that will require 15 hours to set up a basic configuration, but which cannot be further customized without coding ; They offer paid services, but their pricing page mentions more than $100,000 a year for a half-time coder dedicated to your project (100 hours/mo).

- The product can be downloaded and installed for free; this LTD just offers a few premium modules. The most interesting modules must be purchased from the marketplace. However, the selection is limited, with most modules created by only a few developers.

- There are no UI tips, you keep wondering what each setting is supposed to be about.

- There is no detailed documentation, and you must use a trial-and-error approach, eventually killing your CMS because you cannot set up a 'sandbox' environment or handle versions. You cannot export/import settings, so creating a clone is also not an option.

- I was really surprised by how little customization there is. It’s missing some basic settings you’d expect to set up a simple community platform. Even the premium modules have just a short list of things you can tweak. So, you’ll have to dig in the code, but then there’s the worry that it might not work after updates.

- Finding settings is not straightforward, as there are no convenient search bars available. You will need to navigate through the pages one by one until you locate the option you need to edit. Content, format, menus etc are not regrouped per page. Editing could be made more straightforward, merging everything in the visual page editor.

- At some point, my CMS stopped working: Posts on feeds or discussions posted in public were not visible, even after reinstalling the related modules. There was no way to fix this by myself.

- There are bugs with no ways to fix it, e.g. posting in anonymous mode doesn't work, or setting up an AI agent resulted in all questions and answers being posted on the public feed of the user!! I would expect basic features to be bug-proof and work smoothly, at least.

- This product has undergone numerous updates over the years, with significant revisions occurring every 1 to 2 years. In my opinion, this situation has turned into quite a mess, and I believe the developers ought to adopt a completely new strategy.

- I don't anticipate any significant AI integration in the near future, and we know how much future CMS will require to be reinvented with AI-powered features. At some point google studio, Manus.ai or OpenAI will allow us to code, publish, updade, and maintain, or own products. Or we will see new actors using this AI-optimized coding approach to boost their product update. I therefore don't see myself investing time in a product that might soon become outdated.

- My fundamental question is: What customer segment are they targeting, and why did they release on AppSumo?

This product is full fledge for developing your own social media platform community, website or pretty much any kind of site. It has so many features and customization.

Of course since its so flexible and capable, it has clearly a learning curve but if you are looking a platform to build your community, course platform etc without limitations - UNA.CMS can do it!

Well, the install documentation could be a bit more detailed, but after some tries, it worked. I installed UNA on a AWS Lightsail instance, and all is under control!

UNA is really powerful everything is customizable, sky is the limit!

I am technologically savvy, but I had a hard time installing UNA CMS at first. I tried the DigitalOcean approach and quickly became lost in the process - there just wasn't enough step-by-step documentation. I got further than I thought I could, but could not get to the finish line. But the progress made me more determined.

After watching Mr. Web's video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AULtMgXNdI, I got very close to the finish line. Using Hostinger was amazingly more straightforward. However, I got a couple of messages not shown in Mr. Web's video. I think it's because the current version is newer than he was using. However, I was able to figure it out and install the software. Here is a link to the video (no audio, just shows the steps) I created that addresses the specific messages I got on two separate installations: https://videos.allacesinc.com/s/Pvj0EGzP
Everything else you need for installation is in Mr. Web's video. I hope this is helpful.

This takes a huge commitment, but how many people and organizations can say they have their own social media network? How many create the opportunity to nurture a community of people and organizations that presents so many possibilities for ad revenue, lead generation, sales, and more (especially at these price points)?

It is so rewarding to see the platform live on my domain. Now its all about customization. I have added my apps from the marketplace and have been going through the Launch Checklist: https://unacms.com/wiki/checklist

IMPROVEMENTS
It would be helpful to...
🔘 Access the Spacenook community and starter kit. I could not access the community (as many mention in the Q&A) nor could I find the download.
🔘 Know when the other starter kits are going to be available
🔘 Be able to duplicate fields and permission levels so we do not have to start from scratch
🔘 Have updated and more detailed, tutorial style documentation with visuals or videos

I am so glad I pushed through the process...you will be too. I will update once we have actual people using the platform. Good luck fellow Sumolings!

I purchase the AppSumo Plus just to get UNA because I missed the purchase deadline, and they extended it like 2 days for Plus members. So I essentially paid 3x just to get this deal, and after using it a couple weeks, it's worth 10x. It's worth more than the normal price on their site. If you missed the deal, just go get it from their site, you won't regret it.

You can do whatever you want with this. I have no coding skills and AI is my developer, but I've managed to get this 99.9% how I want it. Which makes me ecstatic. I've tried number other community builders and they're all missing 1-2 must have features. UNA has them all! All the basic features you would expect are all included as modules. Then, what's cool is all the unique features you want, you can easily add with a little bit of code from AI! It's awesome! They say it's because it's all "open source". Idk if that's 100% true as I can't find some stuff in the coding, but I'm not a coder, I'm just familiar with notepad and ctrl+f when I try to find things in code. But, you do get all the files/code to host yourself, therefore you don't need to really worry if something were to happen to Una as a business... even though I doubt that. They seem to have things on lock.

Their support is also superior. They use their own product. Like... they actually use it use it. You can message them right on there and they'll get back to you! I had a slight problem with the installation. I sent a message, they had it fixed within 1 hour. Obviously you can't always expect that, but it was like 10pm at night!

Awesome product. Awesome team. Don't miss out, just go buy from them direct, you won't regret it.