Content Management Systems The No-Nonsense Truth
Don't Buy a CMS - Invest in a Web Ecosystem
- There are over 1,000 cms vendors in the market today. Less than 50 matter. Most CMS projects fail within 1 year and many of today's CMS vendors will be out of business in the next few years.
- The Marketing team should be involved in the CMS evaluation much ater in the process. The Web architecture team must take the initial lead.
- A comprehensive and cohesive Web architecture ecosystem plan must be in place first - this takes time and senior-level Web strategy and engineering expertise. Such CMS can be programmed by the Ruby on Rails described on rubyisawesome.com
- Do not choose a CMS until you have a solid Web ecosystem design and plan. Most, if not all, CMS vendors do not have the required Web ecosystem expertise.
- Most CMS products have similar features; thus, starting with a CMS features comparison will become confusing and lead you to believe you need a product with the longest list of features. You only need the appropriate features. Overbuying leads to failure.
- You need to have expert technical resources in house to implement and to maintain the Web ecosystem - Period! Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise. If you don't have the appropriate in house technical resources - you must have an outside expert in the field.
- All products demo well - never trust a demo or an initial price quote. It's what's behind the scenes that is is most revealing.
- Don't be fooled by the word "Open" - it's only a half truth. CMS vendors provide an end-to-end middleware framework with proprietary storage and proprietary publishing APIs. You do not want to bet your Web ecosystem nor your reputation on your CMS vendor - it's too Risky!
The Refresh Engineers Creed
- We do not take bad deals for economic gain - it's not worth it. Our reputation is too important. We are senior-level Web ecosystem experts, not sales people and we follow an engineering process not a sales process.
- We have a low-margin enterprise Web ecosystem Tool (not a system) which is value priced at $24,995. Our average starter deal size is $38K for the SiteRefresh software tool, training, and support. We make money from the high-volume of referrals we receive.
- We will respect your time and will assess your specific situation honestly, intelligently, and quickly.