Why your corporate website shouldn't be built on a Proprietary CMS.
For most websites, often the unsung hero is the content management system (CMS). As marketers, we work tirelessly with our CMSs publishing, editing, and revising content to help our organizations increase clients and grow. But when was the last time you evaluated the performance of your current CMS?
Though there are many unique and useful CMS platforms, at its core a CMS is divided into two categories: proprietary and third party.
For proprietary CMSs, a single company develops and maintains the source code and does not allow integration by outside developers. Generally speaking, proprietary CMSs are sold by digital agencies focusing on vertical-specific web development.
For third-party CMSs, either a single company (closed source) or a community of developers (open source) develops the source code. Third-party CMSs are better known for their accessibility by other developers and businesses, such as Kentico and Sitecore (closed source) and Drupal and WordPress (open source).
Are Proprietary CMSs Putting You at a Disadvantage?
If your company is using a proprietary CMS, you could be putting your business at a disadvantage. When we compare a proprietary system to the advantages of a third-party CMS, you may find the proprietary system just can’t cut it. Consider these three critical concerns when evaluating your CMS: innovation, flexibility, and cost.
Innovation
Are You Keeping Up or Falling Short of Technology?
Proprietary: Digital agencies that were looking to dominate a vertical market space created proprietary systems to differentiate their business. Once they saturated the market, they also stopped developing the product.
As the technology world changes, many proprietary systems can’t keep up with new techniques like responsive web design (RWD), social media integration, and basic search engine optimization (SEO) requirements. Google alone makes more than 500 changes a year to its search algorithm! This inevitably leads to outdated systems that will perpetually be playing catch-up.
Third Party: On the other hand, third-party CMSs are backed by a mammoth network of developers and innovators. Closed source companies like Kentico and Sitecore are investing heavily to stay ahead of technology by delivering new updates, security patches, and software to make running your digital properties possible.
On the open-source side, worldwide communities of developers are pushing themselves to create new themes, widgets, modules, components, and more, which all community members can access. This peer-to-peer network ensures the most innovative developments are always accessible by business and digital agencies. With any good third-party CMS, you’ll also receive ongoing maintenance and support, security patches, and timely upgrades.
Flexibility
Are You Bending Over Backward to Accomplish Your Business Goals?
Proprietary: Your digital strategy should drive technology—not the other way around. Proprietary systems are notoriously inflexible. If your digital strategy demands customizations to fit your business, more often than not, proprietary systems are too rigid and complicated to conform to your standards. And those you can customize will cost you a pretty penny.
The limitations force you to bend over backward and jump through complicated hoops just to make simple changes across your site. Simply put, proprietary systems lack the upgradeability, maintainability, scalability, and usability to empower your internal marketing team to be in control of your digital strategy.
Third Party: When it comes to flexibility, third-party CMSs can’t be beat. You’ll find a CMS that fits every organizational infrastructure, from a single person marketing team with no IT support to well-equipped marketing teams with a slew of tech support.
The usability alone gives third-party CMSs the advantage. For many CMSs, content workflows, social media publication and integration, SEO tools, and campaign development are out-of-box solutions, which gives your team more control without requiring time-consuming customization requests.
Cost
Are short-term savings costing you more in the long run?
Proprietary: One of the main reasons organizations are still using proprietary systems is the cost. And that makes a lot of sense at first glance. Digital agencies built these proprietary systems especially for your industry, and many components were built specifically to meet those needs. But tools like proposal generators—which may be undoubtedly incredible tools for your business—exist outside the proprietary system world and can be developed and customized for future innovations.
Additionally, while the upfront costs for proprietary systems may be less compared to going with a third-party CMS, in the end you’ll pay heavily—not just monetary costs either. Costs in the form of time spent dealing with a difficult backend, the frustration and morale depletion of your staff to make simple changes on the site, and, maybe the most important cost, falling behind the technology curve.
Third Party: Closed source CMSs like Kentico and Sitecore do require annual licenses, but the value of innovation, flexibility, ongoing support, maintenance, and security outweigh the price.
And of course, with open source solutions like Drupal and WordPress, there is no cost to utilize the CMS frameworks. You pay for development and hosting, but not for the CMS itself.
The Choice is Clear (or it should be)
If your website runs on a proprietary CMS, you need to think seriously about the how its limitations are impacting your digital strategy. Are the hits to innovation, flexibility, and cost worth it? Take a look at your options, reevaluate your current system, and ask yourself the following questions:
- What is your digital strategy and objective and is your CMS technology supporting or hurting you?
- How much is your proprietary CMS costing you in both budget and missed opportunities?
- Can your organization afford to remain set back and at a disadvantage?
Share your thoughts with us. What advantages or disadvantages are you experiencing with your type of CMS? Message us on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.
Also, you can find me (Dana Clancy) on Twitter and LinkedIn.