CMS vs. Pay As You Go

What is a Content Management System? (CMS) If you’ve ever had a Myspace page, a personal Yahoo!, My MSN or iGoogle page, a membership to a dating site or used eBay, then you’ve used a CMS.

My MSN Myspace

CMS allows a person untrained in web development and coding to upload/edit content on a website. It makes it easy for the average Joe/Jill to manage their online stuff.

We are often asked to build CMS for websites. But here’s the bad news… No matter how “easy” the CMS is designed, it’s still work for the end user. It takes time and focus to log onto an online CMS, prepare your content, text and graphics, and upload it to the system.

Many clients initially think they have the time to do the CMS on their site but usually run into problems like: forgetting username and password, writing crappy text, unable to optimize images correctly, etc. Many times these clients come back to the developer to ask them to manage the content for their site.

So the client pays $X,000 for a CMS and ends up paying a developer $X,000 to make the edits.

We always caution our clients before building a CMS. They need to realistically think about the ongoing site maintenance tasks and determine if the added cost of the CMS and the manpower on their side is worth it instead of paying their developer for edits on an as-needed basis.