Think Vitamin recently published a solid article that outlines the “five hidden costs” of running a CMS. These hidden costs are a function of your business model, your website requirements, and technical level of your team. At Viewstream, we have seen both sides of the coin, clients who do really well and save a lot of money with CMS, and then others who get stuck with bad systems and poor code that require complete redevelopment.

We recommend a reputable agency or consultant to determine your website requirements in the context of you business objectives before you make a decision. My advice to clients is be risk adverse, treat a CMS decision as any other business decision in terms of best practice decision making process, and give your organization plenty of time to make the right choice. Because many CMS systems inject a code layer between the html and the cms edit functions, once you install and integrate your CMS, it is pretty much a complete website redo if you decide to change your CMS later. Also, your CMS imputes a certain website code structure onto your site, one that is also not easy to modify in the case of new business requirements, marketing initiatives, and the myriad other forces at work that influence your website.

Viewstream has developed and worked with many CMS systems – and we recommend MODx, WordPress, and Clickability.