The Advantage of a Custom CMS Over Boxed

In terms of benefits, a custom CMS has a number of benefits, including the ability to quickly edit the platform, and depending on authorization almost anyone can edit and manage it. The three most well-known CMSs are Joomla, WordPress, and Drupal, in which cases we can feel like real masters.

Boxed CMSs (licensed products) are designed to meet as many business needs as possible at once, but this is too superficial. As many features as possible will be available in it and provide useful workflows, but there will also be trade-offs because it will lack features that otherwise we would be able to solve for ourselves with a unique CMS. With a unique solution, on the other hand, we can meet all our needs and it is fully customizable.

Regarding reports, what we see is that in the case of boxed software there is a certain analysis, but it may be missing exactly the data we would need. When we set the guidelines in case of a custom design, only reports that are relevant to us will appear.

Custom development is a bit bigger investment than boxed software, as we also need to consider development costs, business analysis, system design, testing, and maintenance. Boxed products are cheaper because they split the costs among many customers, but if we look at the license fee or the cost of the subscription, we realize that the cost difference is not as large as we first estimated.

Developing our customized site can take quite a bit of time depending on factors (e.g. company size) but you should also be aware of the fact that even boxed software won’t be implemented in a matter of days due to configurations and other parameters. When deploying it, don’t forget about proper training and data security, which are specially taken care of with boxed software, but with the right awareness and engagement, these can also be addressed with a custom CMS.

In terms of scalability (in what period of time, how scalable, changeable, and extendable) it is possible to add and remove features as needed in the case of custom software. In the case of boxed software, such action may be less frequent, and this flexibility is rarely available with licensed products.

Overall, we can make the best decision when making a choice if we fully know our company and specifically set the goals that we want to achieve. However, we need to be able to identify the cases and areas where a boxed software is appropriate and also when we already need to undertake unique development for longer-term utilization.