The sheer size of the CMS market is interesting when you consider that one of the most frequent questions we get at Ibuildings is: "What CMS do you recommend we use?"

Over the years we've been using a number of different CMS systems, we even built our own at some point, so we have a good understanding of what's out there. Based on those experiences I am convinced that there is no 'one CMS to rule them all'. Every CMS has its strengths and weaknesses. This makes the selection process more difficult, as it's not just a matter of simply following popular opinion.

I recently did a talk at the IMS conference in London, and after explaining to the audience I was in the market for a new car, I showed them a slide with 4 pictures of different cars: a Fiat, a Vauxhall/Opel, an Aston Martin and an Audi. I asked the audience which they thought would be the best car for me, and their votes were distributed evenly among every car but the Fiat which got 0 votes, and the Aston Martin which got the majority. I then went on to explain how no matter what car they selected, their answer was wrong; they had failed to ask me about my requirements. Sure the Aston Martin is the best car if I'm looking for something fast to impress people, and my budget was endless, but if I was looking for a practical car to do grocery shopping and picking up the kids from school, the Fiat would probably be a more cost-efficient solution.

It is very difficult to select a system if you don't have a clear idea of what you need. Many people in my audience admitted that in the exhibition area they were attracted by all these vendors demonstrating fancy features, while not even sure what features they would need for their website project. One attendee was even taking notes on a notepad she got from one of the vendors, featuring the tagline "finally a CMS built for you!". How can a vendor build a system 'for you' if they don't even know you? The answer obviously is: they can't.

I seriously think that selecting a CMS should not be taken lightly, and all aspects of the selection process should be taken into account. Total cost of ownership, integration, technology platform, features, functional requirements, non-functional requirements, lifespan, flexibility, vendor independence; all those things need to be considered.

The slides of my IMS talk are available here.

For those that would like some help with the selection process, we've launched a new service called our CMS Discovery (our Dutch readers may like to read the Dutch version). There's a diagram of what a CMS discovery looks like on this page. We've done a couple of those recently and feedback so far has been positive.

In any case: when you're in the market for a CMS, don't rush it; don't start meeting vendors before you've analysed your own needs. Once you know what you need, you are able to ask "does this CMS do what I need" instead of "do I need what this CMS has to offer?". A subtle difference, but one that can make the difference between a successful CMS implementation and a disaster.

P.S. I'm talking about CMS systems here, but the same concept is applicable to other applications and even frameworks. See this older post by Harrie on framework selection.