Why You Should Not Use Proprietary Content Management Systems (CMS)

Why You Should Not Use Proprietary Content Management Systems (CMS)

These days, having a website is a must for all businesses. Regardless of whether you sell stuff online or if you only have a brick and mortar store, establishing an online presence is essential to the growth and development of your business. With a massive audience waiting for you online, you  don’t want to miss the perks of promoting and advertising your brand on the Internet.

If you’re planning to set up a website for your brand or business, it’s wise to avoid companies that offer off-shore hosting and automated websites on Proprietary Content Management Systems. Sure, using them may appear to have advantages, but there are many disadvantages that may hurt your business in the long term.

Shopify is one of today’s biggest online shop builders. Data showed that it is currently powering over 200,000 online shops in the different parts of the globe. While it is very flexible and offers visitors a clean and organised look, it has known weaknesses, too.

Can be expensive.

In addition to a monthly service fee, customers are required to pay up to a 2% transaction fee for their plans. Basically, it means that if you make a sale worth $100, you will pay an extra $2. Or if you earn $10,000, you will pay an extra $200. According to Shopify, the fee is intended to cover the technology and other expenses it takes them to power your sales.

You have to pay extra if you want to use certain apps

One of the things many business owners like about Shopify is that it offers them more than 1,100 apps that can help beef up the functionality of their sites. However, many of these apps are not free and if you want to use them, you will have to pay an additional monthly fee, which is not cheap to say the least. For example, equipping your Shopify store with Freshbooks, which is an accounting/booking software, will cost you USD $31.99 every month.

It can be challenging to customise your site

Customising your site via HTML and CSS is not as straight forward as when using other platforms. Perhaps one reason for this is that Shopify uses its own coding language called “Liquid.” If you want someone to help you modify your online store, it is very likely that you will have to hire a Shopify expert, which won’t be as affordable as hiring a normal programmer.

Squarespace is basically a SaaS-based content management system. It is composed of a website builder, blogging platform, and hosting service.

Adding, dragging, and dropping Blocks are slightly buggy

Squarespace has its own basic website building components called Blocks, which include text, image, and slideshows. However, rearranging them can be quite a pain. If you want to re-organise content on your site, you have to be extra patient if you are using Squarespace.

Customising the style of your site can be overwhelming for some

One of the cons of using Squarespace for your site is that it has the Style Editor that allows you to customise anything and everything on your website without having the need to use coding. However, it can be a double-edge sword as the numerous styling and design options can overwhelm some users.

Weebly is a web-hosting service that has its own drag-and-drop website builder. As of August 2012, the company hosts more than 20 million websites with more than 1 million unique visitors every month.

Design templates could use some improvements.

One common complaint among Weebly users is that the design templates are too basic. If you want to use an advanced design for your website, you have to look elsewhere because according to the company, Weebly is all about keeping things very simple.

Template customisation options are limited.

When it comes to customising design templates, your options are limited, as well. You are allowed to change only the font styles and overall colour scheme for each template. This basically means that if you want to spice things up, like change the menu bar colour or adjust content width, you will have to modify the codes of the template.

Blog features could do better.

Another problem with Weebly is that it has yet to incorporate today’s latest blogging functions. Like the design templates it offers, the blogging tools are too basic. Some web experts even call them “primitive.”

Wix is a cloud-based web development platform. Through their online drag and drop tools, you can create HTML5 websites and mobile sites.

Large advertisement on the free version

If you’re going to use Wix’s free website builder, be prepared to have a large and very prominent Wix logos and ads on the side and at the bottom of your website.

You can’t change your template

While Wix has many pre-made design templates you can choose from, you cannot change it later on once you’ve made your choice. If you want to change the look of your site, you have no choice but to rebuild it from scratch.

Not advisable for online merchants.

Another disadvantage of using Wix is that their platform is not suitable for building an online shop. It is because their e-commerce tools are not advanced enough to help you manage your store.

Off Shore Hosting Creates The Biggest Problems

All of the service providers above host your website and your data off shore. There are no guarantees that your privacy or your customer’s privacy are kept safe, and because of the large number of other sites resting on the same server, you open yourself up to hacks and malware attacks.

If you are an Australian Company, should be hosting your website on a quality Australian Server. This is your storefront to the world, so keep it safe.

Don’t Get Locked In with a Content Management System

Proprietary CMS (content management system) means that the platform has been developed and owned by the company and it is not open source (free to the public). Companies who operate on Proprietary CMS have the ability to hold your business to ransom. I recommend to steer clear of using any Proprietry based CMS, as you will never own your own website and will be forever paying a monthly rental fee. Worst yet – you will be unable to move your site away from this company.

WordPress is the world’s most popular platform, it’s free (open source), and you can move your website to any hosting provider that you choose at any time.

So if you truly want a safe and long term online asset for your business, and want to avoid problems and inconveniences, talk to us today about building you a WordPress site on our High Speed Australian Servers, with Premium WordPress Hosting. It will be much better value in the long term.