BucksMania

I just switched CMS. I am a total nerd I spent months looking and comparing them all and doing a ton of research. I am still doing some final tweaks on my CMS as we speak. Some of the people I shoot for offered me their custom CMS and I had a ton of different things to look at.


A couple of tips

How I compared.

a.) Features I need
b.) b-list features - things that would be nice, but I don't need now
c.) who do I know that is using it, this is a biggie for me.

All CMS owners are going to push their own product that is common sense. Who do I know that has a Carma member’s area that can I call? Who do I know who has an Elevated X site that can I call?

I did that first because if a CMS doesn't support their product why should I spend the money on them I will find someone who does.

Also talk to people that do the same thing you do, and that you want to be like. I know this sounds strange, but trust me. For me, I run glamour / teen / solo girl sites. So something that might work for a BBW Multi girl site, might not work for me Yea…Yea… people say content is content, but it is not. My members know who lightspeed, ftv, and others like that are.

From talking to people I limited my choices down to like 2 CMS

Well from that point their feature where similar (one had a bit more) but again it wasn't features I was going to use right away so what did I care.

Then I looked at price

That is what sold me on Elevated X

It is a 150 dollars a month let me REPEAT THAT $150 A MONTH, UNLIMITED SITES, NO BULLSHIT, No games... just $150 a month… that is like 5 or 6 sales. I thought to myself, I will get Elevated-X installed and start testing it. There is NO better test then to get it installed and working (features, spec, and user comments are one thing, but to get it installed and working that is priceless)

Well long story short, I got Elevated X installed, and fell in love with it. I have had it for like 2 months or so and I could not be happier.

Hell, my suggestion is spend the 150 dollars a month test Elevated X out, and see if it is for you. (He charges 500 set up fee again not a big deal 500 dollar set up fee is nothing)

However, I mean for a 150 a month spend a month or two testing it, place a link in your current members’ area, and see what your members think. Worst case you are out 500 dollars, best case you move to a CMS that you love.

That's such a general statement AJ. You can pay someone to add modules to Joomla too, but it sure as shit won't give you what they made with their CMS. LOL

Our system powers large sites and is proven so it's in no way general and in fact is very specific and no, paying us to add modules won't give you what they made with their cms, it will give you 10 TIMES MORE at a fraction of the cost.

Now you sound like a used car salesmen. There's a reason why the experienced software pros like Oystein and PB John don't snipe other companies products.

Sorry if there was any ambiguity in my last statement, but there was no intention there to trash anyone's product. I was just pointing out that if someone needs specific features, we will be happy to add them and can typically do so at a very reasonable cost, saving our clients time and money in the process.

If nobody is buying a cms today does anyone want to buy a used honda? :1orglaugh

BTW here's a pic of the car, maybe if someone buys the cms we can throw in the car as a package deal.

http://www.elevatedx.com/promo/car.jpg

A very good point, and very relevant to the thread's poll, however the poll in essence is completely useless if used a comparison between the listed CMSs. You might as well have asked a room full of 20-50 year olds which is the best car out of 5 cars. You can not compare the CMSs in question just because they are CMSs.

First of all though I'd like to openly say that anyone who think's a CMS should cost $500 to buy outright should crawl under a rock and die. I can't remember how many times I see people chime in with this kind of crap. When did software development become the 21st century version of Nike child labour?

Let's focus on purchase price for a minute, forget monthly licensing for now. NATS and MPA are wildly seen as the most popular options for Affiliate Software and last time I looked their purchase price ranges from $12,000 to $20,000 depending on a few factors. A fully featured (i.e. not a glorified mail merge application) ADULT CMS is much more complicated than Affiliate Software. I'm sure that any company posting in this thread who has tried to do both will find it hard to disagree with me. So why exactly has ElevatedX (I'm picking out this one just because it was discussed the most) priced its purchase option at nearly a third of the cost of NATS/MPA? I can't really get my head around this and vice versa, I can't understand why anyone is so shocked at the cost of PaysiteCMS.

I appreciate the underlying sentiment here but unfortunately that's a really crappy example that just confuses the less knowledgeable readers. You're assuming first of all that the same Doctor who treats your piles is also offering to treat your feet - which is just not how it works. I ask everyone to ponder that if you were in a hospital with some illness would you rather be sent by ambulance to 5 different 'specialists' across the city who have no working relationship with each other and no knowledge of the previous person's work or would you rather be treated in one hospital by a team of specialists who work together to treat your mysterious disease which gave you piles and sore feet.
We're not selling an All-in-one printer here where mechanical limitations affect the ability to perform as well as a specialised device. A companies ability to run multiple departments and seamlessly integrate them is limited only by the ability to hire enough good people.

CMS has become such a buzzword that I'm going to make it extra buzzy. PaysiteCMS provides a CMS Solution. Unless I'm mistaken, non of the other products in question do? Your $5k is only gonna get you so far and you're only gonna get a few yards down the road before your support requests or integration help requests eat into the sellers profit margin enough for him to start charging per hour or per ticket. I think similar economics apply to hosting packages that give you a gazillion megabits for the princely sum of 99 cents a year yet the guys selling 5megabits+server for $500 are still finding customers every day.
When you buy PaysiteCMS you are guaranteed that one company will be at your side from birth to graduation. You're guaranteed that every doctor in the hospital has seen the others naked in the shower.

You can market your template as "powerful and easy to use", and your software as "fully documented", we all do it, but look, if you're not an experienced tech who's been on the interweb for a few years or unless you've got in-house staff who you trust, you're gonna find it tough to release a GOOD site that has any chance of competing in today's environment.

More than a few programs have said to me recently that they're realising their forte is "sales and marketing" and they don't want to be a tech company any more. These are the guys who want a solution, the guys who want another flagship site that they can sell up the wahzoo. They don't want to cross their fingers and hope they find 4 companies who will work together to build the various element the site requires - Software, Hardware Infrastructure, Design and Implementation.

For those of you who are able to afford any of the CMSs on the market (and then some), when you're choosing your next CMS please think about things logically. Do you a) go with the companies which sell a cheap of the shelf product but who's super hardcore l33t programmers will code you the extra bits you need for a rate which allows them to break even or b) go with the guys who have the manpower to backup their software with 24 hour support and development?

Just to make sure all the facts are out there about Elevated X to avoid any confusion:

Our CMS is $3995 which is comparably priced to MAS and Carma. We do, however, offer a monthly lease option for $500 down and $150/month that includes free tech support and free product upgrades.

We provide installation and site setup for free so there's no need for our clients to have programming staff or tech staff of their own.

We deliver the system ready to use.

In 2.5 years of operation we've never charged a customer anything extra for help and support unless they wanted customized features.

We work with hosts and designers and many times we communicate directly with our client's hosting company so the process is not complicated at all, even for a non-technical customer.

In regards to specializing, our approach is different, as are our beliefs when it comes to the best setup for our clients. We want our clients to have the very best of everything and to be able to pick and choose what's best for them.

A lot of people already have a host they like, a biller or cash program software, maybe they have strongbox or some other auth system in place. Our system works with all of these things by default so there's no need for our customers to make any changes to their current setup.

I want my clients to pick the best hosting companies, the best affiliate software and the best designers out there in conjunction with using the best CMS on the market which in our opinion is Elevated X.

We want educated buyers as clients, which is why I said in my earlier post that people should evaluate all of their options, talk to each company and demo each CMS and ask questions and then make decisions based on facts, not opinions.

All we're concerned with is helping our clients build the best pay sites possible. Call us simple minded but as you can read in our user's replies here, they seem to be very happy with us on every level, from performance to ease of use to support.

We have worked with Carma for about 6 months and Elevated X for over 2 years and both companies, i can say, have a great product for sites that generate decent volume. I have known AJ for two years and he is very honest and straight up. I am pretty straight forward so i truly appreciate the same.

a.

AJ -
I'll be contacting you next month for a demo (I'm totally backed up right now), but two quick questions that you may or may not want to answer here....

1. I assume the lease option is just that - and that it's not lease-to-buy.
2. How much extra is the video transcoder plug-in?

Thanks :-)
mike

Hey Mike,
Here are the answers to both questions:

1) The lease option is a month to month use license, with no minimum term or obligation should you sell your sites or no longer need the software. If you start with the lease and then decide to buy the full license we credit the $500 down payment toward the purchase price. This option works well for people who want to migrate to a cms for the first time or people who want to try it out before they buy it outright because there's no real obligation and the out of pocket cost is so minimal.

2) The video transcoding plug-in is $495 and this fee is for setting up your sites and video encoding formats. Like everything else we offer, we deliver this ready to use as well.

If you have any other questions please don't hesitate to ask. You're welcome to make a list and email me directly and I'll get back to you with answers :)

Great...thanks, will be in touch soon :)

Im backed up too but hope to followup with the possible transition to ElevatedX later this year.

I might be able to do that.

If you're still looking for integration, hit me up so I can take a look and see if it's doable.

Sounds good buddy. If we plan to run any promotions that will help you get there faster I'll be sure to hit you up and let you know.

Here is another question...

If you BUY the CMS. Can you sell it later? What if you spend 4k on your CMS, then want something else, but someone else is willing to buy yours or you just want to offer it for sale, can you?

I'm not sure what the policies of the other companies are but with us the software license is issued to an individual or to a company/business and cannot be resold.

Someone else can however take over your license in the case of a site purchase or buyout where they take over ownership of an existing cms installation and/or continue to run your existing sites. They would just need to setup a support subscription with us under their name.

If you anticipate the possibility of a sale, the monthly lease option is the best way to go. In this case the new buyer would just pay a small fee to have the software installed and setup and they could just take over your license. :thumbsup

+1 for sitedepth here.

Support is great and easy to customize. I like it for the simplicity of it, yet, it has the power I need...when I need it.