Since our content management systems are hosted applications, they reside on our own servers. I get questions from time to time about this from customers who want to install the products on their own servers. When I tell them this isn't possible, they occasionally express concern. When I dig deeper, I find that the concerns almost always revolve around the issue of trust.
- What happens if your servers go down?
- What about if your company goes out of business?
- Isn't it asking a lot for me to trust your company with my website or my clients' websites?
The questions are valid, and certainly the start-up filled web industry has done much to foster this inherent distrust in our would-be customers. In response, I typically explain that no matter what your situation, you have to trust someone with your website. Therefore, the real objective is finding a company you can trust.
You have to trust someone.
It doesn't matter if your website is on a hosted CMS, a deployable CMS, an open sourced CMS, or just a static server, you are always putting your trust in someone or something to keep your site running. The question is do you know all of the entities responsible for keeping your site working and do you trust them?
If you install CMS software on "your own" servers, most likely those servers are not really your own, but servers that you lease from a hosting company. Do you trust the hosting company? Also, the software will have to be supported by someone (since that's not the hosting company's responsibility). Who supports your CMS software? Who upgrades it and troubleshoots it? Do you trust them?
Maybe you actually do have your own servers in your own office. Who maintains them? Do you trust them? If they leave the company, does anyone else know how to do the job? How are the servers connected to the internet? Are there redundancies? Do you trust your server configuration?
When it's hosted, the buck stops here.
The difference with a hosted CMS solution is that when the same company is building the software and maintaining the servers, you've only got one person to blame. You won't have a hosting company blaming the software or vice versa. No, with a hosted CMS, the company that built it takes full responsibility for making sure everything is working at all times. So, with a hosted CMS, things are simpler. There's only one question to answer -- do you trust the software company?
This is why we have always placed a high emphasis on providing information about our company to our potential customers. We've built our company on a reputation of trust. We're not a startup. We've grown our business organically. We're debt free. We have no outside funding. We have a nine year history. We're proud of the reputation we've built and we put it out there to help inspire the trust that is needed for any relationship to be successful.
So, can you trust a hosted CMS? Of course! But as with any solution, it all depends on who's behind it.
Posted on
Tue, June 3, 2008
by Tim Wall