I recently came upon this article written by a CMS developer who was amazed that a potential client chose a custom CMS over their recommended solution. I see these articles on occasion, and they always aggravate me to a certain extent.

The reason is because custom CMSs continue to make a ton of sense for enterprise clients—more so now than ever before.

The real shock here is that more developers don’t see custom CMS solutions as a viable option. They are stuck in a bubble overrun with off-the-shelf solutions. Oftentimes, they can’t even tell that the professed “benefits” of off-the-shelf software are the same detriments that lead to customers eventually wish they had traveled down the custom development path from the beginning.

The writer of the article posed some interesting questions and arguments which we’d like to answer, starting with this:

Have you ever built a CMS before? Have you ever used a custom CMS? The answer to both is no. Because if it was yes, you would not even consider doing it.

To the contrary, we’ve been building custom CMS platforms for over 15 years. When we began, the custom pathway was pretty much the only option for website developers. There weren’t any off-the-shelf solutions such as WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla. Those platforms developed over time and did indeed make life a lot easier. However, one could argue that they also ushered in an era of “sameness” on the Internet. An era where a true “web developer” can’t be distinguished from a “themer” by most business owners.

But I digress. Ultimately, in this article, I want to reply directly to the original author’s points regarding why off-the-shelf solutions are superior to building yourself. He posits the following arguments with the idea that the available CMS solutions offer more value because they can handle these issues better than a custom solution.