Why Ektron, why?
I keep being blown away by the number of companies using this backasswards ‘CMS.’ This should not be labeled as a content management system. A more appropriate label would be control management system.
Ektron is un-robust, un-simple, and un-restriction free; everything a CMS is supposed to relieve.
Yet, time after time, I come across clients who use this bungled piece of tomfoolery dressed as advanced technology. There is absolutely nothing logical about this software, and using it only makes me feel more and more restricted the farther I dive into it.
I often think of this as the Constant Contact of the CMS world. They blew up on the scene, impressed companies with money that didn’t know better and are just grandfathered in them. I mean, how can anyone seriously want to use them? Everything they ‘profess’ the CMS can do can be done in an open source platform, and it can be done easier.
The dev site looks like a relic of table-based design from ‘98. They only support Windows, and the web portal only works fully in Internet Explorer. Those two facts should be enough for anyone who knows anything about web to throw up a red flag. Their dev PDF says they support PHP, yet while chatting with a support tech (they are good at that I’ll at least say), I was told they don’t support PHP…hmm.
I haven’t even got into the price–when I was first researching CMS’ a few years ago the price was $12K / year.
That’s right $12K for one year.
Gadzooks! This CMS better create the self-automated / self-updating website that clients are often dumbfounded does not exist.
Much like Constant Contact, Ektron sounds nice and shiny, but when you get down to it, it limits you everywhere, preventing you from getting into the nitty gritty of a site and being able to make your site fully kick ass like you need it to.
An easy enough sell off of Ektron is just the price, but this short post should be enough for any IT manager to realize if they are in bed with Ektron, it’s time to get a move on before getting into any more trouble.
