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Originally Posted by Marcus Aurelius
Agreed. ElevX is pretty good out of the box, but it's a shame the company won't accept any customization request. I mean, if the customer is paying money for it, why not put those coders to work since it's their full time job anyway.
Another issues with all these CM scripts is that there is almost no design/template/integration support. Zuzanna is the only designer that I know of who can handle ElevatedX, but her prices are outrageous. It would be good if these companies kept a full time designer on their staff who could do the complete integration for a client. I bet this would bring much more business.
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People are attracted to Elevated X for how good it is right out of the box with no customization. Every time we add something new they can have it instantly. We're updating the product constantly so if someone has a custom site, it means each time we put out something new that they want (up to several times per year) they'll be amidst some kind of coding project or will need to pay someone to work on their sites. This is shitty and it prevents businesses from staying up to date with what's current.
Obviously we do also realize a lot of people want to dig in and really customize their sites...
I could do like some other CMS companies and sell designs and customizations and make a ton of money but we won't. Elevated X's business model is different from companies who make a good part of their revenue from customizing the CMS system they sell. Our core focus is software and support, not custom coding. We do take on a few custom projects per week but we don't do big integration jobs, design work or large scale coding projects in house.
There are several coders who do Elevated X work. Demand is high and most are already booked up or design companies have them on contract. For example, Czarina is booked solid. Mark Tiarra does freelance Elevated X gigs but is busy with overflow work from design studios paying him to integrate designs for Elevated X customers. Wyldesites and Dickmans quote too high for most clients. Zuzana has no shortage of this kind of work so her rates go up. A few others will take small gigs but don't want to deal with cheapskates or throw out lowball quotes for major development jobs.
Instead of staffing to do this work and charge our customers for it we've undertaken a gigantic project that will likely go on through the end of 2013. We are redoing the Elevated X template system entirely from scratch with the goal of making it easy for even a basic user to make changes to their own sites. This will allow an Elevated X customer to hire any designer or coder, even if that person has zero prior experience with Elevated X.
Anyone who would like to give input on the new Elevated X template system is welcome. Please shoot me an email at
[email protected] if you want to be a part of the process.
AJ