So whats a good CMS in these days for paysites?
 

not in the mood of having something custom

just basic CMS that can update tours / members area / schedule etc

I love awiz http://v6.awizsoft.com/index.php

See sig :thumbsup

ElevatedX.com
Done deal

I took over a few sites that are running aWiz and I was pleasantly surprised by this CMS. It does everything that the pricy CMS does and the support is very good.

I second that.
Awiz is cheaper than most CMS and do the same job.
Support is fast.

yea shop around. people keep posting the same links to these crappy 1.0 technology cms on gfy. sorry folks but this isnt 1999. there are better ways to build a cms. anyone heard of modular or db-free? holy shit whats that??

see sig if u must bother me..

Awiz or elevatedX.. Either way get with Czarina bout skinning them. She does amazing work.

Elevated X is, hands down the best CMS out there today. It does it all, is fully customizable and the support is great. (www.elevatedx.com)

Bottom Line :2 cents::

As with any service or product, shop around and make an informed judgment for yourself.

Any reputable service would be more than happy to set up a demonstration for you to explore.

Drop their customer service an email, are you pleased with their response time and professionalism? Even for the simple questions?

Don't be afraid to ask questions, and don't be afraid to double check the answer. The answer to your question should contain knowledge, not a sales pitch.

I have more if necessary... :thumbsup

Good luck with your search!

I have been learning to integrate elevatedx from Czarina and it's a breathtaking product. There are so many things it does that I doubt there is anything similar to it out there. All our clients are very happy with it, so I recommend it.

appreciate it, did u try anything else thou

Not sitedepth thats for sure

as with any "off the shelf" software be sure that you get good support included or find out what the cost is. Also be sure it does everything you want for the price and that is does not require extra add ons that increase the price.

You get what you pay for..

If you have no customer support you can end up in real trouble.
ElevatedX have always been there for us 24-7.
That is our experience anyways.

For damn sure! :thumbsup

I had a different experience with ElevatedX. On the phone, AJ told me that they didn't have enought time to give each customer attention. That's when we jumped ship and moved on to another product.

Escort Biz,
Pleasure speaking with you about our content management system CARMA --If you have any other questions please feel free to hit me up at anytime.

Thanks! :)

AWiz is a great out-of-the-box solution if you don't want custom. Now, if you NEED custom than any mass-market CMS will have its' drawbacks.

Nobody likes being misquoted and I'm no exception to this.

We try to provide excellent support to our users and every client is given attention. Unfortunately as with any service there are times when the amount of support someone requires simply exceeds what can reasonably be provided.

The Elevated X CMS is not an entry level pay site solution and we assume that the users of our CMS have a basic Webmastering skillset. We're simply not equipped to become an extension of our client's business or become a concierge for site related matters outside of our CMS product.

This isn't something we make an attempt to hide. Anytime I speak with someone who is brand new to the business, brand new to pay sites or who I feel may not have the skillset required to use our product and be successful with it I make them aware of the fact that our time is limited and we may not be able to give them the amount of attention they need.

Our goal is not to have the biggest number of clients but the biggest number who are successful.

Anytime we're unable to meet a client's needs or expectations it's disappointing. I hope that whatever CMS solution you go with meets your needs.

AJ

I have tried many of them, owned most.

Sitedepth is not super bad. It has some major hidden issues, and requires tons of tweaks. Support is hit and miss. Every so often the DB will just blow up, so do backup. Cheap, but has issues. Good for many small sites.

Awiz - Some swear by it. The documentation really sucks unless your 100% fluent in Engrish. Same goes for support, they are quick but are real bad with English so things can be frustrating.

Adult web ware - was fantastic. dead product now. Really a shame.

Carma - support is just like Nats. Integrates great into nats. Kind of pricey, hard to change in my opinion. Also seems to not have as many features as I am used to - again unless I could not understand the tweaking. Like nats the documentation center could use a little work.

Elevated X - So far my favorite. Very stable, great support using the ticket system. Does everything I can see the need for so far. No real issues yet. Only downside is I wish they had a more automated way to keep it licensed. Sometimes I am just not around when they mail me the key. Sort of a personal issue I suppose. I now have that forwarded to someone I trust to add to my site now in case I am not around.

The license keys are 100% automatic. If you get a key via email it means it failed which is a host/server issue. Hit me on ICQ or submit a ticket and we'll give you info to pass along to help resolve this.

Our pricing is comparable if not lower on monthly based CMS products-- $150/month along with a one-time set-up fee of $500 which includes installation, product training over the phone with tech, and support.

Yes it may have been just a smarty function that needed to be added into the template, if you are a current client contact support and they will able to take care of you.

We also offer an in-house templating service for those that need any custom work done.

Again, we welcome any of our clients to put a ticket in if they have any issues that need to be taken care of.

We use ElevatedX and it works pretty good. I've used their support system too and don't have any complaints. They just added a new mobile feature too which looks pretty sweet. If you sign up now you'll get that free, definitely sweetens the pot a little on an already good CMS :thumbsup

nice info in here.. will chck back to read!

But if it works, does it matter how it is coded?

I have an older CMS that works like a charm, never breaks and does the job. A guy beating off doesn't care how it's coded. He cares about getting his updates.

Don't get too caught up in the tech hype that you forget why we are all doing this in the first place. :2 cents:

Well shit then. I will figure that out and get a ticket in. I just figured that was how it works.

No need for a ticket. Check your mail. I looked into it already and emailed you :)

PornCMS looks good - is it available without hosting?

I was thinking of trying out porncms for a new project and then I saw a comment in your thread ranting over ccbill "fucking the industry" with their decline rates that stopped me:

You mean that you have access to the sales data and declines for companies using PornCMS? Do these companies know this?

Personally I consider that information private. Cam you clarify my (mis)understanding?

I've worked with most if not all CMSs out there and I'd say the answer is anything that does the job and it's easy to customize without having to pay shitloads of money to the same script owner. We got so frustrated with many CMS scripts we started developing them by ourselves.... and they're way better, faster and featured-filled than any CMS out there, bar none. Of course, custom will always be better since you do what you need the way you want it and it will always work.

But on the standard CMSs, I see some of them that are quite good are really back with the times, others are up with the times but support limits with non-existent, not matter what they say. And others are totally outdated and support-less!

IMHO, anything that has 99% of its code zend'ed is a no-no. I mean, I understand, approve and support to have some core functions zend'ed, but some scripts goes over the top to avoid client-side customization. In these times when business changes every day and you need to make constant changes to try new things and approaches, I really don't understand the reason for 99% obscured code. I mean, I understand it and know why, but in the end, they'll many good clients just for trying to make a few more bucks

Again, just my humble opinion :2 cents:

Elevated X gets a lot of love of the boards, but we started converting our network to it in late winter...so far it was been a nightmare. The support isn't very good either.

Thanks, problem solved or will be once we fix that server setting. :thumbsup

That's what I was trying to do and I couldn't find answers in their knowledgebase. Therefore, I tried asking questions on the phone but they didn't have time for us.

Do you use Awiz?

LOL. At least I am not the only one.

ElevatedX needs to step it up. I have a business to run.

NemesisEnforcer,
Your unhappiness with our support is completely understandable. While we do deal with support issues by phone (especially urgent issues or emergencies) unfortunately we're not able to provide quality tech support by phone and still put out our product at an affordable price. We have a ticket system that's checked periodically around the clock, SMS paging to our cell phones for emergency tickets and I'm able to field a lot of basic/general questions personally during the day via email or ICQ. That works well most of the time and we definitely try to accommodate everyone and handle things as best we can.

We're not perfect and as is the nature of any service/support based business there will be times when we fail to meet someone's needs. I'm sorry that you were one of those people and that your experience with us was a negative one.

I'm going to update our FAQ page tomorrow to provide more information on our support methods so no assumptions are made by potential users. Your negative experience could have been avoided if this was clear and you knew this up front.

Ultimately all we can do is strive to get better as our business grows and enhance our product and service so that the majority of our CMS users remain happy and the general tone of CMS posts related to Elevated X remains positive.



Jay,
The love we get on boards comes from our average user. If you build a new program from scratch with our platform I'm sure you'll be singing its praises too. Not all clients are the same so a company like OC Cash with a massive 2 program migration project is far more demanding and may equal the routine support load of a few dozen of our "average" users. Getting these done is a juggling act and to be honest we won't likely be taking on as many of these total conversions in the future.

When you get into database conversion, content migration and bulk video encoding with developers working on both sides these projects are always messy. Trust that often it's a nightmare on our end as well. Stuff like this is never as quick or pretty as we'd like it to be and I'm sorry that you're dissatisfied to the point of wanting to make a public post about it and I'm more bothered that you felt this was needed to get our attention...

There have been many phone calls between us and members of your team and countless conversations with your developer (Munki) and many late nights spent working on your stuff throughout the process.

I know you guys are anxious and things are dragging but I can't let your statement "The support isn't very good either" go unanswered since the only true "support" issues you've had with your live Elevated X sites were given prompt attention.

If you want to say we're lagging on a huge multi-site migration that's had a lot of hurdles I won't argue but please don't say that our support isn't good.

I know you're frustrated but our speed on working on very large custom dev projects is no reflection on the way we handle tech support and while I can't argue that progress on your projects isn't as fast as we'd all like it to be, migrations like this account for a very small percentage of clients we service.

We'll call you guys tomorrow to discuss picking up the pace and hopefully move past this quickly.

AJ