MAS or CARMA, which CMS to choose?
 

Well, i'm going to start a few new paysites and need some good CMS program to be able to manage all those new paysites.
So my attention was grabbed by MAS by mansionproductions and CARMA - by toomuchmedia. They have different pricing, but maybe there are people who used both of them and have something to tell regarding which one is better, easier to operate, easier to set up, etc?

I use Adultwebware CMS atm, but since they are not answering for more than 2 weeks, and i'm loosing my potential income by just waiting, i kinda need new CMS software. So, my main needs are to rotate the content - i.e. add x stack of sets at x days and show it as update and then remove the same number of oldest sets for future updates, it's a fake content updating, just rotation.
Also, all of the paysites will need to have different members area designs and layouts, i hope both CMS proggies will be able to handle that right...

So, shoot me your opinions, Thanks!!!

I have been learning Awiz lately and it is pretty nice...the layout of the admin is pretty bad, but it has great features

MAS no doubt!

Can you please describe WHY?

anyone got ICQ of MAS support guys who could answer some questions?

I use them for years and they answer my support requests very fast, I never had any problems with their script, all custom stuff I asked for they handled it for me and they support me in all possible ways.

Beside that the script is very good, has tons of features and it is a big time saver.

ICQ Number: 21-978-948
Name: Oystein

he is main sales guy there.

Btw, I am not affiliated with them; I am just very satisfied about the service they provided to me over the last years.

I was using awiz, its not bad but not doing everything i need so we just ordered Carma

Pete-KT
We have CARMA as well and are very happy with it.
And TMM have a great support.

All the best to you :)

ohh yearh, i used Awiz also as my first CMS.
CARMA is in a whole other leuage imo

Awiz isnt bad, but it doesnt do everything and its a lil slow on loading the pages

using sitedepth and that works great for me...

Hi there spycam,

feel free to contact me on ICQ if you have any MAS questions or want to work out a deal.

Always around to help you know :)

Carma is pretty awesome.. and the team over at TMM are fabulous ;)

Ditch AWW / AWiz.
I've only looked over MAS, I haven't had to develop on it so far, but I would have to say the superior product at the moment is CARMA, for the following reason.

Templates are powered by SMARTY. This means you have FULL control over your templates, and total seperation from any coding hassles. It means you can make your sites look exactly like you want, and do whatever you want. The plugins component means that you can process any of the data coming from CARMA to do exactly what you want. I've written sites for WAP in CARMA, full content rotation etc etc, advanced authentication modules for our webcam systems, embedded video plugins, the works.

I come from a purely technical side, so you might not be looking for these features.
Apart from auto-thumbnailing, video screencap galleries, I believe the new version can convert your videos to flash automagically as well.

Depending on your traffic, you can loadbalance your sites out of CARMA with no troubles.

Again, I've only had a chance to develop seriously on CARMA, but I was looknig over MAS last night, and their templating system doesnt seem to compare just yet, or their pages are slightly out of date.

**bump**

I understand when people use one or another product and they are happy with it so they recommend it, but i don't see anyone who really used both products to know which one is better and why...

Many of the customers who came to Mansion choosing MAS were not feeling comfortable with the Smarty template engine used by many other CMS. They find the MAS template system easier to work with, more understandable without any technical knowledge, allowing for WYSIWYG editing of templates in Dreamweaver etc. The MAS templating system is much more than simple replacement of a few tags, there are options for conditional statements, "subtemplates", included (shared) sections and many more. So, again you have full control over the templates, but with achieved through a different approach than Smarty.

And I have to admit that the MAS promo pages are slightly out of date, although the system is in constant impovement. We will have a new major release very soon, which will be updated on the site as well.

SpyCam - MAS could do everything you mentioned here and more. Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have.

BTW - here's another similar thread from a couple of weeks ago: http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?t=724908

Have to vote for MAS - we even use MAS for our 'auto updating' paysite tours along with our members areas.

I haven't used both, but I can say that MAS has served us very well, and support has been great.

I can only think that Mansion has 2 tiers of service: for the big guys, and for everyone else. Their support has *always* been sketchy, sometimes fast, sometimes they don't respond for hours or days (regardless of how high you set the ticket priority), and here's the other problem: you can *only* reach them by the ticket system, regardless of how urgent the issue is.

Any time you need the smallest intervention they try and stick it to you: $500 to re-issue a license to move MPA3 to another server.

Any one else experiencing this? Right now I'm really disappointed.

All I can say is this is a dumb way to treat your customers. especially the small ones - it's much easier for us to switch to NATS than for Hustler. And one day we'll be big too ...

On the bright side I can highly recommend Mojo Host, they really make it feel like they're an extension of your company (except for one time I must have caught Brad in the middle of dinner, he got testy with me that time).

MAS.

I'd go with just about anything that Mansion puts out for webmasters. Top notch crew over there and some of the best support you can ask for.

Karups is proud to use MAS for its sites. We have 3 of the 4 moved over (KPC is a monster) and could not be happier.

We have worked with both companies and hands down MAS is 10 times more responsive and helpful then TMM has ever been.

Tony,

It saddens me to see that we have one unhappy client here. I checked our ticketing system and see that you got a reply not long after.

We have to charge anyone $500 for a server move as it takes hours for us to do to ensure go over the new setup to check that everything works 100%. There are a lot of different variables that have to be checked, and this means extra work for us. This is the reason why it is in the contract that all customers sign. We do not charge anything to issue a new license, it is 100% free.

We can be contacted via phone, email, ticketing system and ICQ

:2 cents:

PS. Our techs has ALSO been communicating with your hosting company and given you a few options to choose from. I think that is pretty good support on our end actually :)

If a server move was like installing photoshop eveyone would be doing it :2 cents:

ElevatedX :thumbsup :thumbsup


talk to AJ @ 202474015 :)

Here's something to think about

Carma/NATS uses Smarty http://smarty.php.net/ . Smarty has over 6,000 contributing developers who contribute to make it better. It's a no brainer

Carma is obnoxious.

It was so slow on a Quad Xeon w/ 4GB, local SCSI (U320), that a client opted to not only trash it, but to create static index pages to get away from it, they were so burned at the concept.

I can't vouch for MAS; I haven't used it extensively. I can suggest that any attempts at integrating CARMA might just opt to have a monkey on staff which is given a list to reply via telnet to the requesting host; the ability and speed is nearly the same.. but the monkey likely has a higher tolerance.

That's the same thing I heard time and time again. A buddy of mine tried working with Mansion to get his site working and launched, i.e. smallfish. He went through long bouts of being ignored. He would vent his frustrations to me quite often. Eventually I suggest he move over to TMM.

Shortly after moving to TMM, his site launched.

I personally use Carma and NATS for my sites and I've been very happy with both their support and their technical innovations. I love the smarty template system, but I really love the smarty caching system. My server load is non-existant and response time of the program is super fast.

Their support has been nothing short of top shelf, I always get immediate responses to any ticket I open and their staff is very knowledgable. I will say they do need to kick up their sales support a little more. Finding someone to buy a TMM product through or get notified of new TMM products is not an easy task. But if i had to choose, I'd rather have great support after the sale than before it ;)

Brad rox the house, while I don't host there, I've referred some of my buddies over to him and they couldn't be happier. I'm just too lazy to move my sites :)

I use CARMA myself and I'm very satisfied with it. Support is also excellent.

The only thing I keep requesting over and over again is a CHANGE LOG. Maybe one day we'll get one and we'll stop trying to guess what each new version brings to the table.

Both are definitely steps up from AWW (i've used all 3). Just started using Carma so I cant say anything about it except it uses smarty templates (which is a good thing) :D. MAS works well as long as you don't have a model centric site, if so than you have to do few workarounds (which I guess you could say about any out of the box CMS) hehe, also MAS had excellent support. Good luck in your decision!

heh, i got back from a small holiday, i see some replies so i'll need to reed them, while i'll be doing that, others could share their thought regarding the theme of this topic ;)

the exact same could be said for Carma and TMM.

I am personally working with Carma at the moment, and it looks great. And easy. A big bonus is it plugs effortlessly into NATs, which is a fanatastic affiliate's manager. And then there's the RSSDish plugin and.....

IMO TMM, has most avenues covered and as a first step, you would not go wrong with them.

Hehe - never read your post - looks like we're on the same page :winkwink:

This seems very odd, as it's not at all what I'm currently seeing. Was this on a default install or a heavily modified backend? A tonne of lengthy Smarty plugins and/or extensions will always slow down ANY smarty-driven site, simply because the way the templating engine works.

hey, if you would like to be in this biz for awhile and actually have a CMS that will save you money in the long run with being able to save your time or your employees time and have them or yourself do something else....checkout
www.ThePaysiteCMS.com it will pay for itself with the time you will save....not to mention the features it offers....

www.ThePaysiteCMS.com

ehm, your online demo link is dead.... you can't expect someone to pay $30k upfront for a minority CMS without an online demo :2 cents:

The Demo is available upon request until official launch...should you or anyone like a demo, please do not hesitate to contact me. Price is reduced 50% if hosted with us.

www.ThePaysiteCMS.com

you can try www.sitedepth.com our templates might not be as flexible as CARMA or MAS but i do believe they do quite a lot and for the price difference we can pretty much customize anything you need done

Omar
icq : 271697529