When having a website developed, many business owners tend to ponder over the thought of making not only a financially smart decision, but also a very important one.

The fork in the road question tends to be something along the lines of -
'Do I have a Custom Developed Website or a Content Management System?'

To begin with, the websites designs are usually based around the business displaying logos, colours and information, but the development and functionality of the website can vary when making such decisions.

For example, having a Custom Developed Website can be very beneficial in the sense that it can be very cost effective for businesses that want to own a website but don't need to make many changes often. When they do make changes, they are generally minor and consist of adding in more images and/or updating some textual information throughout the website. These changes can be done by the employees of the company providing they have a fine knowledge of HTML, CSS and also with using off the shelf tools such as Dreamweaver and Frontpage. But don't be fooled, web editing programs such as these usually come at a cost. Alternatively, they can seek the assistance of a website developer to make the changes for them (for a minor cost), thus also resulting in savings.

But what happens when those changes occur more frequently and the costs are no longer minor?

That's where CMS (Content Management System) based websites can also be very beneficial and cost effective, especially when the business is on the rise and the dependency of regular updates is inevitable. With CMS websites, business owners can have the flexibility of being able to make regular updates to their websites, at any given time, whether they are in the office or out of the country, all they need is a computer and an internet connection. With CMS based websites there are no minimal requirements for off the shelf web editing tools and/or a fine knowledge of HTML and CSS as they generally come with a built-in user interface, similar to that of MS Word.

CMS's also provide a range of other flexible options such as - adding, editing, deleting, moving, renaming and displaying which ever pages and information the company desires.
They also have the ability of creating users for the website and choosing whether those users are an administrator or a subscriber.

Those are just some of the options and advantages of having a CMS based website, but, whether your company is small, medium or large, at the end of the day it all depends on what the needs and requirements are and what would be more beneficial for the business.

So you decide which is more beneficial for your business, and whether you choose to a Custom Developed Website or a Content Management System, just having a website in general can be very beneficial and an advantage in itself.