When to Build vs Buy a CMS
AdvancedQuick Answer
TL;DR
Buy a CMS in almost every case. Building a custom CMS costs $200,000–$1M+ and requires ongoing engineering investment that rarely delivers competitive advantage. The exception: when your content model is so unique, your scale so extreme, or your regulatory requirements so specific that no existing platform can meet them. Even then, consider a hybrid approach — buy the core, extend with custom code.
Key Takeaways
- Building a custom CMS costs $200,000–$1M+ upfront and $50,000–$200,000+/year to maintain
- Buying a CMS lets you focus engineering resources on your actual product differentiators
- The "build" case is valid only for extreme scale, unique content models, or strict regulatory requirements
- Headless CMSes with open APIs and extensible schemas dramatically reduce the need to build custom
- A hybrid approach (buy + extend) covers most edge cases without full custom development