Stateless Systems has launched a professional, subscription based version of its hosted content management system CushyCMS.
I interviewed Guy King from Stateless for the CushyCMS launch in April (the post includes a demo video) and he mentioned then that the long-term plan for CushyCMS was to offer a professional subscription version. King tells me that the demand for a professional version of CushyCMS was strong from the day the service launched, so they immediately started building it. As of last week, the free version of CushyCMS has more than 4,600 active users, a tidy number given this isn’t an every day consumer based product.
CushyCMS is a simple content management system that aims to make life easier for web designers by simplifying content management. Web designers use CushyCMS to give content editors (for example a client) access to part, full or many pages at a granular level (headings, images, sidebars, etc), enabling them to update or create standards-compliant content directly from a browser without messing with the sites coding.
CushyCMS Pro is being offered at $28/month and features branding support, including a custom logo, colors and domain (e.g. acmedesign.clienteditor.com). There is no set-up fee or minimum subscription length and both PayPal and AlertPay are accepted.
In addition, several new features have been added to the free version of CushyCMS, including SFTP support (secure FTP), Improved WYSIWYG editor and Support for IIS and other Microsoft-based FTP servers.
Former TechCrunch writer Duncan Riley edits The Inquisitr, a daily dose of tech, pop and penguins.
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Nice job… way to answer demand Cushy team! Very compelling product, I’d like to see this service do well!
Looking Good Guy, looking good!
welcome to the neighborhood. This post also allowed us to mention JoinSources was a winner tonight in Pittsburgh’s EnterPrize business plan competition ( phase 2 ). I’m proud to say we’re the only new business to win both phases 1 and 2..
Real clever approach to web publishing. Meets a niche market well I reckon.
cheers don GTFO
Good service and good marketing strategy where combine an web hosting with the CMS system.
Well Done!
Is it OSS ?
Plug in may be limited……if not an OSS
DUNCAN!
NICE ARTICLE. NICE CMS. NICE DUNCAN!
I’ll stick with Expression Engine (www.expressionengine.com)
>I’ll stick with Expression Engine (www.expressionengine.com)
Word!
CushyCMS is really pretty, but I found the features underwhelming when I test-drove it. It’s essentially a nice wrapper around the ugly task of FTP-ing HTML files back and forth. Most sites seem to be running dynamic CMS’s these days anyway, so I’m not sure about the addressable market. Does anyone have any thoughts on how often do people still use FTP to edit flat content these days?
@Q dub,
maybe you misunderstood the end-user target of cushycms. I think that cushycms isn’t a real cms, but a simple content editing system for small projects that don’t need the complexity of a real cms. IMHO, it does that very well.
Think about a little project of a small company that only wants a business-card-like website with 5 to 10 pages presenting their activities. Well, now think about giving to your customer the possibility to edit their fax number in the contact page or the image of their building with an easy interface without annoying you for doing that. You know, you are busy with other bigger projects so doing that for your customer would be very annoying. Well here comes the power of cushycms and other systems like that (another nice project, http://www.typeroom.com).
What I like of CMS over other similar solutions is that the free version will remain free and the pro upgrade gives you the possibility to rebrand the system. I’m doing some projects with it, maybe I’ll upgrade to pro version. I’m italian so maybe I’ll try to make some translations for my customers.
Surreal CMS (http://surrealcms.com) looks promising too. Similar concept, but looks a bit more mature.