Universities should evaluate a CMS based on the outcomes it will enable, not the number of features it includes. A feature checklist tells you what software can do, but it doesn't tell you whether your institution will recruit more students, reduce risk, work more efficiently, or deliver a better digital experience.
Traditional evaluations often start with a spreadsheet of hundreds of requirements. Vendors confirm whether they support workflows, permissions, structured content, accessibility, personalization, and dozens of other capabilities. Teams tally the scores and compare totals. However, as important as features are, checking a box doesn't confirm that your people, processes, and resources can turn that capability into results. Features are inputs, while outcomes are the reason universities invest in a CMS.
The sections below outline how to run an outcome-driven evaluation that fits the realities of a complex, decentralized higher ed web ecosystem.
Before comparing platforms, define what should improve because you selected a new CMS. Your priorities will depend on your institution, but they often include:
Then weight those outcomes by their importance to your institution. This shifts the central question from "Which CMS has the most capabilities?" to "Which CMS can best support what we're trying to accomplish?"
Once you've identified your outcomes, determine what the CMS must enable to achieve them. Reframe each feature question as an outcome question:
A university website isn't a typical corporate website. You may have hundreds of contributors across academic departments, administrative offices, student affairs, research centers, athletics, and advancement, and most of them aren't professional web publishers. Evaluate every platform against that reality by asking:
A CMS that's easy for five experienced web professionals isn't necessarily easy for 500 occasional contributors.
For every important capability, evaluate four dimensions rather than a single yes-or-no answer:
These four dimensions keep an impressive demonstration from being confused with real-world value.
Don't let vendors drive the entire demonstration, and don't simply ask them to march through your RFP. Give each vendor problems that reflect how your institution actually operates:
Scenarios reveal the difference between having a feature and being able to use it successfully in your environment.
CMS selection shouldn't be limited to senior decision-makers, procurement, and IT. Include people who represent different types of users:
A platform may impress experienced web professionals while overwhelming someone who logs in three times a year. Pay close attention to what contributors would actually experience. In a distributed environment, overly complex tools push people to ignore warnings, abandon tasks, or work around established processes.
During demonstrations, it's easy to be impressed by how much a CMS lets you do. For universities, it's equally important to evaluate what the CMS helps contributors not do:
The goal is to provide the appropriate amount of flexibility based on each person's role and responsibilities. Effective distributed governance balances autonomy with institutional guardrails.
Ask vendors to show you more than how their platform identifies problems after publication. Evaluate how it helps prevent them in the first place. For accessibility, template-level enforcement can stop certain issues from being introduced at all, while inline checking helps contributors correct other problems before publishing.
Apply the same thinking to content quality, governance, brand consistency, metadata, and content maintenance. A CMS that prevents problems at the point of creation reduces the auditing and remediation your central team has to perform later.
Don't just ask what the platform can automate. Ask what your team will still have to do manually. Consider how you would:
The productivity question is how efficiently the institution can maintain its entire content ecosystem.
A CMS may remain in place for five to ten years or longer, so you're evaluating a long-term relationship as much as a product. Ask:
A strong product that your institution can't successfully implement, support, or evolve isn't a strong long-term choice. For universities operating with lean teams, best-in-class support is a core capability, not an afterthought.
Vendor references are most useful when the institution resembles yours. If you have 400 contributors, don't rely on a reference with 20. If decentralized governance is one of your biggest challenges, speak with an institution running a similarly distributed model.
Ask references what happened after implementation, not simply whether they like the product:
Most importantly, ask whether the outcomes they expected from the CMS actually materialized.
You're selecting infrastructure that may remain in place for a decade or longer. You can't predict every future requirement, but you can evaluate how adaptable the platform is. Consider its APIs, integration capabilities, content architecture, structured content model, ability to separate content from presentation, and the vendor's history of evolving the product.
Future readiness isn't about guessing which AI tool or digital channel will matter five years from now. It's about choosing an architecture that doesn't force you to start over whenever something changes. Structured content, consistent metadata, semantic markup, reusable content, strong governance, APIs, and flexible architecture are the foundations of that adaptability.
You can still use a scorecard. But instead of awarding a point for every feature, organize it around the outcomes your institution defined before the evaluation. For each outcome, assess the platform's capability, usability, evidence, and scalability, then document why you assigned the score.
That last step matters. Six months later, you should be able to understand why one platform scored higher than another, not simply see that it earned 437 points instead of 421.
The purpose of a CMS evaluation isn't to determine which platform can do the most things. It's to determine which platform will best enable your institution to achieve the outcomes that matter, within the realities of your people, processes, resources, and digital environment.
Start with outcomes. Test platforms against realistic scenarios. Evaluate usability and scalability alongside capability. Weigh the operational burden. Ask for evidence. Assess the vendor relationship. Talk to comparable customers. Then use features to understand how a platform will help you reach your goals, not as a substitute for defining those goals in the first place.
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