Sifting through vendors is not the easiest of tasks for a school faced with selecting a school website provider. Many content management systems look pretty similar on the surface, and distinguishing one from another can be difficult.
Many schools don’t realize the shortcomings of of their CMS provider until a problem arises that affects the educational setting. A website that makes it difficult to engage parents and staff; one that's hard to create and edit content; a hard-to-navigate website or one that's 'down' way too often – these problems can be avoided with the right website provider.
How capable your provider candidates are in design, support, reliability, security, accessibility, scalability, and general reputation are areas that can and should be objectively measured when entering into one of the most important decisions affecting your school’s communications. Compounding the decision on which vendor to go with are factors like the rapid advancement of web technology, social media integration, and mobile device access.
Finding a vendor your school can confidently partner with requires a thorough review of some key vendor criteria.
To take the guesswork out of the vendor vetting process, we’ve put together a Vendor Survey for you to use. It’s designed to enable you to create an apples-to-apples comparison of school content management system providers.
When searching for a new vendor, use the following questions and qualifiers to help your school avoid the shock of having chosen the wrong website hosting provider:
In the fast-moving world of website software, it's more important than ever your school not only choose the right software but is adequately equipped to make that decision. Your school website is your foundation for school communications, and it's important you choose a website partner that is a good match for your school or district.
Use the questions above, which are available in a ready-made, easy-to-use template as part of the School Website Buyer’s Guide, to grill your vendor candidates. It's your obligation.
Don't be shy about asking the hard questions. After all, it's a big investment of resources to undertake building a new website, so you owe it to all your school's stakeholders to be thorough.
Do you have some questions that should be included in our list?