Carson Gibbons
January 07, 2017
Age Old Issue: Speed | Quality | Cost
The golden triangle of project success or failure rests on the three angles of A) Speed B) Quality C) Cost. When it comes to interactive agencies, they may be promising (at best) two of the three triangle points, but how likely are they to fulfill that promise? Speed + Cost naturally rules out Quality, right? And Quality naturally rules out cost if speed is at all involved. In my former life of scoping projects for an interactive agency, clients who had hard deadlines for app launches would be charged more. Clients whose websites served as their brick and mortar needed extremely high-quality work, which affected speed and cost. This is true in at least the old working model of installed content management systems, but the Golden Triangle doesn’t take into account agencies that are managing websites and applications using a CMS API.
We wrote a blog awhile back titled The Cosmic Stack. The article details how developers bypass the installed Content Management System + Web Hosting process for the apps and websites they are building. When you use Cosmic as your CMS API, your application stack is simplified down to the Cosmic CMS API and a code repository.
Speed
By removing the client-side server from the application stack, speed is ‘sped up’ immensely simply from the dynamics of your new content management stack. Depending on how you decide to build your new application, speed has been seen to almost double in certain cases (according to PageSpeed Insights from Google Dev). Recently we measured a legacy WordPress website on its installed content management system. It ranked at a 50 on a scale of 100 when summoned from its content box and myriad of servers. That same website built on Cosmic ended up being ranked at a 94.
Quality
Quality isn’t compromised! Because Cosmic works by decoupling content from code, you don’t sacrifice on either side. A CMS API simply saves time and bandwidth by delivering content seamlessly through the powerful Cosmic CMS API, which delivers JSON particles to any web-connected device, regardless of your application’s programming language. Your pages are rendered with the original code and the updated content, but never compromises the quality of the interactive application you have built.
Cost
Agencies typically bill out on either a project basis (total # of estimated hours X billable rate) or retainer basis (total # of agreed monthly hours X discounted billable rate). Because developers no longer have to build out a backend Content Management System on top of an antiquated installed legacy system, many devs report a time savings of up to 75% of their original project timeline estimates. That saves the client money, which saves the agency money. As far as the cost of using a CMS API, billing is largely a la carte. Cosmic costs on a usage basis, as well as a la carte add-on items that devs can use if needed. For a full view of Cosmic pricing, visit our Pricing Page.
Helpful Resources
Cosmic is an API-first cloud-based content management platform that makes it easy to manage applications and content. If you have questions about the Cosmic API, please reach out to the founders on Twitter or Slack.
To read more about how developers are using the Cosmic CMS API to build slicks apps and websites, read our Developer Spotlight Series with 1) Jon Bloomer 2) Simple Media.
