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When it comes to choosing a digital experience or engagement platform (DXP) or Content Management System (CMS) for higher education, the decision often boils down to two main options: proprietary systems or open-source alternatives.
The choice between a proprietary and an open-source DXPCMS is a pivotal decision for higher education institutions because it directly influences how effectively you can engage with students, faculty, and other stakeholders—and it's something you'll likely live with for many years.
Your online presence is often the first point of contact for prospective students, making it crucial that your DXP not only supports a seamless user experience but also aligns with your school's broader strategic goals.
We know this choice proprietary or open-source is crucial for higher education, and each hasits unique strengths and potential drawbacks.
That’s why this week, we’re evaluating how open-source DXPs fare against proprietary ones to offer you more information before you begin the RFP process.
The role of a DXP in higher education marketing
As the digital landscape continues to shift, implementing a DXP/CMS or digital engagement platform for your school has become even more important than it was in the past.
With the right platform, you can streamline your content management, improve student and faculty engagement, and enhance your recruitment efforts.
It will allow you to match Gen Z prospective (and current) students’ expectations: that you’ll deliver personalized content, keep their information secure, and allow them to efficiently get the information they need, quickly.
Additionally, by centralizing your digital operations, a DXP/CMS or digital engagement promotes efficiency, reduces costs, and supports the university’s strategic goals, helping to maintain a strong and cohesive online presence that attracts and retains students.
Most importantly, it fosters collaboration between Marketing, IT, Academic, Admissions, Student Services, Alumni Relations, and Administration to manage your university’s digital ecosystem.
Why choosing the right DXP/CMS is key
The right choice can improve your school’s ability to attract and retain students, support academic and administrative processes, and ensure compliance with accessibility and security standards.
Choosing the right platform will also impact your long-term scalability and adaptability—as you know, the world of higher education environments moves quickly, and the landscape is constantly changing, as the pandemic and AI have taught us.
So it’s all the more important that your platform can integrate with existing systems, so your team can quickly update and manage content across multiple systems that are consistently changing and improving.
A DXP/CMS that’s flexible, secure, and easy to manage can significantly streamline these processes, enabling your to stay competitive and responsive to these changing demands.
Conversely, if you choose the wrong platform, you could be battling with inefficiencies, increased costs, even security vulnerabilities—and a very disgruntled team!
And it’ll be years before you can obtain the budget to make a change again.
The pros of proprietary systems
1. Purpose-built for higher education
This is, in a nutshell, what it’s all about.
Proprietary digital engagement platforms are typically specifically designed to meet the unique needs of higher education institutions—or at least, this is what you should be looking for.
Unlike open-source systems that may cater to a broader range of industries, these platforms are purpose-built to work seamlessly within the academic environment, reducing the need for extensive customization and providing a solution that is ready to deploy out-of-the-box.
2. Low-code approach and user-friendly interface
Proprietary digital engagement platforms offer a low-code approach, enabling your non-technical users to build and publish content through intuitive drag-and-drop functionalities.
Rather than a one-type-fits-all approach, proprietary systems’ user-friendly interfaces are usually designed to accommodate both novice and experienced users, regardless of their technical skill, so you can streamline content creation and management.
With more experienced developers, you can also often extend the capabilities of the system in a highly available and secure platform.
3. Higher education-focused development roadmap
With proprietary digital engagement platforms, the development roadmap of these platforms is often shaped by active engagement with the higher education community.
The companies developing them usually continuously invest in research and development—often based on your own feedback—ensuring regular updates and feature enhancements.
This commitment to innovation guarantees that the platform remains stable, reliable, and equipped with the latest tools, eliminating concerns about system obsolescence.
Through user group meetings, conferences, and user testing, the platform evolves in line with the needs of colleges and universities.
4. Built-in features and tools
Proprietary platforms often come with a wide array of built-in higher education features and modules that are highly relevant to that sector, minimizing the need for third-party plugins.
Tools such as smart personalization, multichannel publishing, form builders, and analytics/reporting are integrated into the platform, offering a comprehensive solution that supports a secure and compliant hosting environment.
5. Interoperability and integration
One of the biggest benefits of proprietary digital engagement platforms is in their interoperability, their ability to connect and integrate all your university systems together. with robust integration capabilities that allow seamless connections with third-party systems.
This makes data exchange more seamless and efficient.
Integrating systems means, for example, that you can update one of your systems, and the change is automatically made on your website, too—like, for example, your LDAP or your university calendars.
6. Product support
Support is a key advantage of proprietary platforms, with dedicated teams providing comprehensive assistance across all aspects of the DXP/CMS, hosting environment, and additional tools.
This ensures that institutions like yours can quickly resolve issues and maintain smooth digital operations, knowing that your platform is managed entirely by the company.
7. Transparent pricing
Proprietary platforms—depending on the supplier—should provide transparent pricing that doesn’t (or shouldn’t) change every time you want to add additional features.
The key, whether you’re going for proprietary or open-source, is to find suppliers that can offer a clear picture of the total cost of ownership over several years, with no hidden costs.
8. Templating or modular system
Another benefit is often a simple and customizable templating system that makes content creation and reuse faster and more efficient.
Using component-driven templates that require no advanced technical skills for creation and configuration makes it easier for your editors and content writers across your university to create, edit, or update content quickly and accurately, ensuring your pages remain accessible and properly branded.
9. Working with a single supplier
The best-in-class proprietary systems take care of everything you need to get started with your project (and afterwards) in-house, with a dedicated team who knows your system inside out.
This means everything from hosting, design, migrating existing content, training, and support.
Work with a single organization from start to finish—without having to go to a third party— has advantages, and you won’t have to go through a “middleman” when you need something done.
10. Community of higher education users
A point often made by proprietary platforms is that their community is extensive—but also specific to the higher education sector.
These companies often will have a community of higher ed users and will organize meetups, conferences, calls, and more to facilitate information sharing and best practices within their client base.
There’s often a lot that can be shared between higher education institutions in different countries, with different approaches.
The pros of open source systems
1. Pricing options
Open-source DXP/CMS solutions may have lower upfront costs—at least initially— and no ongoing subscription fees compared to proprietary systems.
This affordability makes them particularly appealing to budget-conscious institutions, such as smaller colleges and universities, allowing them to allocate resources to other critical areas of their operations.
2. Vendor independence
Open-source DXP/CMS platforms may eliminate the risk of vendor lock-in, which is something to look out for in proprietary systems.
Institutions can modify, enhance, or switch platforms without being dependent on a single provider for support and maintenance, provided they have the right expertise in-house.
This independence fosters greater flexibility and autonomy in managing your digital environments with your team.
3. Customization
Open-source platforms offer extensive customization options, which means you can tailor systems to meet unique or specialized needs—although this is often true of proprietary systems too.
This adaptability ensures that higher education institutions can implement features that align closely with your specific requirements and user experiences with more autonomy—and maybe more speed, if you have in-house developers.
4. Community, too
Open-source DXP/CMS platforms also have large, active developer communities, though these won’t necessarily be within the higher education sector.
These communities can contribute to continuous improvement and innovation, ensuring that the platforms evolve in response to the changing digital landscape—and we know it happens fast.
Members of open-source communities often find conferences and online forums where they can leverage shared knowledge and resources, enhancing their digital strategies and knowledge.
5. Longevity
It’s important to find long-term solutions that can grow with your university, regardless of whether you’re choosing proprietary or open-source systems.
Find companies or systems that have been in existence for a long time and are continuously updated.
When it comes to open-source, this can often happen faster, as feature and UX enhancements can take place more slowly with established proprietary systems that need to invest considerably to update the systems as times change.
Developers can often rely on the ongoing support of their community and the ability to self-host or migrate their systems themselves (or with the help of an agency) to ensure continuity and stability in their digital operations if they want the freedom to do that themselves.
Has your team been debating the pros and cons of open-source and proprietary digital engagement platforms? We'd love to hear about your experience.
Let us know in the comments below or on social media.