Free Publisher Template
CMS Comparison Spreadsheet for News Publishers
Compare WordPress, general-purpose platforms, and dedicated news CMS options against the requirements that affect daily publishing and long-term operating cost.
News CMS evaluation criteria
Use the downloadable sheet to add vendor scores, weights, evidence, costs, and decision notes.
| Criterion | Question | Evidence to request |
|---|---|---|
| Editorial roles and approvals | Can permissions and approval stages match the real newsroom? | Demonstrate reporter, editor, publisher, correction, and urgent-update workflows. |
| Breaking-news workflow | Can teams publish and update quickly without bypassing governance? | Run a timed publish, update, correction, and homepage-placement exercise. |
| Multilingual editions | Are language URLs, metadata, desks, and taxonomies independently manageable? | Create one story in two editions and inspect URLs, metadata, and linking. |
| Technical SEO | Are canonicals, schema, sitemaps, metadata, and redirects controlled? | Inspect rendered HTML and ask how rules apply across thousands of articles. |
| Performance and resilience | How does the platform behave during traffic spikes? | Review measured Core Web Vitals, caching, CDN, monitoring, and incident plans. |
| Migration readiness | Can URLs, authors, dates, media, taxonomies, and archives be preserved? | Request a sample migration map and URL-level redirect plan. |
| Analytics and revenue | Can editorial results connect with ads, subscriptions, ePaper, and leads? | Trace one article from publication through audience and revenue reporting. |
| Security and support | Who owns upgrades, backups, access control, and incident response? | Review written responsibilities, response times, recovery steps, and exclusions. |
| Total operating cost | What will the platform cost after plugins, hosting, support, and internal time? | Model setup plus three years of recurring and change-related costs. |
How to use the comparison
Shortlist no more than three platforms, assign a weight from 1 to 5 to each criterion, and score only what the vendor can demonstrate. Add notes, evidence links, implementation cost, recurring cost, and known constraints before calculating a total.
Use the same publishing scenarios for every vendor. A polished presentation is not evidence that corrections, language editions, archive migration, or breaking-news workflows will work for your team.
What the score cannot decide
A spreadsheet supports a decision; it cannot replace technical due diligence, editor testing, reference checks, contract review, or a migration rehearsal. Treat unsupported claims as unknown rather than automatically awarding a middle score.
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