A self-serve TCO model for content platform projects. Twelve plain inputs in. A 3- or 5-year cost band, a benefit-side estimate, and a take-away PDF out — gated only by an email.
Research preview · v0.1 — based on public benchmarks and ECM.dev estimates, refreshed quarterly
First time? Try a sample scenario
Loads a representative scenario into the form so you can see how the model behaves before entering your own.
1. Your organisation
2. Current platform
Pain points
3. Target platform
Headless / composable — separate content backend (Sanity, Contentful, Storyblok); your dev team builds the front-end
Mid-market CMS — turnkey CMS with a built-in editor (Kentico, Umbraco, Sitefinity)
DXP / enterprise platform — vendor suite with personalisation + commerce + experimentation (Sitecore, Optimizely, AEM, Acquia)
ECM — document-centric records management (Hyland OnBase, OpenText, IBM FileNet)
SaaS — vendor runs everything; you log in to edit. Lowest hosting + ops overhead (~30% cheaper run cost).
PaaS / managed cloud — vendor manages cloud, you run the app team. Baseline.
Self-hosted — you run infrastructure and ops in-house. Slightly higher run cost (~10%) on average — infra savings offset by larger DIY team.
4. Scope & complexity
Total pages plus migratable assets (images, PDFs, videos, downloadable documents). Drives content-migration effort. Be generous — count every URL and asset, not just the headline page count.
Required integrations
Each ticked integration adds ~5% to implementation cost (data mapping, auth, error handling, ongoing maintenance). Capped at +40%. Five or more pushes the project into the high-risk profile band.
None — same content for every visitor. No uplift.
Light (rules-based) — IF/THEN logic: geo banners, logged-in vs anonymous variants, simple A/B tests. +10% on implementation.
Heavy (AI / ML) — real-time content scoring, ML recommendations, dynamic AI chat, agentic content selection. +25% on implementation.
Compliance constraints
GDPR / UK-GDPR — data protection, cookie consent, right to erasure
WCAG 2.2 AA — accessibility (UK Public Sector Bodies Regs, EU EAA)
ISO 27001 — information-security management system audit
Each ticked item adds ~3% to implementation. Capped at +15%.
5. Run-time profile
Optional — enables the revenue-uplift benefit row
Indicative 3-year TCO
ECM.dev model v0.1 · refreshed quarterly
£529k – £2.2M
Mid case £1.2M · Medium confidence
Net of benefit (3-yr)
-£130k – £2.1M
Mid £870k after editor + dev productivity savings
Cost breakdown
Line itemCadenceRange
Year 1 implementation
Days × SI rate, with scope multipliers
One-off
£166k – £719k
+ Contingency
Always added on Year 1 build
One-off
£30k – £129k
Annual licence
Subscription / SaaS / per-seat
Annual
£9k – £47k
Annual hosting + run team
Hosting, infra, content-ops FTEs, integrations
Annual
£33k – £100k
Annual vendor support
20% of licence (industry standard)
Annual
£2k – £9k
Annual out-year enhancement
60% of Year 1 implementation, recurring (RSG benchmark)
Annual
£100k – £431k
3-year cash flow
Year 1£240k – £1.0M
Year 2£144k – £588k
Year 3£144k – £588k
Risk band
ConservativeMid caseAggressive
£529k£1.2M£2.2M
Benefit side (indicative)
£97k – £659k over 3 years
Currently showing conservative case. Toggle would change to £194k – £1.3M.
Editor hours saved / yr
1,200
Across all content authors
Dev hours saved / yr
600
Platform team only
Revenue uplift / yr
—
Add revenue input to enable
Benefit numbers drawn from Forrester TEI studies of Contentstack (295% ROI), Kontent.ai (320% ROI) and Storyblok (582% ROI). These are vendor-commissioned composite-organisation studies — directional, not guarantees. The default conservative case uses the low-end of the published ranges.
Take it away
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Curious how the numbers are derived? Read the methodology and sources — every coefficient with its analyst origin and confidence rating.
