Most CMS decisions get made wrong because nobody on the call had shipped on more than two of the options being compared. We have shipped on every major web platform since 2017, and our job at this stage is to tell you which one earns your project. Written recommendation in 24 hours. No sales pitch.
What this engagement actually is
This is the pre-build conversation. You have a project, you don’t want to commit to a stack you’ll regret in eighteen months, and you don’t want to sit through three discovery calls with three agencies all pitching the platform they happen to know. We do a 30-minute briefing call, you tell us what the project is, who edits it, what the integrations are, and where the money comes from. Within 24 hours you get a written recommendation.
The output is a 3–6 page document, not a deck. It covers: the recommended platform and why, two viable alternatives with the trade-offs spelled out, a rough cost-of-ownership comparison across 24 months, the top three implementation risks specific to your situation, and a one-page architecture sketch. We do not blank-check the recommendation — we tell you what it costs to be wrong if we missed something.
Who actually needs this
Most of our strategy clients fall into one of four buckets:
- Founders pre-build. First marketing site, first storefront, first internal tool. You’ve been told to “just use WordPress” or “just use Webflow” and your gut says it’s more complicated than that.
- Marketing leads at growing B2B companies. Your current stack was picked four years ago by someone who left two jobs ago. The platform is the bottleneck, but you’re not sure which one earns the rebuild.
- Agency PMs and CTOs. Your team is great at design and bad at making honest stack calls on behalf of clients. We do this engagement white-labelled too.
- Enterprise teams in procurement-mode. You have three vendor decks. We read all three honestly and tell you what each one is hiding.
The decision framework we run
Every CMS recommendation reduces to about ten variables. Most agencies skip nine of them and answer the tenth with the platform they happen to know. Our framework walks all ten:
- Who edits the site daily? A founder, a marketing team, a developer? Editor UX shifts the choice more than feature lists do.
- How many content types and how related? 1–3 = anything works. 4–8 = WordPress / Sanity / Contentful. 8+ with relationships = headless or Craft.
- What does the site actually do beyond render content? Commerce, gating, membership, real-time, multi-locale — every one of these collapses the option space.
- What’s the headless-vs-monolith answer for your team? If you don’t have React fluency in-house and don’t want to add it, headless usually loses.
- Hosting and ops budget. Managed WP costs $300/year. Headless on Vercel + Sanity costs $4K/year minimum at any real scale. Both are valid choices.
- Compliance. SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, India’s DPDP Act 2023. Self-hosted requirements eliminate most SaaS-CMS options instantly.
- Existing tech stack. If your engineering team runs Node, a Sanity + Next.js setup integrates cleanly. If they run .NET, that probably loses.
- Budget for build + first-year ops. $20K rebuilds and $200K rebuilds need different platforms. Most agencies pitch the same regardless.
- Timeline. Webflow ships marketing sites in 3 weeks. WordPress block themes take 6–10. Headless takes 8–14. Mobile-tied apps take longer.
- What happens if you outgrow the platform in 3 years? Some platforms have great migration paths (WordPress, Shopify). Others trap you (proprietary builders, locked SaaS).
How it runs in practice
Day one is a 30-minute briefing call — calendar slot, Loom-recorded if you want a record. Day two we review the call, do open-source research on competitive sites, and sketch the architecture options. Day three we write the recommendation document and send it.
You get one round of written follow-up included — clarifying questions, pushback, “what about platform X?” — which we answer with a one-pager amendment. Additional follow-up calls are billed at our hourly rate.
If the recommendation we give you is a platform we don’t personally ship on, we’ll say so — and where possible point you at a team we’d trust to do the build. We’d rather lose the build and earn your trust than ship a half-fit project.
Pricing & deliverable
- Solo founder / small-team scope: $1,500 flat, 24-hour turnaround, includes one round of follow-up.
- B2B / mid-market scope: $3,500 flat, 48-hour turnaround, includes a 60-minute review call.
- Enterprise / regulated industry scope: $7,500 flat, 5-business-day turnaround, includes vendor-shortlist analysis and a 90-minute review with your team.
If you decide to engage us for the build itself within 30 days, we credit the strategy fee against the build cost. No commitment though — you can take the recommendation to any agency.
Book the call
Email connect@prizorai.com with a one-paragraph project description — what it is, who edits it, what your rough budget is. We’ll come back within one business day with a calendar link and a list of three or four sharpening questions before the call. The form below works too.
