Q: What Services does CrownPeak offer?
A: CrownPeak provides and administers a complete Web Site Management Infrastructure, including CrownPeak CMS, CrownPeak Search, and CrownPeak Hosting.  We offer hosting from IBM and RackSpace. All of the above are set up, managed, and fully supported by CrownPeak for our customers.

Q: Do you provide some sort of a guarantee that our web site and related services will be reliable?
A: Yes.  We provide a Service Level Agreement (SLA) covering each aspect of our services.  It guarantees uptime, support levels, disaster recovery procedures and maintenance.

Q: How secure are CrownPeak services and applications?
A: CrownPeak is very secure.  We are providing web site management for mid-sized organizations through the Fortune 1000, to Government agencies, and major publishing companies.  We have a full-time security staff monitoring and managing our systems 24/7/365, and manage all of our applications out of Tier 1 IBM Data Centers.  Our approach is this: Manage security as well or better than any internal IT organization can.

Q: How is CrownPeak priced?
A: As with any customized package of software and support services, much will depend on how much or how little you require of CrownPeak.

Q: Does CrownPeak offer d esign, content creation, custom development, or consulting services?
A: Yes.  CrownPeak has partnered with a number of quality firms who offer these services.  Please review our partners section for more information about the specific services and firms.  Our customers always have the option to work with their own design resources or design firm, or contract with one of our partners.  If our customers work with one of our partner firms, CrownPeak can also manage and bill directly for these services, acting as a single-source provider.

Q: Can I leave CrownPeak if I’m not happy?
A: Yes.  That’s the whole point of a software service.  However, we think you’ll be happy.  We average over 95% customer retention year-to-year.

Q: Can I add new web sites to the system over time?
A: Yes.  You can manage multiple web sites using CrownPeak.  In fact, many of our customers manage both their web sites and intranets using the CrownPeak CMS.  For each new site, CrownPeak will typically add an incremental fee to your monthly services to cover system usage.  You also have the choice of implementing new sites yourself – or having CrownPeak work with you just as we did during the initial implementation.     Similarly, if you’re using CrownPeak Search, CrownPeak can help you customize it for each new project.  For new Intranets or Extranets, you may also want to utilize CrownPeak Authentication and Security Management , or some other method to restrict user access.

Q: Does CrownPeak charge for the number of users or hits my site gets?
A: No, under most circumstances.   If you are using CrownPeak Search or CrownPeak Hosting, you will have stated limits on the amount of bandwidth available on a monthly basis.  If you exceed those limits on a consistent basis, we’ll let you know and we can upgrade your account if warranted.    Very few customers have such high levels of traffic, though, so for most customers, this isn’t an issue.

Q: Does CrownPeak offer training?
A: Yes. We include administrator training with every implementation. Additional classroom training for Administrators, End-Users or Developers is also available, either onsite, or at our location in Los Angeles, CA.

Q: Does CrownPeak offer Email Campaign Management, Ad Serving, CRM and other services?
A: CrownPeak offers all of the above services as integrated components from our Software Services partners.  In these cases, our clients typically prefer to contract directly with the partner, whether it be ExactTarget, Salesforce.com, etc.

Q: Does CrownPeak offer its applications as installed products?
A: No.  Hosted applications are better managed, better supported, and more cost-effective.  We would have to charge much more for our applications if they were installed, and they wouldn’t come with any support or services.  We are here to do away with installed software applications – not to release new ones.

Q: Does CrownPeak release its software as Open Source?
A: No. We deliver our software as a service. If our clients need any changes to the code to accommodate special requests, we are here to make those changes, which we then support as part of our code base. In our opinion, only organizations with very specialized requirements that necessitate the modification and ownership of source-code should consider acquiring that rather than having the support, cost-effectiveness and reliability of a hosted application.

Q: Are Open Source applications less expensive than Software Services?
A: No.  Many Open Source applications are free, but the cost of implementing and supporting an application is typically 2 to 5 times the cost of the software itself.  So, if the software itself is free, that will save 15% to 25% of the cost of a project.  Software Services tend to be in the range of 50% or greater cost savings, when compared to installed applications, and so are typically less expensive than a custom or installed application – even if there is no application license fee.