Six questions that decide an evaluation
Most evaluations compare feature matrices, then find the differences that mattered were never in the matrix. These six questions decide whether a program lands.
Feature parity is the wrong battle, structural fit is the right one
Modern component content management systems have spent the last decade filling out their feature matrices. Components, content references, conditional profiling, controlled vocabularies, translation memory integration, schema validation, publishing pipelines, most credible vendors check most of the boxes. The differences that decide whether a CCMS program succeeds in your organization are structural, not featural: where the content lives, who authors it, how identity and audit work, what your exit looks like.
The six questions below are the ones that surface those structural differences. They are also the ones a CCMS vendor cannot answer with a slide.
Six axes, one vendor per shortlist row
Take each criterion below, score every vendor on your shortlist against it, and let the differences accumulate. The vendor that wins on the most axes is rarely the vendor with the most features; it is the vendor that fits the structural reality of your organization.
1. Where does the content live?
The substrate question
- Ask: on whose infrastructure does the CCMS store its content: the vendor's, ours, or a shared one we already run?
- Look for: a substrate that aligns with the platforms your IT department already operates. Microsoft 365, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or a private data center.
- Why it matters: a CCMS on a separate substrate is a parallel platform decision. The procurement, security, data-residency and audit-log integration conversations are duplicated. For a regulated-industries customer that adds six to twelve months before the content work begins.
2. Who actually authors?
The SME-adoption question
- Ask: which tool will subject matter experts use to draft content, and have you ever piloted that tool with the actual people who hold the domain knowledge?
- Look for: a tool the SMEs already use, or one indistinguishable from it. The further the authoring tool sits from the SME's working environment, the higher the chance the structured-content program becomes a tech-comm island.
- Why it matters: the most common reason CCMS programs stall is that the experts will not author in an unfamiliar editor. The back-end mechanics are not the bottleneck. SME adoption is.
3. How does identity and access work?
The integration question
- Ask: does the CCMS use our existing identity provider, or does it run a parallel access-control model that has to be reconciled with the corporate one?
- Look for: native integration with the identity provider in use across the rest of your estate. Entra ID, Okta, Ping, Active Directory Federation Services. Conditional access, MFA, role assignments inherited rather than re-administered.
- Why it matters: a parallel access model means a parallel joiners-movers-leavers process, a parallel quarterly access review, and a permanent reconciliation burden between two sources of truth.
4. How is the audit answer constructed?
The traceability question
- Ask: when a regulator asks who approved a specific statement and when, what does the answer look like, and how long does it take to produce?
- Look for: approval and version history captured at the component level, queryable on demand, with a structured report as the output. Not a reconstruction from email archives and document comments.
- Why it matters: document-level approval scales until the same statement appears in twenty filings. After that, audit response becomes archaeology. For EMA pharmacovigilance, the response window is seven days. Archaeology does not fit in seven days.
5. What are the deployment options?
The sovereignty question
- Ask: can the CCMS be deployed where our data needs to sit: cloud, on-premise, sovereign cloud, air-gapped, hybrid, and at the customer's choice rather than the vendor's preferred path?
- Look for: a deployment model that matches your data-residency, classification, and regulatory constraints without rearchitecting the system. Multiple options supported under the same product line.
- Why it matters: nuclear, defense, sovereign-cloud and national-cloud customers cannot adopt a cloud-only platform. SaaS-only vendors disqualify themselves from those evaluations on the first call.
6. What happens if you leave?
The portability question
- Ask: if we decide to move off this CCMS in ten years, what format does our content come out in, and will any other DITA-compliant tool be able to read it?
- Look for: content stored in a standardized open format (DITA XML), with an exit path that does not require vendor cooperation. Vendor-proprietary storage formats are an exit-cost trap.
- Why it matters: nuclear and energy assets run on multi-decade lifecycles. The documentation system that recorded the original commissioning will be on its third or fourth migration before the asset is decommissioned. Content portability is the only thing that survives those migrations.
Where DitaExchange sits on each axis
We wrote the six questions above because they are the ones DitaExchange Dx5 is strongest on. That is an editorial choice; another vendor would write a different six. To use the page in good faith, score every vendor on the same six. Here are the answers we would give for ourselves.
| The question | The DitaExchange answer |
|---|---|
| 1. Where does the content live? | Inside Microsoft SharePoint. SharePoint Online in your existing Microsoft 365 tenant, or SharePoint Server on-premise. Same substrate as the rest of your Microsoft estate, so there is no parallel infrastructure decision. Built on SharePoint |
| 2. Who actually authors? | Subject matter experts continue to use Microsoft Word, desktop or online. No dedicated XML editor for SMEs to learn or reject. DxAuthor+, the Word add-in, brings tagging, cross-topic linking, and content references into Word; everything else looks and behaves like Word. Authoring in Word |
| 3. How does identity and access work? | Entra ID, conditional access, role assignments, the same identity model your IT department already operates for the rest of SharePoint. No parallel access regime. The SharePoint substrate |
| 4. How is the audit answer constructed? | Approval and version history captured at the component, queryable through SharePoint. Audit response is a query, not a reconstruction. Traceability in Dx5 |
| 5. What are the deployment options? | SharePoint Online (Microsoft 365), SharePoint Server on-premise, national-cloud Microsoft 365 (US Government, Germany, China 21Vianet), and hybrid topologies. Air-gapped deployments supported for sovereign and restricted environments. Deployment options |
| 6. What happens if you leave? | Content is stored as DITA XML, the open international standard. Any DITA-compliant tool can read it. SharePoint exports cleanly. The exit path does not require our cooperation. The Dx5 platform |
We score well on these six because they are the ground we have built on. A different vendor's six questions will surface their strengths and our weaknesses. The honest test is whether the six you choose are the six that actually matter to your organization.
Things that matter, but not as much as the six above
Three criteria come up in every evaluation and belong on the scorecard. None of them decides it.
Feature checklists
Components, content references, conditional profiling, controlled vocabularies, translation integration and schema validation are largely table stakes across the credible vendors. Score them, but expect modest differences.
List pricing
Rarely a useful comparison signal in this category. The meaningful difference shows up in total cost of ownership: implementation effort, infrastructure overhead, integration cost, ongoing administration, exit cost. A vendor that wins on the six structural axes typically wins on TCO too, even when the license number looks higher.
Interface polish
Important, but not decisive. Subject matter experts will tolerate an imperfect interface in a tool they already use. They will reject a polished interface in a tool they do not.
The named head-to-heads
The structural questions above favor different vendors in different scenarios. We have written those comparisons explicitly rather than leaving them implied.
Paligo alternative
A capable cloud-native CCMS. For an organization already on Microsoft 365, the honest comparison is which platform the content lives on.
RWS Tridion alternative
Enterprise DITA with translation depth few match. The question is whether you need the whole platform or the part that governs structured content.
Heretto alternative
The most visible cloud-native DITA CCMS. The question is not whether the product is good; it is whether a parallel cloud platform is the right architecture.
All nine comparisons
Quark, RWS Tridion, MadCap IXIA, Contiem, Adobe AEM Guides, Paligo, Heretto, Adobe FrameMaker and Bluestream, collected in one library.
Frequently asked questions
Where does the content live in a CCMS?
A CCMS on a substrate separate from your existing IT estate is a parallel infrastructure decision. DitaExchange Dx5 stores DITA components inside Microsoft SharePoint. SharePoint Online in your existing Microsoft 365 tenant, or SharePoint Server on-premise. Same substrate as the rest of your Microsoft estate.
Who actually authors content in a CCMS?
Subject matter experts will not author in an unfamiliar XML editor. DitaExchange Dx5 lets them continue to use Microsoft Word: desktop or online: with structure, reuse and version history applied behind the scenes through DxAuthor+, the Word add-in.
How does identity and access control work in a CCMS?
A parallel access model means a parallel joiners-movers-leavers process. DitaExchange Dx5 uses Entra ID, conditional access and role assignments, the same identity model your IT department already operates for the rest of SharePoint. No parallel access regime.
How is an audit response constructed in a CCMS?
Document-level approval becomes archaeology when the same approved statement appears in 20 filings. DitaExchange Dx5 captures approval and version history at the component level, queryable through SharePoint. Audit response is a query, not a reconstruction.
What deployment options does a CCMS support?
SaaS-only vendors disqualify themselves from nuclear, defense, sovereign-cloud and national-cloud customer evaluations. DitaExchange Dx5 supports SharePoint Online (Microsoft 365), SharePoint Server on-premise, national-cloud Microsoft 365 (US Government, Germany, China 21Vianet), hybrid topologies, and air-gapped deployments.
What happens to your content if you leave the CCMS?
Vendor-proprietary storage formats are an exit-cost trap. DitaExchange Dx5 stores content as DITA XML, the open international standard. Any DITA-compliant tool can read it. SharePoint exports cleanly. The exit path does not require the vendor's cooperation.
Bring the six questions to every vendor conversation
Including ours. If we lose on the questions that matter most to your organization, that is a useful conclusion to reach early. We are happy to say so on a first call.
