3 options for CiviCRM support
Let's look at your three general options for keeping your CiviCRM installation (and the Drupal or WordPress site that contains it) in good working order.
We'll compare these across three criteria:
Reliability / ease
Customizability
Affordability / Low cost
Remember, the central question here is:
Who is the specific individual responsible for making your site do everything it should?
1. CiviCRM as a service
This includes CiviCRM Spark and similar hosted offerings.
Reliability / ease: Pretty good. These services will make sure your site is always running well, but you can still screw up the configuration if you're not careful.
Customizability: None, really. To achieve that “pretty good” reliability at a reasonable expense, these services will lock down the features and even limit you to a predetermined list of available extensions. You won't be able to add your own custom extensions, either.
Affordability: Pretty good. CiviCRM Spark is incredibly affordable, and the others are not too bad.
2. Full-service agency support:
This is an arrangement that you might make with a CiviCRM provider be your hands-on maintenance and configuration team. In its most full-service form, you'd be calling them for almost any configuration change that you want.
Reliability / ease: Very high, assuming the provider is as responsive as you need. (This can vary by provider, and like anything, that can be hard to know until you've actually worked with them.) Part of their service will be to tell you when you’ve asked for something that’s unwise, and to ensure all configurations actually make sense in terms of what you want.
Customizability: Very high. A provider who is offering this level of service will be able to create whatever custom features you need, and then make sure it works well with your configuration.
Affordability / Low cost: Not so great. The provider is potentially performing a lot of work at your request. They're also taking on the responsibility to make sure everything works flawlessly. You can expect to pay handsomely for this level of service.
3. In-house expert (with or without outside help):
This is the model most of my clients are using — which is not surprising, because it's also the model that I most like to support.
In this model, you'll designate one of your own staff to be the in-house expert. This is your responsible person. Any questions about the system come to this person. Any change to the system is done by this person or their staff.
Reliability / ease: Varies, depending on the attention this person gives to their responsibility.
in the beginning, this in-house expert will often need help from an outside expert. That need generally decreases over time, as they become more familiar with the system.
But any problems with your system (or improvements to it) will always be the responsibility of one of your own staff.Customizability: Very high. Your in-house expert can install whatever extensions they like, and if they want they can hire someone to develop custom extensions for them (or even learn to do that themselves, if that's their thing).
In truth, this system belongs entirely to your organization, and you can make it do anything you want.Affordability / Low cost: Rather low, but this varies. Your cash outlay to outside providers will be fairly low. But you should also count the staff member's time. Even if they're a volunteer, time is a limited resource, and its use is an expense.
So to sum up, to might choose:
CiviCRM as a service: If you don't need customization and are fine with the limited features, but like the reliability and price.
Full-service agency support: If you have a business case for expensive white-glove support.
In-house expert (with or without outside help): If you want maximum flexibility and are willing to put in the work of mastering CiviCRM.
And if none of those exactly work for you, talk with a CiviCRM partner. They may be able to work out some hybrid that meets your budget and your preferred balance of freedom and responsibility.
But all of these options share two caveats. Can you spot them?
I'll spell those out tomorrow.
All the best,
A.