I've been selling CMS software to web designers since 2015, almost all of it inside one ecosystem: RapidWeaver and Stacks, Mac apps for building websites.
That worked for a long time. Then the ecosystem started shrinking, and a business built on one platform shrinks with it.
So I made two bets.
First, the product had to stand on its own. Total CMS 3 no longer needs RapidWeaver or Stacks. It's a flat-file PHP CMS that drops onto any host and works with hand-written templates, any visual builder, or none.
Second, build for AI instead of hoping it passes me by. Every install now ships an MCP server, so coding agents read the site's real schemas and the docs for that exact version instead of guessing. AI is the most exciting and the scariest thing to happen to my business. I'd rather be building for it.
What's gone well
- Shipped 3.5 and 3.6, the biggest releases in the product's history.
- Independent developers started building extensions — six so far, some of them paid. There are about a dozen more waiting for my marketplace.
- Agencies managing dozens to 100+ client sites have reached out about volume licensing.
What's been hard
- Distribution. I'm a builder. I've spent years shipping and not nearly enough time selling, and reaching developers outside my old ecosystem is a cold start.
- Migration. Long-time customers like the new version, but moving client sites is real work they often can't bill for.
Pricing is one-time per domain, $195 or $395, no subscription — deliberate, for an audience that's allergic to subscriptions.
I'm curious how others have handled moving off a single-platform dependency, and whether anyone has found distribution channels for developer tools that actually worked.