The end of DIY CMS? Why buying beats building in today’s newsrooms
Labrador CMS helps publishers invest in storytelling, not servers.
For decades, newsrooms faced a choice: build a CMS in-house or settle for software that doesn’t quite fit. But with margins tighter and the pace of publishing faster than ever, more publishers are asking a better question: Why build something you can buy better, faster, and cheaper?
A new generation of full-stack SaaS platforms, including Labrador CMS, is changing the equation. Today’s economic realities demand a smarter approach. An approach that lowers costs and enables publishers to reinvest in journalism. By sharing infrastructure, feature development, and integrations across 350+ media brands, Labrador helps publishers lower overheads and reinvest in what matters most: quality journalism.
Why media companies build and where it fails
Building your own CMS can sound like the holy grail. You get full control, bespoke features, and the sense that your platform is tailored to your workflow. But in reality, running and maintaining a custom system often becomes expensive and unwieldy. Here’s where the DIY model breaks down:
Expensive internal tech teams
You’re not only building a CMS; you’re assembling a product team, managing quality assurance (QA), handling support, and overseeing DevOps. That means hiring and retaining high-cost tech specialists to keep your system running.
Slow innovation
New features take months to develop and test. Meanwhile, the newsroom waits.Staff often prioritize maintenance over innovation, stalling progress and frustrating editors.
Hidden infrastructure costs
Hosting, security, integrations, and scalability need ongoing investment and constant attention. These aren’t one-time costs either; they demand long-term commitment and specialist oversight.
In short, building in-house takes resources away from editorial.Every hour spent fixing tech issues is an hour not spent creating outstanding content, growing audiences, driving clicks, or breaking the stories that matter.
Why full-stack SaaS wins
Modern SaaS CMS platforms flip the model. Instead of every publisher solving the same problems in isolation, you share the solution and the savings. With Labrador CMS, clients benefit from shared development, unified infrastructure, and a full-stack experience.
Here’s what that delivers:
Lower total cost of ownership: One feature built means 100+ clients benefit. You’re not paying for the same problem over and over.
Zero hosting headaches: Hosting, scaling, and uptime are included, and no extra infrastructure is needed.
Faster innovation: New features (like AI-assisted workflows or print system integrations) roll out continuously.
Built-in integrations: Paywalls, analytics, print integrations, and ad integrations (such as Google Ad Manager) are included. There are SEO options including creating SEO-optimised social media titles.
Freed-up editorial budgets: Less money on tech means more journalists and more output.
Put simply, it’s the difference between building a custom CMS and plugging it into an ecosystem that already works. All without reinventing the wheel.
Labrador’s approach, full-stack by design
Labrador isn’t a toolset. It’s infrastructure. As Thomas Peterssohn, CEO and Editor-in-Chief at Ny Teknik, puts it, “Labrador is a content management system that is cloud-based rather than on our servers. It frees up resources that we can instead invest in journalism and business development. While it does reduce our ability to develop unique features for the site, our analysis is that Labrador still covers more than 95% of our needs.” He adds, “With hundreds of media companies as clients that are similar to us, we feel confident that the system will evolve in line with industry developments. Labrador was developed by journalists for journalists. This shows in daily use.”
Everything is included with Labrador CMS: hosting, development, rollout, integrations, security, and performance. It’s designed from the ground up to scale with newsrooms, all without scaling costs. Labrador CMS was built to take the pressure off both editors and developers. That means full-stack support, from hosting and integrations to user interface (UI), with new features rolled out across all clients.
Benefits of the full-stack approach:
One integration, everyone benefits: A paywall or print system built for one client becomes available to all.
Built-in scalability: Whether you're a local newsroom or a national publisher, the platform grows with you, and no re-architecture is needed.
Lower overheads, higher output: Tech team time shrinks, and editorial teams grow because there is less time building tools, and more time for reporting.
No development bottlenecks: Journalists can launch pages, update headlines, and publish content without calling IT.
Continuous improvement, no extra cost: New features and updates roll out automatically, so you’re always up to date without extra investment.
This type of shared infrastructure means your CMS becomes smarter and more powerful with every feature release, without increasing your overhead. From paywall integrations to print workflows, once it’s built, it’s available to everyone.
When one Norwegian daily newspaper group replaced its custom CMS with Labrador,
their developers not only got more time back, but the editorial team published faster, with zero tech bottlenecks. And those savings? They go straight back to where they matter: quality reporting.
Stop building and start publishing
Building your own CMS might sound strategic. But buying the right one is smarter. Invest in your newsroom today, not your backend. Labrador CMS lets you cut costs, share innovation, speed up publishing, and redirect time and money into the one thing that sets you apart: journalism. Smart publishers don’t build their CMS; they buy it.
Book your free demo
You too can see Labrador CMS in action. Whether you're in the US, Europe, or APAC, our team of journalists-turned-CMS-experts is ready to show you how Labrador cuts costs and boosts publishing power.
Book a demo with David, Jon, or Jay today:
