Thinking about going the Do It Yourself (DIY) route for your CiviCRM implementation?
It’s a fantastic option for techies who love to get their hands dirty, have implemented other IT systems and want to truly understand the inner workings of their CRM.
If you’ve got curiosity and a bit of patience, this could be a great long-term investment in your organization’s success. Here’s how the DIY approach stacks up against those 8 key factors I mentioned rated on a basis of very low to very high (1-5).
Control – 5
DIY gives you maximum control. You’re in charge of hosting, backups, performance, planning, and configuration. But remember—it can also feel like a heavy lift if you’re new to this. You will want to make sure you’re hosting is going to meet the minimum requirements. If what you need can be handled with CiviCRM’s out of the box functionality and top-rated extensions, then more control on your end makes sense.
Curiosity & Patience – 4
Is this a project you can see yourself enjoying? Have you been deemed the “technical guru” in your org? You’ll need a thirst for learning and the patience to work through challenges by working thru some debug procedures. If you love asking, “How does this work?” and have a data management background, then this is right up your alley.
Technical Skills – 4
You’ll need a good foundation of technical skills (or be willing to learn). This is your chance to pick up valuable knowledge, but if you’re not comfortable with tech in general, DIY might feel overwhelming. You don’t need to know PHP, JavaScript, MySQL or GIT to get going but you do need to be highly organized, conscientious, used to wrangling spreadsheets and understand data structures to properly abstract your organization into a CRM. Some basics of working on the command line are a plus.
One-Time Costs (OTC) – 2
The initial costs could be quite low, after all CiviCRM is free and open source software. The real costs will be for suitable hosting and any work you need to do on your CMS side. But time isn’t free. You will need to fully understand your user needs and how they can be met with CiviCRM, complete your extraction, transform and load (ETL) process from your various data sources and manage the user training.
If you’ve got other work to look after, then hidden opportunity costs could come back and bite you then what you may have “saved” in the process.
Annual Recurring Costs (ARC) – 2
In terms of long-term costs, DIY can be quite affordable, as there is no subscription to be paid or experts you have to pay for backup. Hosting can range from $15 – 100 per month, depending on what tools and level of support options you need.
Risk-Level – 5
DIY comes with substantial risk, simply because you’re the one responsible for everything. Mistakes can happen but mission-critical data your development team counts is at stake. Usually an all volunteer, low budget organizations with an accidental techie can justify this route. On the other hand, organizations with staff should probably shy away from going it alone.
Speed of Project – 2
Going DIY means you’re working at your own pace, which frankly will be slower without outside help. Just be prepared for a longer timeline as you juggle learning, configuring, and testing. Doing something for the first time always a bit bumpy. If you’re aware of this, then keep going!
Ongoing Support -2
DIY means you’ll be leaning into CiviCRM community support, documentation, and online resources – which there is a a lot of! If you need a lot of hand-holding, this might not be the best option, but for the adventurous, it can be empowering.
The “free trap”
Have you landed at a DIY option because you think it’s a great deal?
It’s completely open source, which means it’s technically free but not really free as you’ll be investing some time and skills to set it up, maintain, and customize it. If you pick CiviCRM DIY only on the basis that it’s free; I’d question if this is really the right path for you.
Here’s the deal:
DIY is done by thousands of people using CiviCRM. Leveraging the online resources like the docs, StackExchange and Mattermost improves the chance of your success. And having a realistic sense of where your limits are so you are expectations are aligned.
But there is also is another moderate path to mitigate this risk: using a CiviCRM advisor. This at least gives you an affordable escalation point to ask questions and get pointed in the right direction, without having to make costly and/or frustrating mistakes first. Consider a service level agreement on a hourly or retainer basis as an insurance against pure DIY.
All in all, DIY is a great path if you’ve got the curiosity, time, and willingness to learn. You’ll be able to implement on a smaller budget —at the cost of your time and effort.