CMS Vendors
Tresite
SACS Pro
Tresite is a small, Mexico-based interactive agency focusing on media firms, bringing its own content management system (CMS) platform (SACS Pro) to their engagements in the Latin American region.
- As an agency, Tresite wants to support your entire digital operation and not just sell a stand-alone CMS
- SACS Pro is best suited to small independent news organisations in Latin America that do not have internal tech and design resources and that seek a single partner to handle the entire platform
- Customers include Diario Libre (Dominican Republic), Pulso SLP (Mexico) and Expreso (Mexico)
Likely fit
Mexico-based Tresite with its SACS Pro CMS is a potential fit for small news organisations in Latin American regions that publish digitally but lack their own development resources — and for whom white-glove service, the ability to customise and media-specific business advice hold appeal. News organisations that publish both digitally and in print should note that, although Tresite has customers that publish in both mediums, SACS Pro lacks smooth functionality to bridge digital and print. Toolset gaps include archiving, video services, subscription and ad management services.
At a glance
Primary customer fit
Small independent news organisation
Secondary fit
Small chain of news organisations
Most active geographies
Latin America
Official support hours
Email: 24x7
Phone: 24x7
Messaging app: 24x7
Officially supported languages for user interface
ES
Third-party language support available?
No
Licence model
Based on traffic, number of users, managed services; vendor reports median licence at $2,250 (USD) a month; median implementation $4,000 (USD)
Scope summary
Digital publishing system and services for Latin American news organisations seeking a bespoke tool and white-glove service
Tech base
.NET
Cloud model
SACS Pro is multitenant SaaS (Azure)
Headquarters
Monterrey Nuevo León, Mexico
Head count
13
- SACS Data Insights
- SACS AI Assistant
- SACS Pro 2.0
What customers report
- Service: Customers report that Tresite customer service is consistently rapid (2–5 minutes, 'always open') and appreciate the vendor's high level of engagement and transparency with them in terms of desired features and road map
- Tresite itself configures/customises its SACS Pro CMS to each customer's specifications
- The tool/service combination is reported as 'affordable' for a small- to mid-sized publication; a monthly service fee affords unlimited changes
- SACS Pro lags in archiving and lacks native functionality for video services and digital-to-print flows
- Some customers report that Tresite's desire to 'please all' has led to feature-bloat, which can mitigate against a friendly UX
- Tresite has experienced some problems with release-management on updates, leading to unexpected hiccoughs in the UI for customers with highly configured variations of the base tool
Background
- Founded in 2004 in Monterrey Nuevo León, Mexico, Tresite is a small, privately owned services agency serving LATAM news organisations with a proprietary web CMS called SACS Pro. Tresite supplements its small team of 13 with an additional 7 contract workers.
- Tresite offers what it calls a 'premium service' to its customer base, including unlimited development services, training and 24/7 customer service via a chatbot built into the CMS as well as via a proprietary messaging tool built on WhatsApp. As a general-purpose agency, Tresite services extend to marketing and sales, UX design, editorial consulting and digital monetisation advice. They have ambitions to further extend their service offerings to include editorial strategy, aiming to help their customers achieve business viability and growth.
- Hosted on Microsoft Azure infrastructure, Tresite provides its customers with Content Delivery Network (CDN) services via an unnamed 'strategic ally' selected for custom rules capabilities to support speed but will also provide such services within Azure. The SACS Pro architecture includes separate CMS and production environments for reliability; that is, so that issues with the CMS won't affect the media website and vice versa.
- Access is governed by role and group. The vendor will build workflows to suit (as many approval levels as desired) but reports that most of their customers prioritise speed and simplicity.
- Customisable content-entry templates support content categories, from news articles and columns to horoscopes. The rich text editor supports embeddable elements, e.g. galleries, timelines, related news blocks, video (via integration with JW Player) and previews. The authoring interface provides both user experience (UX) and search engine optimisation (SEO) validation tools that score content based on best practices. SACS Pro enables the multipurposing and reuse of content with tagging and taxonomies, e.g. author, SEO keywords. All customisable.
- Tresite has no ad or subscription management tools but assists their customers' use of Google Ad Manager.
- The vendor has an AI LAB, in which Tresite and its customers explore new AI-based features.
- Tresite's near-term road map includes a new data insights module and an OpenAI API. Longer-term, Tresite plans to release an updated version of the SACS Pro CMS designed to improve system performance and provide a more visual UX. This will likely constitute a major upgrade, so you will want to review timing with the vendor.
- Tresite seems highly engaged with its customer base, through quarterly surveys, twice-monthly newsletters, once-monthly meetings with each customer and messaging app channels for suggestions as well as support. On the flip side, this agency-like relationship may make SACS Pro less suited for media firms that just want a CMS platform and nothing else from a provider.
- The median license cost for SACS Pro is $2,250 (USD) a month; median implementation cost is $4,000 (USD). Integrations may cost extra depending on factors like traffic volume and complexity. Some simple integrations, such as Mailchimp for sending newsletters, cost nothing.
Package scope (as reported by vendor)
| Core platform - i.e., bundled in product (yes/no/beta) | Add-On (yes/custom/3rd party) | |
|---|---|---|
|
Content lifecycle: author / classify / edit / approve / publish / re-purpose / archive / dispose
|
Yes
|
|
|
Basic digital / voice / media asset management
|
Yes
|
|
|
Support print publishing
|
No
|
Custom
|
|
Simple social media re-publishing
|
Yes
|
|
|
Optional modules: forms / polls / social widgets / etc
|
Yes
|
|
|
Connector library (OOTB connectors, APIs, etc.)
|
Yes
|
|
|
Bundled CDN (with DDOS protection)
|
Yes
|
|
|
User registration
|
Yes
|
|
|
Subscription management and fulfillment - digital
|
No
|
Custom
|
|
Subscription or membership
|
No
|
|
|
Personalisation
|
Yes
|
|
|
Ad management - digital
|
No
|
3rd Party
|
|
Ad management - print
|
No
|
|
|
Content management
|
Yes
|
|
|
Research
|
Yes
|
|
|
Content management
|
No
|
|
|
Video management / OVP
|
No
|
3rd Party
|
|
Audio management / podcasting
|
No
|
3rd Party
|
|
Data journalism and visualisation
|
Yes
|
|
|
Classifieds
|
Yes
|
|
|
Commenting / community features/
|
Yes
|
3rd Party
|
|
Newsletter production and management
|
No
|
3rd Party
|
|
Notifications and alerts
|
Yes
|
3rd Party
|
|
A/B testing
|
Yes
|
|
|
SEO
|
Yes
|
|
|
Multi-title management with variable inheritance
|
Yes
|
|
|
Complex layout and subsite / subsection cloning
|
Yes
|
|
|
AR- / VR- enhanced services
|
No
|
|
|
Audience segmentation
|
No
|
|
|
Online user / partner forums
|
No
|
|
|
Regular user group meetings
|
No
|
|
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