Why Cold Fusion?

These are real questions from our clients about why we use ColdFusion as our web development platform:

Are there major companies using ColdFusion technology?

Here's a list of top companies that use ColdFusion for their websites (taken from the Macromedia.com website) -- 10,000 major companies can't ALL be wrong:

We use ColdFusion on all kinds of projects because it helps us get web-based applications built and deployed quickly and cost-effectively.
Tom Provost, IT Manager, Schlumberger

In use at 75 of the Fortune 100 companies and at more than 10,000 other companies worldwide, ColdFusion MX is one of the most widely adopted web technologies in the industry. Here's a partial list of websites which rely on ColdFusion for its signature server-scripting environment.

Partial Customer List:

192.com
Allied Office Products
American Power Conversion
Amkor Technology
Aspen Skiing Company
AT&T Wireless
Bank of America
Bertelsmann
BMW USA
Boeing
Casio USA
Caterpillar
Chicago Bears
County of San Diego, Dept. of Child Support Services
Crayola
Dallas Stars
DHL
Dial Corporation
East Carolina University
eBags
Eli Lilly
eMCSaatchi
FAO Schwarz
First Union
Foot Locker
George Washington University
GlobalSpec.com
Goodyear
Half.com
Hasbro
iHotelier
Inmarkets Training, Ltd.
International Speedway Corporation
Jaguar
Australia Legato
The Limited
Mayo Clinic
Mayo Health Systems
Michelin
Moen
MySwitzerland.com
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
New York Giants
New Era Cap Company
New York State Office for Technology
One World Alliance
Pepsi
PGA of America
Pottery Barn
Prometheus
Quaker Oats
Roche Pharmaceuticals
Rugby Football Union
Schlumberger
Scott's Corporation
Seattle Times
United States Senate
Siemens
Simon & Schuster
SmartMoney.com
Sprint
State of New York
Symantec
Travelers
United States Olympic Committee
US Bank

Top World Companies Using ColdFusion MX

What are the monthly fees?

We have no monthly fees for the ColdFusion Platform. If your site is hosted by an outside hosting company, such as GoDaddy which uses an "a la carte" pricing system, there may be a nominal additional charge on top of their basic hosting set up. At the time of this writing, the GoDaddy charge for ColdFusion hosting is $1.99 per month.

Not Many people use ColdFusion:

ColdFusion is simply the platform which displays the website and has nothing to do with whether visitors to the site know anything about ColdFusion at all. It's totally seamless to the visitor. Unless you're familiar with the various platforms, you have no idea on how a website is built when you visit it. ColdFusion IS a newer technology but because of that is more flexible. The older alternative to build a website is with "ASP" (Active Server Pages) or PHP or JSP (Javascript). PHP is free and ASP is included with Microsoft's IIS Server so it doesn't cost the hosting company any extra to offer those platforms.

ColdFusion not Compatible with Javascript:

We don't know where they came up with this one. We use javascript to verify form contents. ColdFusion coding can actually be inserted into Javascript codes and work. We've used javascript with ColdFusion many many times....for example, in a changing slide show where the product is pulled from a database.

Search Engine Placement:

ColdFusion (or any other platform for that matter) has nothing to do with Search Engine placement (other than the problems I mentioned with Javascript or Flash). Your website will be built to "web standards" which means the Search Engines and browsers will be able to read the pages, including forward technologies such as Palm Pilot, blackberry, etc.

We switched to ColdFusion from using ASP (Active Server Pages) several years ago and have had no problem whatsoever in getting good rankings in Search Engines (partially due to coding to web standards but mostly due to appropriate use of keywords and content).

What are the Long Term Benefits?

Your website will be "scalable" which means it will be able to grow, change, develop over time without rewriting all the pages. The main page content (products, features, benefits etc) is easily updated and if you decide you don't like the colors, the layout, the fonts, whatever....that is very easily changed by changing three pages: The header, the footer, and the style sheet which controls the font styles, colors, etc. If your site ends up with hundreds of pages of products, we will still only need to change these 3 main pages.... and that means you save money!

We are evangelists for ColdFusion as a website platform because we have seen how powerful and flexible it is. If we didn't think it was the best way to go we wouldn't recommend it to you. Actually, building your site in an alternative technology like ASP would probably cost more because it would take more time to code.