I spent last weekend digesting as much of the WordPress API as I could, and it was really quite thrilling. It’s flexibility & extensibility is incredible. I have new found respect.
What was really interesting though, is how much easier it makes it for a new business to manage their own portal. It’s not particularly expensive to have your web guy integrate WP into your website (when you’re getting it made or afterwards). Once it’s done, there’s no messing around with designers, programmers, ftp, or any other acronym. You just get on with it.
The ability to rapidly create and change pages is worth it’s weight in gold. The speed at which you can change something, is worth more than any setup cost. Especially as a start-up, when you’re frequently adjusting your collateral, pricing, content, positioning… (everything really).
There are a few other CMS systems that are worth evaluating, but definitely use one. Please remember to select one that is widely used, so that *if* you change vendor – you don’t have to change platform.