Publisher technology spending in 2025 revealed priorities and results. Some investments paid off immediately. Others became expensive lessons. Here’s where money went and what value publishers received.

Content Management Systems: Steady Investment

CMS spending remained stable. Publishers who’d deferred platform upgrades finally bit the bullet and modernized. Those on legacy systems moved to contemporary platforms. Those on adequate systems stayed put.

The ROI here was operational efficiency. Better editorial workflows. Faster publishing. Easier maintenance. Not revolutionary, but meaningful for teams publishing daily.

The publishers who struggled were those chasing new platforms without clear problems to solve. Migration costs exceeded benefits when existing systems worked adequately.

Analytics: Shift from Free to Paid

Google Analytics 4’s complexity pushed many publishers toward paid alternatives. Plausible, Fathom, and other privacy-focused tools gained market share.

The spending was modest—$10-50 monthly for most publications. The value was significant: actually understanding site performance without fighting obtuse interfaces.

Large publishers stuck with GA4 and hired analysts who could decipher it. Small publishers who tried that approach mostly gave up and switched platforms.

Email Platforms: Consolidation Spending

Publishers consolidated from multiple email tools to integrated platforms. Separate tools for newsletters, automation, and transactional emails became single platforms handling everything.

This reduced total spending while improving capability. The migration effort was significant but one-time. The ongoing simplification paid dividends.

ConvertKit, Ghost, and Buttondown captured share from Mailchimp and Substack by offering better value at comparable pricing.

AI Tools: Experimentation Budget

Publishers allocated “AI budget” for tool experimentation. Much of this was wasted on tools that promised more than they delivered.

The successful investments were narrow tools solving specific problems: transcription, headline testing, metadata generation. The failures were broad platforms claiming to revolutionize publishing.

Most publishers ended 2025 spending less on AI than they budgeted, having culled unsuccessful experiments.

Subscription Infrastructure: Growth Investment

Publishers serious about subscription revenue invested in platforms that handle paywalls, membership tiers, and subscriber management. Some specialists in business AI consulting helped organizations implement these systems thoughtfully rather than just throwing technology at the problem.

This spending ranged from a few hundred monthly for small publishers using Piano or Memberful to substantial investments for custom solutions at larger organizations.

The ROI calculation was straightforward: does subscription revenue growth justify the platform costs? For many publishers, yes. For those without clear subscription strategy, the tools didn’t help.

Security and Infrastructure: Overdue Spending

Publishers who’d deferred infrastructure investment faced forced upgrades. Security vulnerabilities. Legacy hosting. Outdated dependencies. The technical debt came due.

This spending wasn’t optional. Sites got hacked or went down. The question wasn’t whether to fix problems but how quickly publishers could mobilize resources.

The preventive spending some publishers made earlier looked wise in comparison. Proactive infrastructure maintenance costs less than emergency response.

Workflow Tools: Productivity Investment

Spending on project management, collaboration, and editorial workflow tools increased. Airtable, Notion, Linear, and similar platforms captured budget previously going to purpose-built publishing tools.

The value came from flexibility. Publishers could build workflows matching their needs rather than adapting to opinionated software.

Implementation required more initial effort than turnkey solutions. But the ongoing fit made that investment worthwhile.

Design and Development: Variable Spending

Site redesigns ranged from minimal template changes to complete rebuilds. The spending varied wildly based on publisher ambition and internal capabilities.

Publishers with in-house development teams spent time rather than money. Those outsourcing spent significantly but often got better results than internal teams lacking specific expertise.

The redesigns that succeeded had clear goals beyond “refresh the look.” Performance improvements. Better mobile experience. Improved conversion. Cosmetic changes without functional improvement rarely justified costs.

Data Infrastructure: Emerging Investment

Publishers began investing in first-party data collection and analysis. This meant customer data platforms, advanced analytics, and tools for audience segmentation.

The spending was modest for most publishers but represented new category. Previously, data infrastructure meant Google Analytics. Now it meant serious investment in understanding audiences.

Early results suggested this spending would grow. Publishers with good data infrastructure could make better editorial and business decisions than those flying blind.

What Got Cut

Tool sprawl became a target. Publishers audited subscriptions and eliminated tools nobody used. The typical publication was paying for 3-5 tools that staff had tried once and abandoned.

This didn’t save huge money but stopped waste. The psychological benefit of simplified tool stacks exceeded the financial savings.

The Vendor Consolidation Trend

Publishers moved toward fewer vendors providing more functionality rather than best-of-breed tools for everything. The integration overhead and support complexity of dozen-vendor stacks became untenable.

This meant some capability loss. All-in-one platforms don’t excel at everything. But the operational simplification justified the tradeoff for most publishers.

Small vs. Large Publisher Spending

Spending patterns diverged between small and large publishers. Small publishers assembled affordable tools into functional stacks for under $500 monthly. Large publishers spent six figures on enterprise platforms.

The middle ground struggled most. Too large for simple tools but too small for enterprise platforms. They assembled complex systems from SMB tools that weren’t designed to work together.

What Delivered ROI

Investments that improved daily workflow or directly enabled revenue delivered clear returns. Better CMS. Functional analytics. Subscription infrastructure. Email platforms.

Investments in speculative or experimental technology mostly didn’t. AI tools that didn’t solve real problems. Platforms changing editorial process without proven benefit. Shiny new things without clear use cases.

Looking Toward 2026

Publisher technology spending will likely consolidate further. Fewer, better tools. Less experimentation for experimentation’s sake. More focus on fundamentals that enable publishing.

The hype cycle around AI will continue, but spending will become more targeted. Publishers learned in 2025 which applications work. They’ll invest accordingly rather than broadly experimenting.

Infrastructure spending will remain necessary. Technical debt doesn’t disappear. Security requires ongoing investment. The publishers who budget for this proactively will fare better than those who ignore it until crisis forces action.

Nothing revolutionary. Just steady investment in capabilities that make publishing sustainable. That’s probably what the industry needs right now.