Opinions wanted concerning Dreamweaver/Adobe Business Catalyst

Question

I wanted to get some opinions related to Adobe BC. In January I made the decision to start an online marketing company. last week I published my site and officially opened my doors. My focus is on PPC advertising, but I wanted to offer web design as well because the two are so closely related. My plan all along was that I was going to work exclusively with templates. I don't have the time, knowledge, skills, or experience to build custome websites. But I can turn a template into a workable site fairly quickly.
So now I have my first client wanting a website and PPC campaign. Whoo hoo! Then I came across Adobe Busisness Catalyst and wondered if I should be leaning that way. I wasn't planning on doing eCommerce sites and this first client wouldn't be, but it does seem that there are some features of Adobe BC that would work for me: the ability for my clients to edit their own content, web apps, forms, blogs, forums, built in analytics, email marketing.
That all sounds good, but the price is a little steep. First there is the $989 sign up fee for me (I'm broke). Then there is the $16 to $39 a month fee for my clients, which is on the neighborhood of four to six times higher than a regular hosting plan and Google Analytics is free.
So what are your thoughts?
Emilio
http://www.ClickHereOnlineMarketing.com

Answer 1

There have been numerous comments on the adobe/incontextediting forums (from a couple of Adobe people - Christenel, e.g., http://forums.adobe.com/message/2756449#2756449 and Rich, e.g., http://forums.adobe.com/message/2759339#2759339 ) with respect to BC as a replacement for ICE.
Among the significant negative points are that
this is a hosted service from Adobe, so one is locked into whatver specs they have like traffic, number of domain aliases, etc.
they do not support php
they have a database, but what it is is unspecified.
their have their own "formbuilder.(sounds like yahoo, doesn't?
Adobe seems to be going away from industry standard programming methods and substituting their own.
it also sounds as if one has to completely rewrite one's code, at least if there are any dynamic elements to it.
Quote from Cristinel (emphasis added):
The beauty of the BC system is that you don't have to re-write your  contact forms in another language. The system comes with a large number  of predefined modules that you can use directly.
For any  custom forms, you get a forms builder that creates all the logic and  database fields. Once the customer or user fills that form, the  information is stored in the database and you can even trigger email  alerts for each event. Even more, the Admin dashboard displays a live  feed that shows the activity on the site.
On the PHP side, I am not at all  questioning the importance of PHP in today's web development landscape.  I'm just saying that, although we're not using or supporting PHP, I am  pretty sure that we can cover most of your needs with the current  system. This is why I am asking what kind of applications are you  looking for, because we might already have an equivalent on the BC  platform.