There are too many different open source content management systems and this is not so simple to choose any of them for your web site. Generally, this is impossible to say that someone of that system is the best for all projects. All of them has a slightly different purposes and huge difference inside. Therefore, the cost of development and further maintenance depends from CMS that you choose.

The greate advantage of Typo3 from other CMS is support and funding by Typo3 Association. This makes it possible to regular release of new improved versions and hot fixes, which is significantly increases reliability of the system. 

Being a perfectly scalable system, Typo3 can acquire new functionality and expand or modify existing ones by means of special modules, in Typo3 terms - “extensions”.

But even base installation has an exellent feature set. Below is the short overview of the important typo3 features for site managers and editors.

Workspaces and versioning - one of the very useful features of Typo3 is. This allow you to work with draft versions of web site without affecting of live site content. In other words you have a workflow system which separates creation, editing, review and publishing stages of the content. Also, with a user permissions system, you can authorize different groups users to perform the above operations. For example, authors – to create a content, editors – to create and edit, managers – to review and publish.

Unlimited Undo/History levels make it possible to rollback your changes to previous state, regardless how old this stage. You can even restore a pages that deleted a years ago.

Multilingual - the next important lineament of Typo3. This allow you to edit an original and localized versions of the content as single unit. The behaviour of the localized elements is highly configurable. For example, you can define that content in other language will be shown in case of the absence of the requested localized version. On the other hand you can have a different page trees for a different languages. And of course Typo3 backend can be localized to the many languages.

Multidomain allows you to have several web sites on different domains within single Typo3 installation. This is useful when your sites has shared or related content or these sites belong to one complex project.

User management and permission's control is also very important feature of Typo3. These make it possible to have authorized users and groups and give to them different authorities. Typo3 provides to you a flexible management of user's permissions on pages, content elements and even on database tables. In conjunction with Workspaces this feature also controls workflow operations of content, such as create, edit, review and publish.

Access restrictions give you ability to temporarily hide some content without deleting and time limitations of visibility of the content. Hidden content can be previewed before enabling. This is useful when you are working with new content and don't whant to show it before finishing.

Login protected sections allow you to create a sections of the web site with restricted access and clients registration system. These sections will be visible only for the specified groups of users.

Clipboard is a usual feature of desktop application, which improves a productivity and usability. With Typo3 you will get even several clipboards, which allows you to copy/past content elements, pages and other records.

With perfect cache system Typo3 has a very good performance as on small sites, and the complex portals. And please note, last version Typo3 4.5 LTS has a long term support (3 year).

For more details about typo3 features for site managers please visit:

http://typo3.com/Highlights.1629.0.html
http://typo3.com/Feature-list.1628.0.html
http://typo3.org/documentation/videos/tutorials-v4

Some people say, that Typo3 is too complex and too large for small projects. This is partly true. In case you are creating your personal homepage maybe Wordpress or Joomla will more match your requirements. But if you need a serious site or portal and you have an ambitious plans of extending and growing your project then Typo3 will definitely be a right solution.

If you still unsure is Typo3 will be a good choice for your needs, feel free to contact us and we will help you to make decision.