On the heels of Clickability's announcement yesterday that it has received a second round of VC funding, the other pure-play SaaS vendor we cover in the 2008 Web Content Management Report, CrownPeak, is making some news of its own. Today the company announced a new product, ContentManagement.com, aimed at offering a SaaS option at a lower price. The company says the new product will be a scaled-down derivative of the current CrownPeak CMS product.

The new product that starts at $1250/month seems like an attempt at trying to challenge Open Source alternatives and products that offer low entry costs like Ektron. As with Ektron (and many others), ContentManagement.com is offering a free trial that allows a potential buyer to try all of its features except publish content to a live site. It will be important for potential buyers to take advantage of the free trial because - while CrownPeak claims to have packaged the "most popular" features of its CrownPeak CMS product and left out some of the more complex options - your needs could differ. Be sure test the product carefully before committing, even if the up-front price is attractive.

Current CrownPeak customers may be wary of the implications of CrownPeak supporting two distinct product offerings (and code bases and support levels, etc.). It remains to be seen if CrownPeak can keep up with the needs of two separate client bases, especially now that they are targeting clients of varying sizes and budgets.