I agree that the project not being open-source is a great no-go.

You guys should consider replicating the Wordpress model: open-source tools and paid plans for hosting & support.

Don't think that S3 or github pages are too simple for a user to being autonomous in deployment. IMHO typical use case for your product is a tech guyssetting things up for some non tech people to administrate and write content afterwards.

This means the keys are : - 0 tech steps in administration (no git push, no jekyll generate etc.) - plugins - plugins - plugins - themes - plugins

But clearly if this can become an alternative to WP, this is great because devs hate WP and it scales really bad, while static websites is the complete opposite.