Acquia Digital Experience Platform vs. Optimizely Content Management System

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Acquia Digital Experience Platform
Score 7.7 out of 10
N/A
The Acquia Digital Experience Platform is an "Open DXP" with its two core pillars being content and data. Built on top of one of the largest open-source content management systems, Drupal, it aims to provide the flexibility and interoperability a modern organization needs. With its customer data platform, it allows organizations to understand who their customers are and deliver personalized experiences. Acquia's DXP offers variety of other tools including digital asset management,…N/A
Optimizely Content Management System
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) is used to deliver digital experiences across channels and devices with a marketer-friendly interface, AI-generated insights that drive real-time personalization, and flexible content delivery options—including headless delivery.N/A
Pricing
Acquia Digital Experience PlatformOptimizely Content Management System
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Acquia Digital Experience PlatformOptimizely Content Management System
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeRequired
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Acquia Digital Experience PlatformOptimizely Content Management System
Considered Both Products
Acquia Digital Experience Platform
Chose Acquia Digital Experience Platform
Acquia is so much more flexible when it comes to using products beyond what they sell.
Optimizely Content Management System
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Optimizely Content Management System is on par with these other platforms. They all have the strengths and weaknesses so it comes down to what features work best for your needs.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Ultimately it had little to do with features, as all 3 were capable systems. We preferred the tech stack and 3rd party integrator choices for OCMS.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Acquia Digital Experience PlatformOptimizely Content Management System
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Acquia Digital Experience Platform
8.3
49 Ratings
3% above category average
Optimizely Content Management System
8.5
120 Ratings
6% above category average
Role-based user permissions8.349 Ratings8.5120 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Acquia Digital Experience Platform
7.7
41 Ratings
5% below category average
Optimizely Content Management System
8.1
118 Ratings
5% above category average
API7.639 Ratings7.9113 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language7.732 Ratings8.287 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Acquia Digital Experience Platform
7.7
43 Ratings
1% above category average
Optimizely Content Management System
7.6
136 Ratings
0% below category average
WYSIWYG editor7.631 Ratings7.7126 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness7.534 Ratings7.8115 Ratings
Admin section7.942 Ratings7.9124 Ratings
Page templates7.830 Ratings8.0124 Ratings
Library of website themes7.426 Ratings6.662 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design7.828 Ratings7.9119 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.134 Ratings8.1124 Ratings
Form generator7.724 Ratings6.989 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Acquia Digital Experience Platform
7.6
35 Ratings
7% above category average
Optimizely Content Management System
7.6
127 Ratings
4% above category average
Content taxonomy8.028 Ratings8.1117 Ratings
SEO support7.329 Ratings7.6118 Ratings
Bulk management7.431 Ratings7.099 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions7.832 Ratings7.7101 Ratings
Community / comment management7.826 Ratings7.882 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Acquia Digital Experience PlatformOptimizely Content Management System
Small Businesses
Kentico Xperience
Kentico Xperience
Score 7.2 out of 10
Divi
Divi
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
Acquia Digital Experience PlatformOptimizely Content Management System
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(93 ratings)
8.7
(161 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.6
(11 ratings)
9.5
(30 ratings)
Usability
7.9
(2 ratings)
8.0
(30 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.2
(4 ratings)
Support Rating
8.7
(5 ratings)
10.0
(6 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(1 ratings)
6.4
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.6
(73 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Acquia Digital Experience PlatformOptimizely Content Management System
Likelihood to Recommend
Acquia
It made it super easy to upgrade 300+ Drupal sites to the latest major version in 12 weeks, end to end. It is easy to deploy legal changes and updates to components at scale. Turnkey service to deploy new environments and to clone sites. There are no ecosystem lock-in principles for Customer service/success services and professional services for new approaches.
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Optimizely
Well suited to an organisation who wants a real presence and a superior customer experience when visiting your website. Very modern look and feel and is great for hosting videos and specialist graphics. It is hard to fault the product and it is up there amongst the best in the market
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Pros
Acquia
  • It's fast, no lag time
  • Exceptionally good support. When there's a problem, you reach out to your account manager who either fixes the issue or gets you to the right person. We've had no downtime.
  • Platform is very accessible to those who know how to manage the back end software.
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Optimizely
  • A centralized UI to maintain multiple websites using a common entry point.
  • Page types and blocks that can be highly customized using .NET code, but at the same time allows checks and validations when being created by Marketing/Content Users.
  • A very good set of extra libraries/add-ons that allows to expand website functionality in a very short period of time (Content APIs, Personalization, A/B Testing, Social)
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Cons
Acquia
  • Support responds pretty quickly to critical tickets, but they can be slow to respond on non-urgent items. Some of what we experienced may have been related to a newer ticketing system recently implemented.
  • Standard support covers business days/hours but only critical support is available outside those times. We typically schedule our website updates for the weekend or "off" hours when only critical support is available.
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Optimizely
  • On the technical side, Spire is all built on React Redux, so there's a React framework and then Optimizely built their own framework on top of that React implementation, which is, I'd say customized and non-standard. So learning that as a developer is usually a four to five month learning curve. So that is a con where it's not a standard React redux implementation.
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Likelihood to Renew
Acquia
We're moving away from Drupal as a platform. Drupal 8 and 9 were simply too overburdened and difficult to maintain compared to other offerings. PHP seems like a dying language so we are currently in the process of migrating all of our Drupal 7 functionality and custom modules to a Python/Django/Wagtail platform. This doesn't mean Acquia isn't a great service, they are professional and top-knotch, but the only way we'd say with them is if I didn't complete the migration.
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Optimizely
Since I work on the implementation side of things, and do not directly own licensing for Ektron CMS, I have to base this rating off of how I think it will be received or presented to customers looking to start a new site deployment. I try to remain CMS agnostic, though my specialty is with the .NET and Microsoft stack. Because of the experience I have working with Ektron, I tend to be more forgiving with the shortcomings as I am familiar with how to work around them or past them from experience. Being familiar with the community available also helps, as you become familiar with the best approaches to find solutions to your issues. Each product has it's ups and downs and all of them are only going to be as good as the company or development team implementing them can make them. This is EXTREMELY important to remember when choosing a CMS, as it can make or break your expensive investment.
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Usability
Acquia
It's a great user interface. It's always being updated and I've never noticed a bad update that increased the complexity or reduced
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Optimizely
The Opti CMS is pretty easy to use once you get used to it. Setting up the experience editor takes some time and difficult to follow and do in a group setting. We found working one on one or in smaller groups works better
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Reliability and Availability
Acquia
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
Unplanned outages or errors are fairly rare in our instance. And when there are issues, they're usually fixed fairly quickly
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Support Rating
Acquia
Every time we have had an issue, Acquia support has responded promptly and worked with us as a team to solve the problem. The Acquia support team is global and we have literally had interactions with all of their support offices, yet the experience has been the same - top notch
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Optimizely
I attended multiple trainings/tutorials early in the process. The vendor-supplied content about Optimizely was engaging for users/attendees (I often analyze training content, compliance programs, governance plans), which helps our OCM people by having good "word of mouth" about the product long before a rollout ever happens. I actually when the user-focused portion of the Optimizely Academy twice in 2022 to ensure I had a grasp on operability and to be able to support the training and OCM efforts
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Online Training
Acquia
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
Ektron is one of the best solution for .Net platform. Over the years have improved the performance issues that the previous versions had. My only complain is right now you can't do Page builder pages if you choose to have a MVC architecture
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Implementation Rating
Acquia
It was implemented when I got there. I don't know how it was prior.
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Optimizely
I was not fully involved.
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Alternatives Considered
Acquia
We chose Acquia for a much better UI that gave non-analytical marketers and easy to use tool where they could create their own reports. The campaign side of things also had an easier to use UI as well, that made the targeting of audiences much easier.
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Optimizely
Optimizely CMS is part of a more composable suite when it comes to DXPs. With that, some other systems like Sitecore Experience Platform are monoliths, which makes the development and maintenance of those products fairly complex (this includes system architecture). In our experience, Optimizely makes it simpler to implement solutions in a rapid manner and "tack on" additional products if needed as organizations grow and are able to leverage that functionality.
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Scalability
Acquia
The DXP tools can handle millions of requests and can scale automatically to fit your needs. We have clients that use only part of the DXP tools and have a small usage, but even in these cases they see great value in using tools like personalization and CDP.
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Optimizely
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Acquia
  • Acquia has helped us to stabilize and optimize our website performance, lowering page load times and dramatically decreasing the frequency of issues experienced by end-users.
  • Acquia SOLR search provided a much-improved search experience on our website.
  • Acquia's PCI-compliant hosting has helped us to remain compliant and cyber-secure.
  • We are working to implement Acquia Site Studio and Acquia Personalization now and expect those to improve our operation agility and ability to drive more relevant experiences to our various website visitors.
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Optimizely
  • The positive is on ROI as we can get more done without needing to go through 3rd party or know Code to create and add content.
  • Workflows could use improvement. I don't know that there are workflows that I'm aware of.
  • Make it easier to connect to 3rd party software like Hubspot, Magento, email services, etc.
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ScreenShots

Optimizely Content Management System Screenshots

Screenshot of Marketer-Friendly Interface: A low/no-code interface lets content editors manage their day-to-day.Screenshot of On-page & in-context editing: Content can be created and edited with a full view into how it appears, wherever it's published.Screenshot of Drag-and-drop layouts: Layouts and drag-and-drop functionality to test creative limits.Screenshot of Content TypesScreenshot of DashboardScreenshot of Templates