Adobe Analytics vs. Optimizely Web Experimentation

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Analytics
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Adobe acquired Omniture in 2009 and re-branded the platform as SiteCatalyst. It is now part of Adobe Marketing Cloud along with other products such as social marketing, test and targeting, and tag management. SiteCatalyst is one of the leading vendors in the web analytics category and is particularly strong in combining web analytics with other digital marketing capabilities like audience management and data management. Adobe Analytics also includes predictive marketing capabilities that help…N/A
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Whether launching a first test or scaling a sophisticated experimentation program, Optimizely Web Experimentation aims to deliver the insights needed to craft high-performing digital experiences that drive engagement, increase conversions, and accelerate growth.N/A
Pricing
Adobe AnalyticsOptimizely Web Experimentation
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe AnalyticsOptimizely Web Experimentation
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe AnalyticsOptimizely Web Experimentation
Considered Both Products
Adobe Analytics
Chose Adobe Analytics
Adobe Analytics is more expensive than Google Analytics, but Adobe Analytics is also more robust, customizable, and extensive. The level of detail and specificity available in Adobe Analytics is much greater.
Chose Adobe Analytics
Adobe Analytics (or any natural reporting tool), will always be my vote over any testing tool's reports (like Adobe Target & Optimizely) due to a much larger universe of reporting options available to the user. Amplitude has a lot of flashy bells and whistles, and is relatively …
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
This is a platform that was already implemented when I started with my current company.
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
Optimizely Web Experimentation stacks up favorably against Adobe Target, Kameleoon, and Oracle CX Marketing in terms of ease of use, customer service, and features. It is easy to set up and execute experiments, the customer service team is always quick to respond to any …
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
It's more robust and capable.
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
I have used tools in various spaces that have all the flashy bells and whistles, and is, but lacks some basic features - Optimizely isn't this. While other tools, such as Adobe Target, Evergage, Dynamic Yield, Google Optimize, or even Taplytics may make more sense for your …
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
Maxymiser - The statistical significance engine used by Optimizely helps to reduce the detection of false positives. These were noticed on many occasions within the maxymiser tool.

Adobe Target - The ease of use is non-comparable between Optimizely and Adobe Target. The UI of Ad…
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
Prior to Optimizely, we used Test & Target (now Adobe, formerly Omniture and before that, Offermatica). Optimizely is better in every way. It's much easier to use (interface), and it's MUCH easier to have tests run since it requires just one code snippet (where T&T often …
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
Optimizely was the only tool on the market that met our need. Optimizely left its competition in the dust.
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
Test and Target - Omniture - Very expensive compared to Optimizely. Optimizely integrates with Google Analytics.
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
Adobe Test & Target - not chosen due to cost and set-up requirements.
Features
Adobe AnalyticsOptimizely Web Experimentation
Web Analytics
Comparison of Web Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Analytics
8.0
72 Ratings
1% below category average
Optimizely Web Experimentation
-
Ratings
Lead Conversion Tracking7.666 Ratings00 Ratings
Bounce Rate Measurement7.769 Ratings00 Ratings
Device and Browser Reporting8.470 Ratings00 Ratings
Pageview Tracking8.769 Ratings00 Ratings
Event Tracking8.569 Ratings00 Ratings
Reporting in real-time6.868 Ratings00 Ratings
Referral Source Tracking8.068 Ratings00 Ratings
Customizable Dashboards8.468 Ratings00 Ratings
Testing and Experimentation
Comparison of Testing and Experimentation features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Analytics
-
Ratings
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.0
163 Ratings
5% below category average
a/b experiment testing00 Ratings9.0163 Ratings
Split URL testing00 Ratings8.5135 Ratings
Multivariate testing00 Ratings8.4139 Ratings
Multi-page/funnel testing00 Ratings7.9126 Ratings
Cross-browser testing00 Ratings8.197 Ratings
Mobile app testing00 Ratings8.175 Ratings
Test significance00 Ratings8.4147 Ratings
Visual / WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings8.1133 Ratings
Advanced code editor00 Ratings8.0125 Ratings
Page surveys00 Ratings6.217 Ratings
Visitor recordings00 Ratings8.418 Ratings
Preview mode00 Ratings7.6145 Ratings
Test duration calculator00 Ratings7.8112 Ratings
Experiment scheduler00 Ratings8.2112 Ratings
Experiment workflow and approval00 Ratings7.890 Ratings
Dynamic experiment activation00 Ratings7.574 Ratings
Client-side tests00 Ratings7.896 Ratings
Server-side tests00 Ratings7.250 Ratings
Mutually exclusive tests00 Ratings8.180 Ratings
Audience Segmentation & Targeting
Comparison of Audience Segmentation & Targeting features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Analytics
-
Ratings
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.2
152 Ratings
7% below category average
Standard visitor segmentation00 Ratings8.4147 Ratings
Behavioral visitor segmentation00 Ratings7.7122 Ratings
Traffic allocation control00 Ratings9.1144 Ratings
Website personalization00 Ratings7.8111 Ratings
Results and Analysis
Comparison of Results and Analysis features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Analytics
-
Ratings
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.3
149 Ratings
4% below category average
Heatmap tool00 Ratings9.313 Ratings
Click analytics00 Ratings8.833 Ratings
Scroll maps00 Ratings8.517 Ratings
Form fill analysis00 Ratings8.072 Ratings
Conversion tracking00 Ratings8.744 Ratings
Goal tracking00 Ratings8.2127 Ratings
Test reporting00 Ratings7.9137 Ratings
Results segmentation00 Ratings7.7103 Ratings
CSV export00 Ratings7.9102 Ratings
Experiments results dashboard00 Ratings8.049 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Adobe AnalyticsOptimizely Web Experimentation
Small Businesses
StatCounter
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Score 9.0 out of 10
Convert Experiences
Convert Experiences
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Optimal
Optimal
Score 9.1 out of 10
Dynamic Yield
Dynamic Yield
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Optimal
Optimal
Score 9.1 out of 10
Dynamic Yield
Dynamic Yield
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Adobe AnalyticsOptimizely Web Experimentation
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(230 ratings)
8.7
(253 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.5
(95 ratings)
9.4
(51 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(80 ratings)
10.0
(58 ratings)
Availability
8.1
(12 ratings)
10.0
(7 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(11 ratings)
7.3
(6 ratings)
Support Rating
3.6
(41 ratings)
10.0
(16 ratings)
In-Person Training
1.1
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.0
(5 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.1
(10 ratings)
8.0
(11 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
7.3
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(2 ratings)
8.0
(162 ratings)
Professional Services
7.9
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe AnalyticsOptimizely Web Experimentation
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
Maybe for a small company with small products for their thing, Adobe may be bit of an implementation too much for them, but when it comes to companies like us, like a life sciences or large enterprises and even small enterprises, but with more products, more analysis that they need to make their marketing experience better, maybe Adobe product is the best suitable.
Read full review
Optimizely
I think it can serve the whole spectrum of experiences from people who are just getting used to web experimentation. It's really easy to pick up and use. If you're more experienced then it works well because it just gets out of the way and lets you really focus on the experimentation side of things. So yeah, strongly recommend. I think it is well suited both to small businesses and large enterprises as well. I think it's got a really low barrier to entry. It's very easy to integrate on your website and get results quickly. Likewise, if you are a big business, it's incrementally adoptable, so you can start out with one component of optimizing and you can build there and start to build in things like data CMS to augment experimentation as well. So it's got a really strong a pathway to grow your MarTech platform if you're a small company or a big company.
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Pros
Adobe
  • It summarizes large complex data better than any other analytics solution I've dealt with without the need for sampling, gives the right level of detail, does the right level of breakdowns, aggregation. I consistently not only use Adobe Analytics, but I use other data sets and compare against Adobe Analytics. And as I go into Adobe Analytics and compare, as long as I've done the query right and the other systems, they're very, very close. And if anything, with a lot of Adobe's newer products, they've gotten more accurate over time. So that's basically, you asked me what I liked about it. I like that it's accurate. I like that I don't have to do a lot of explaining. There's enough explaining in the world of web analytics to have to go back and explain why data's problematic. And so like I said, provided that the implementation is correct, it's a very easy conversation. Even if people may not like the answer.
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Optimizely
  • The Platform contains drag-and-drop editor options for creating variations, which ease the A/B tests process, as it does not require any coding or development resources.
  • Establishing it is so simple that even a non-technical person can do it perfectly.
  • It provides real-time results and analytics with robust dashboard access through which you can quickly analyze how different variations perform. With this, your team can easily make data-driven decisions Fastly.
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Cons
Adobe
  • Support. I mentioned this earlier and we don't know what we don't know. Researching the massive amounts of documentation isn't realistic with bandwidth constraints, and our rep getting frustrated with us when we go through what we are seeing is disappointing.
  • Education. More please, and designed more towards the "business side". I get with the many many many different implementations (every company is different!), that it's tough, but even a basic of the basics would be nice for situations that everyone is looking at, like the engagement with the merchandising on the home page (or any certain page).
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Optimizely
  • JavaScript is hard to implement sometimes especially for JQuery elements
  • ROI reporting should be part of the overall experimentation reporting
  • CMP integration: where we can easily show status of test on the HPT request
  • CMS integration
  • More widgets like social proof banners, etc.
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Likelihood to Renew
Adobe
We've found multiple uses for Adobe Analytics in our organization. Each department analyzes the data they need and creates actionables based off of that data. For E-Commerce, we're constantly using data to analyze user engagement, website performance and evaluate ROI.
Read full review
Optimizely
I rated this question because at this stage, Optimizely does most everything we need so I don't foresee a need to migrate to a new tool. We have the infrastructure already in place and it is a sizeable lift to pivot to another tool with no guarantee that it will work as good or even better than Optimizely
Read full review
Usability
Adobe
Sometimes the processing times are very long. I have had reports or dashboards time out multiple times during presentations. It could be improved. It is understandable since there is a huge data set that the tool is processing before showing anything, however for a company that large they should invest in optimizing processing times.
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Optimizely
Optimizely Web Experimentation's visual editor is handy for non-technical or quick iterative testing. When it comes to content changes it's as easy as going into wordpress, clicking around, and then seeing your changes live--what you see is what you get. The preview and approval process for sharing built experiments is also handy for sharing experiments across teams for QA purposes or otherwise.
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Reliability and Availability
Adobe
I do not ever recall a time when Adobe Analytics was unavailable to me to use in the 8 or so years I have been an end user of the product. My most-used day-to-day analytics tool Parse.ly however, generally has a multiple hours planned offline maintenance every two to four weeks, and sometimes has issues collecting realtime analytics that last anywhere between 15 minutes to an hour, and happen anywhere between 1 to 5 times a month.
Read full review
Optimizely
I would rate Optimizely Web Experimentation's availability as a 10 out of 10. The software is reliable and does not experience any application errors or unplanned outages. Additionally, the customer service and technical support teams are always available to help with any issues or questions.
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Performance
Adobe
Again, no issues here. Performance within the day updates hourly. other reports are updated overnight and available to access by the next morning. Pages load quickly, the site navigates easily and the UX is quite straightforward to get command over. On this front, I give Adobe kudos for building a great experience to work within
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Optimizely
I would rate Optimizely Web Experimentation's performance as a 9 out of 10. Pages load quickly, reports are complete in a reasonable time frame, and the software does not slow down any other software or systems that it integrates with. Additionally, the customer service and technical support teams are always available to help with any issues or questions.
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Support Rating
Adobe
I barely see any communication from Adobe Analytics. The content on the web is also not that great or easy to read. I would recommend a better communication about the product and the new addons information to come to its user by a better mean.
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Optimizely
They always are quick to respond, and are so friendly and helpful. They always answer the phone right away. And [they are] always willing to not only help you with your problem, but if you need ideas they have suggestions as well.
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In-Person Training
Adobe
It was a one-day training several years ago that cost the organization several thousand dollars. There were only about 10 people in the training class. Adobe tried to cram so much information into that one-day class that none of our users felt like they really learned anything helpful from the experience. Follow-up training is too expensive
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Optimizely
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Adobe
The online training for Adobe SiteCatalyst consists of short product videos. These are ok, but only go so far. For a while Adobe charged a fee for this, but recently made these available for free. There are many great blog posts that help users learn how to apply the product as well.
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Optimizely
The tool itself is not very difficult to use so training was not very useful in my opinion. It did not also account for success events more complex than a click (which my company being ecommerce is looking to examine more than a mere click).
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Implementation Rating
Adobe
One of the benefits and obstacles to successfully using Adobe Analytics is a great / more accurate implementation, make sure your analytics group is intimate with the details of the implementation and that the requirements are driven by the business.
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Optimizely
In retrospect: - I think I should have stressed more demo's / workshopping with the Optimizely team at the start. I felt too confident during demo stages, and when came time to actually start, I was a bit lost. (The answer is likely I should have had them on-hand for our first install.. they offered but I thought I was OK.) - Really getting an understanding / asking them prior to install of how to make it really work for checkout pages / one that uses dynamic content or user interaction to determine what the UI does. Could have saved some time by addressing this at the beginning, as some things we needed to create on our site for Optimizely to "use" as a trigger for the variation test. - Having a number of planned/hoped-for tests already in-hand before working with Optimizely team. Sharing those thoughts with them would likely have started conversations on additional things we needed to do to make them work (rather than figuring that out during the actual builds). Since I had development time available, I could have added more things to the baseline installation since my developers were already "looking under the hood" of the site.
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Alternatives Considered
Adobe
Google Analytics comes across more of a reporting tool whereas Adobe Analytics is more of an Enterprise level analytics tool. Contentsquare provides some traffic and flow capabilities but not to the same level as Adobe Analytics. However, Contentsquare's major advantage is its Zoning (Heatmapping), Impact Quantification and Find 'n' Fix modules; none of which are knowingly available in Adobe Analytics.
Read full review
Optimizely
The ability to do A/B testing in Optimizely along with the associated statistical modelling and audience segmentation means it is a much better solution than using something like Google Analytics were a lot more effort is required to identify and isolate the specific data you need to confidently make changes
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Adobe
Adobe Analytics is relatively affordable compared to other tools, given it provides a range of flexible variables to use that I have not found in any other tools so far. It is worth investing in if your company is medium or large-sized and brings a steady flow of revenue. For small companies, it can be overpriced.
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Optimizely
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Adobe
My organization uses Adobe Analytics across a multitude of brand portfolios. Each brand has multiple websites, mobile apps and some even have connected TV apps/channels on Roku and similar devices. Adobe can handle the multitude of properties that have simple, small(ish) websites and the larger brand properties that include web, mobile and connected TVs/OTT devices.
Each of those larger brands has multiple categories and channels to keep track of. We can see the data by channel/device or aggregate all the data together. This gives our executive teams the full picture and the departmental teams the view they need to see their own performance.
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Optimizely
We can use it flexibly across lines of business and have it in use across two departments. We have different use cases and slightly different outcomes, but can unify our results based on impact to the bottom line. Finally, we can generate value from anywhere in the org for any stakeholders as needed.
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Professional Services
Adobe
The professional services team is one of the best teams for complex adobe analytics implementations, especially for clients having multiple website and mobile applications. However, the cost of professional services is a bit high which makes few clients opt out of it, but for large scale implementations they are very helpful
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Optimizely
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Adobe
  • Adobe Analytics impacts nearly every aspect of a billion plus dollar revenue eCommerce business. From measuring the impact of new build features to marketing campaigns.
  • We are saving substantial money and resource effort by consolidating all of our properties to Adobe Analytics from alternative solutions, at which point we will finally be able to report on Total Digital, rather than disparate reports.
  • We support experimentation on every platform and the performance is only known through Adobe Analytics tagging.
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Optimizely
  • We're able to share definitive annualized revenue projections with our team, showing what would happen if we put a test into Production
  • Showing the results of a test on a new page or feature prior to full implementation on a site saves developer time (if a test proves the new element doesn't deliver a significant improvement.
  • Making a change via the WYSIWYG interface allows us to see multiple changes without developer intervention.
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ScreenShots

Adobe Analytics Screenshots

Screenshot of the Alert Builder in Adobe Analytics.Screenshot of an Analysis Workspace Training Tutorial in Adobe AnalyticsScreenshot of attribution in Adobe AnalyticsScreenshot of the Segment Builder in Adobe AnalyticsScreenshot of anomaly detection in Adobe AnalyticsScreenshot of the Alert Builder in Adobe Analytics

Optimizely Web Experimentation Screenshots

Screenshot of AI-Powered Experimentation with Opal:

- Instant Test Ideas: Generates high-quality A/B test ideas based on any goals and audience insights.
- Smarter Experimentation: The AI can suggest impactful variations, reducing guesswork and increasing test velocity.
- More Than Just Ideas: From hypothesis generation to analyzing results, Opal helps optimize every stage of the experimentation process.Screenshot of the Web Experimentation Visual Editor :

- Tweak experiments using the visual editor or dive into custom code when needed.
- Modify elements, update styling, or add dynamic behaviors.
- Ensure perfect variations while keeping control over every detail of the experiment.Screenshot of AI Content Suggestions:

- Generates copy variations to supercharge experiments.
- The AI suggests high-impact messaging for tests when hovering over a field.
- AI-powered content suggestions help skip the brainstorming process.Screenshot of Advanced Audience Targeting:

- Delivers personalized experiences by targeting users based on behaviors, attributes, and real-time conditions.
- Defines precise audience segments using first-party data, geolocation, and device type.
- Can test and optimize for different audience groups to maximize impact and engagement.Screenshot of Custom Templates in the Visual Editor:

- Offers pre-built templates for common test setups.
- Standardized variations and maintains brand integrity with reusable templates.
- Templates can be customized visually or tweak them with code for full flexibility.Screenshot of the Web Experimentation Results Page:

- Data visualizations help interpret experiment performance.
- Displays which variations are winning with built-in statistical significance calculations.
- Results can be filtered by audience segments, events, and conversions to uncover key trends.