Adobe Business Catalyst was a cloud-hosted system for building and managing web content and online stores with a built-in CRM framework in addition to sales, service, and marketing features including eCommerce and Email Marketing tools. It has been end of life (EOL) since 2020.
$10
per month
Elementor
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Elementor is a Wordpress page builder and creative toolkit from the company of the same name in Israel.
The service provision is good the accounts customer service is poor so I would struggle to give BC a better than average review, if only they could offer customers a better accounts service then the value would be much higher.
I would recommend this for the ease of use and price. It is a good value for any website developer or designer to be able to create multiple websites a year with super simple coding. If you've got a way to speed up your website without using WP Rocket, then it's even better! I think this software is specifically made for someone with a coding background and would recommend that you have a background with Wordpress to make using this software even easier
Probably one of the easiest e-commerce platforms to work in, it does take setup, but compared to a lot of other e-commerce solutions, this is probably the best one that I have seen that can be designed and implemented custom.
Their template system works very well and allows you to create and re-use templates across Adobe Business Catalyst.
Their pre-built modules are great, giving people a great way to use common web elements without having to use a plug-in or find some solution, it is simply built in and generally works exactly as you would expect.
Adobe Business Catalyst is more of an all-around solution, providing elements that most smaller companies would have a hard time figuring out, since it includes the ability to build websites, send and track e-mails, analytics. It really is a powerful tool that would typically require a fair amount of coding knowledge and expertise but with the system already built, it can be easily modified and edited by those with limited or no coding knowledge at all.
Multi Client Management: The dashboard for managing multiple clients as a reseller is a little difficult to get to. There is also no very easy way for me to manage multiple clients at once. I have to log into and out of individual client accounts to do billing or management.
Lack of Server support: There are certain server protocols and languages that are not supported using BC. For example I cannot build a custom php database and upload to BC. I am required to use their tools.
More integration with 3rd party form plugins like Gravity Forms
Sometimes it gets confusing working with template features like headers. Editing in one place may accidentally affect the entire site and it is not always clear.
Actually with Business Catalyst there is no renewal; once you are a partner, you are a partner for as long as you like. It is an investment in your business not simply a product you purchase...and as an investment in partnership with Adobe, both are committed to each other's success.
Overall it is a "plug and play" interface. The majority of the work is done in other software interfaces. Managing billing, user roles and custom reports are all that you need to manage in the actual BC user interface. For my business this is an incredible benefit as I have to leave my preferred software less.
Elementor is one of those website builders that is really easy to get started with. The drag and drop features make it easy to create attractive and creative webpages for even the non-website designer. Some of the features available are not easy to find or easy to discover when you first start using Elementor. Practice makes perfect.
The support provided by Adobe is excellent. Though the knowledge base, forums, blogs and online chat questions most all answers can be found. In the event that you are unable to find an answer or you have a unique situation simply post a question to the forums. These forums are regularly monitored by Adobe and its users.
There support is slow and at times can be frustrating and this is why many prefer to air out their frustrations within the Facebook group community. I tend to give up as when I'm working on something and something goes wrong I need the help straight away. I do not have the patience to wait anymore.
As far as the CMS for BC goes, there is none out there that compares. In the past we have utilized Joomla, Wordpress, Mambo, Drupal, Concrete 5 and others. None of them were as easy to use and train on that Adobe's Business Catalyst. Our alternative to BC is WordPress when our clients want a less expensive solution. For the most part that works OK but we have had issues with plugin incompatibility among other issues. We lost at least two clients because of similar issues. The other great part about BC's solution is that we can still work with our favorite site creation tool - Dreamweaver. The whole process continues to be more and more simplified with added features to the system. No other solution (that we've found) offers such an easy way to create custom web sites that are easily editable by our clients.
Thrive Leads and thrive architect is a pain to update, they've changed version and name in recent years. I am unable to update because every time there was an upgrade or new release of the plugin it caused issues with my website's functionality which has left me stuck updating old versions that don't work anymore. With Elementor i haven't had this issue.
As someone who uses it on behalf of other clients, our ROI with BC is definitely positive. We needed a mid-range CMS without huge licensing costs to satisfy mid-range clients who have some dynamic needs but doesn't need the expense or liability of enterprise level products. Without it we would have lost possible customers or taken bigger hits on projects because of the costs involved with satisfying their mid-level needs
Our clients are all usually very positive about the BC platform and are able to use it themselves which lessens our Support time/cost.
To use the Web App element,. which we do on almost every site, you need to pay for the highest plan. This brings along with it many features most of our clients would never use. A more basic plan with that Web App capability would be a big improvement on our costs.
Elementor has made it possible for our non-profit to stand out in the non-profit space in which we operate. Our website was highly flexible and looked great, which provided confidence to our donors.
Elementor has never been a weak spot in the security of our website. We've had several attempted attacks against our website and yet everything was remained locked down.
We have only used the free version of Elementor, so it has kept our costs low and allowed us to have a professional looking website, but being able to put more money towards our charitable cause rather than IT.
