Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued) vs. eZ Platform

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
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
eZ Platform
Score 5.0 out of 10
N/A
ezPlatform, formerly ezPublish is a content management solution from eZ Systems. The vendor says their solution provides organizations with the technology and framework to build a suite of digital experiences including news and media sites, brand sites, multichannel apps and the Internet of Things, intranets and web portals. This solution is multichannel, multilingual and multisite ready. ezPlatform features user defined content and classes, version control, templates, workflow…N/A
Pricing
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)eZ Platform
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)eZ Platform
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)eZ Platform
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)eZ Platform
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)
6.6
14 Ratings
15% below category average
eZ Platform
8.0
1 Ratings
4% above category average
API7.911 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)
-
Ratings
eZ Platform
9.0
1 Ratings
12% above category average
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)
-
Ratings
eZ Platform
5.4
1 Ratings
34% below category average
WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness00 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Admin section00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Page templates00 Ratings3.01 Ratings
Library of website themes00 Ratings2.01 Ratings
Publishing workflow00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
Form generator00 Ratings6.01 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)
-
Ratings
eZ Platform
5.6
1 Ratings
27% below category average
Content taxonomy00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
SEO support00 Ratings5.01 Ratings
Bulk management00 Ratings2.01 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions00 Ratings6.01 Ratings
Community / comment management00 Ratings6.01 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)eZ Platform
Small Businesses
Divi
Divi
Score 9.8 out of 10
Divi
Divi
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 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
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)eZ Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
6.0
(21 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.4
(10 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.7
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.6
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.6
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)eZ Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
Discontinued Products
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.
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eZ Systems
For a new site: 1. Are there any hosting requirements? eZ Publish works best on a traditional LAMP stack. 2. What is the expertise of the development and systems administrations individuals? There should be some PHP development experience and a solid level of Apache and MySQL hosting. 3. Who will be managing the content of the site? What is their bandwidth for training? For ongoing content changes?
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Pros
Discontinued Products
  • 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.
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eZ Systems
  • Content Taxonomy: Content is managed in a tree. Though taxonomy vs folksonomy is a near-religious debate among professionals, clients seeing the system for the first time just seem to "get it" more often.
  • Content Flexibility: Common content types such as blog posts and articles are available out of the box. However, customizing these and creating new content types is very easy.
  • Developer Friendly: Developers need only a little PHP experience to get started. Of course being an expert doesn't hurt and opens the door for the development of custom modules.
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Cons
Discontinued Products
  • 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.
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eZ Systems
  • The template language: Outputting content or doing something special with it requires use of the templating language. Myself along with other developers I have trained, found this to be one of the biggest hurdles.
  • Layout of physical files: The system decides what settings files and templates to use based on a hierarchy of modules. The same file can exist in multiple modules and you can find yourself deep within very similar looking folder structures, causing confusion during debugging.
  • Community: eZ has a solid set of community contributors but the gap between it and Drupal or Wordpress is pretty large.
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Likelihood to Renew
Discontinued Products
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.
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eZ Systems
No answers on this topic
Usability
Discontinued Products
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.
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eZ Systems
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
Discontinued Products
very few issues with availability
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eZ Systems
No answers on this topic
Performance
Discontinued Products
Very few issues
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eZ Systems
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Discontinued Products
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.
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eZ Systems
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Discontinued Products
bcgurus.com kiyuco
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eZ Systems
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Discontinued Products
Pretty easy to do
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eZ Systems
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Discontinued Products
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.
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eZ Systems
eZ Publish isn't as large in community size and number of installations as other content management systems. However, it's just as capable and met our needs:
  • Developers, system administrators, and project manager can all speak the same language during the development and maintenance cycles of a site.
  • End-user training is very straight-forward.
  • Vendor support is available.
  • Client IT departments can access if need (developers/designers/sysadmins).
  • The community is there (forums) and there are solid contributions (extensions) from both the vendor and the community.
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Scalability
Discontinued Products
It's easy to build small sites or large sites and there is lots of templating.
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eZ Systems
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Discontinued Products
  • 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.
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eZ Systems
  • Common knowledge: By making eZ a core offering, developers, system administrators, and project managers were able to communicate with each other effectively.
  • Training: Due to its content taxonomy, end-user training often went well.
  • Support: In our case, we had Gold support from eZ Publish which saved time and helped with customizations.
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ScreenShots

eZ Platform Screenshots

Screenshot of Editors and marketers create content.Screenshot of Content strategists model their content.