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
Ibexa DXP
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Ibexa, headquartered in Oslo, helps B2B companies to stay relevant and succeed by transforming traditional sales strategies into frictionless buying experiences, with their eponymous digial experience platform (DXP).
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 always recommend Ibexa DXP to my fellows. The only scenario that I would not recommend it is if the site is either too small, too simple, or that they simply cannot afford to stand it up properly.
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.
Block technology is by far one of my favorite features of the tool. This allows us to quickly layout content in a unique manner with a variety of display options.
Micro Shareable content blocks allow users to quickly share our content across the web and drive more relevant traffic back to our site.
Reusable content blocks allow for better management of content throughout the site, ensuring accuracy with a simple update.
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.
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.
It is quite easy to navigate through the backend and also, you can directly work in frontend view. Dynamic content can be created on the fly. Their Landing page features are awesome. You create a page by drag & drop.
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.
They are directly reachable and help you to deal with other services, e.g. if would like to set up a CDN for China or if you would like to integrate a tool like HubSpot. If there is anything you are missing, they help you to find a workaround until they can deliver such items - like local language versions.
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.
We’ve priced other enterprise products and found Ibexa DXP to be a bit more expensive. However, not enough to dissuade us from staying with the product.
The partner ecosystem is small. However, we've worked with two Ibexa partners over the last 10 years. They were very skilled. They were great companies. We've interviewed other Ibexa partners in North America. We found them all to be professional with solid resumes.
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.