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
Salesforce CMS
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization (formerly Salesforce CMS) is a hybrid CMS allowing users to author content once and deliver it anywhere, in or out of Salesforce. Users create content, define content access, and define channels so they can share content and limit access to appropriate contributors. For an experience built with Salesforce, users can choose from two of the company's “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” (WYSIWYG) tools: Experience Builder and Commerce Page Designer. If the user…
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Pricing
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)
Salesforce CMS
Editions & Modules
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)
Salesforce CMS
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Community Pulse
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)
Salesforce CMS
Features
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)
Salesforce CMS
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)
6.6
14 Ratings
16% below category average
Salesforce CMS
8.5
54 Ratings
10% above category average
API
7.911 Ratings
8.453 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language
00 Ratings
8.643 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)
-
Ratings
Salesforce CMS
9.0
58 Ratings
9% above category average
Role-based user permissions
00 Ratings
9.058 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)
-
Ratings
Salesforce CMS
7.9
53 Ratings
2% above category average
WYSIWYG editor
00 Ratings
7.934 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness
00 Ratings
8.144 Ratings
Admin section
00 Ratings
8.044 Ratings
Page templates
00 Ratings
8.148 Ratings
Library of website themes
00 Ratings
7.337 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design
00 Ratings
7.645 Ratings
Publishing workflow
00 Ratings
8.144 Ratings
Form generator
00 Ratings
8.043 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
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.
When managing a team of 30 or more technician the tools available for a scheduler are incredible. The system sync's quickly so all schedulers can be looking at the same Gantt and see what changes have been made or need to be made. If you have too small of a team this service would be overkill especially given the cost.
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.
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.
It will be too difficult to change to a different software. We are fully integrated, and if things are not working well, it would be way worse to try to move to a different platform.
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.
Strengths: - Intuitive for Salesforce Users – If you’re already working within the Salesforce ecosystem, the Salesforce CMS is easy to navigate, with a clean UI, drag-and-drop content management, and reusable assets for quick updates. - Seamless Integration – Since it connects natively with Experience Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and CRM, it allows for efficient multi-channel content distribution without needing extra third-party tools. - AI-Powered Personalization – The ability to deliver dynamic content based on user profiles and engagement data is a huge plus, making content delivery more relevant and impactful. Challenges: - Learning Curve for New Users – If you're not already familiar with Salesforce, the interface can feel overwhelming, requiring training to fully leverage all features. - Limited Customization & Workflow Automation – While it works well for structured content, advanced approval workflows and deep editorial customization are limited compared to enterprise CMS platforms like Adobe Experience Manager. - Media & Design Limitations – Salesforce CMS is not as robust for managing rich media-heavy content, which can be frustrating for teams needing more flexibility in multimedia presentation.
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.
I've never really had to contact support. It's at the point where we have people in the organization that are our specific go-to inhouse support teams for Salesforce. Again, that goes back to what I said about there being a point where just too much is added to Salesforce that you have to hire someone to be the go-to person of Salesforce. There is only so much their support team can do for you. I wouldn't expect Salesforce Support to have any sort of understanding of the weird issues I deal with!
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.
As our business heavily relies on Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud, we need a CMS that works natively with our existing Salesforce Data. Other platforms would require third-party connectors or custom API development, making integration more complex and expensive. Salesforce allows us to manage content once and distribute it across multiple touchpoints. It also delivers personalized marketing content based on CRM data.
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.
It allows me to keep a close eye on all of my performance metrics through the Dashboard Reporting, ie what my sales pipeline looks like, how much it's changed in the last 60 days, new opportunities created in the last 7 days, # of emails sent for the week, etc. The ease of the design and output make it really easy to check my progress throughout the day to find where I have holes and am falling short on my personal and work goals. It's resulted in greater transparency with my Mgmt Team and shorter 1-on-1 mtgs with my boss as he can see exactly where I am at all times (to be fair, I'm a senior sales rep, so he pretty much lets me do my job completely unfettered), but it does prove that I am continually producing which recently resulted in a raise I didn't even ask for.
The SF repository is so detailed that I don't have to spend tons of time finding frequently used websites attached to a client or see what all interactions with the company look like. Even though I don't use SF for my bulk emails and email sequences, SF provides me with an email to use in the bcc of these emails which links everything back to SF. I find that extremely helpful. This really impacts my efficiency and I can honestly say that once I started using all the functionality of data management, it saved me about 20% of my time/week that I could then allocate towards other revenue-generating tasks like prospecting and account management. The more time I have for those, the better. My year-over-year on accounts 1 year and older just grew by 17% this last year.