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 8.2 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…
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.
Salesforce CMS is well suited for anything sales. If you need information on an account, want to touch your old accounts, need to get a better idea of ownership by vertical, or want to estimate revenue from your pipeline, it is very A-OK. We use Salesforce to open, close, and study prospects to later convert them into closed deals. There is a section for notes to detail about each and every account. You can add contacts in, complete with their title, email, cell phones, and other additional info, and since our program is sync'ed up with Outreach.io you can make an immediate call from the Salesforce page. It's a must if you are growing your company and want to stay organized within multiple departments.
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.
Easy to use, just like Salesforce's other products. Many users can sit down and figure it out in no time, and with a little training become power users.
Fast and secure - Salesforce is a leader in the cloud world so you get consistently fast results and security that is top notch in the industry.
Accessible from anywhere - if you use cloud CMS already this is a no-brainer, but for those that do in-house CMS still, this is a major difference. Mobile access from anywhere on the planet without a VPN is something you just can't do without the cloud.
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's super awkward if you aren't familiar with it. I have several years' experience in both my organization's salesforce as well as others and there are still things that trip me up. I think Salesforce can get to a point where it's TOO bloated with all this information, all these integrations, what-have-you, that it can be difficult to find what you need in a timely manner or it creates a hiccup in workflows that you then have to work around. On the other hand, once these issues are identified, there is the possibility to manipulate Salesforce into creating automated workarounds. So, at least it allows for that. I think it's an issue of having so many options for bolt-ons that you start to lose perspective and functionality. You tend to lose focus on usability for users.
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'm not sure - we have hired a person/team that are Salesforce Admin so when I have a question or need support I go in-house. But, I know Salesforce has incredible L+D and trainings available for free to help users develop in their skillsets.
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.
Salesforce has a wide variety of services and its user interface was easy to understand and use. Our teams [thought] Salesforce to be better. When we were comparing the features as per our Marketing and Branding teams needs and uses, Salesforce came out on the top.
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.
