Adobe Experience Manager Livefyre vs. Optimizely Content Management System

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Experience Manager Livefyre
Score 7.8 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Livefyre was acquired in 2016 and is now part of Adobe Experience Manager. Later versions of AEM include features of Livefyre pre-installed. Livefyre (or the Livefyre Studio app) is a content curation, social media UGC, audience engagement application that enables users to access user generated content that can be streamed in real-time to a customer’s sites, digital billboards, apps,…N/A
Optimizely Content Management System
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) is used to deliver digital experiences across channels and devices with a marketer-friendly interface, AI-generated insights that drive real-time personalization, and flexible content delivery options—including headless delivery.N/A
Pricing
Adobe Experience Manager LivefyreOptimizely Content Management System
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe Experience Manager LivefyreOptimizely Content Management System
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredRequired
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe Experience Manager LivefyreOptimizely Content Management System
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Adobe Experience Manager LivefyreOptimizely Content Management System
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager Livefyre
-
Ratings
Optimizely Content Management System
8.5
120 Ratings
6% above category average
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.5120 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager Livefyre
-
Ratings
Optimizely Content Management System
8.1
118 Ratings
5% above category average
API00 Ratings7.9113 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language00 Ratings8.287 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager Livefyre
-
Ratings
Optimizely Content Management System
7.6
136 Ratings
0% below category average
WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings7.7126 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness00 Ratings7.8115 Ratings
Admin section00 Ratings7.9124 Ratings
Page templates00 Ratings8.0124 Ratings
Library of website themes00 Ratings6.662 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design00 Ratings7.9119 Ratings
Publishing workflow00 Ratings8.1124 Ratings
Form generator00 Ratings6.989 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager Livefyre
-
Ratings
Optimizely Content Management System
7.6
127 Ratings
4% above category average
Content taxonomy00 Ratings8.1117 Ratings
SEO support00 Ratings7.6118 Ratings
Bulk management00 Ratings7.099 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions00 Ratings7.7101 Ratings
Community / comment management00 Ratings7.882 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Adobe Experience Manager LivefyreOptimizely Content Management System
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Emplifi Social Marketing Cloud
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Image Relay
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Score 9.5 out of 10
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User Ratings
Adobe Experience Manager LivefyreOptimizely Content Management System
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(7 ratings)
8.7
(161 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.8
(5 ratings)
9.5
(30 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(1 ratings)
8.0
(30 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.2
(4 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(1 ratings)
10.0
(6 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe Experience Manager LivefyreOptimizely Content Management System
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
I was strictly the implementor of Livefyre (for my company only). That task alone was at least 3 weeks worth of work. From a user standpoint, Livefyre is a good product which is why this review is strictly about how difficult it was to implement. Therefore, if a colleague was to ask me if I recommend Livefyre, it's not a straight answer. Questions like, 'how fast do you need it?', 'how centralized is your user database?', 'do you want social login?', all come into question and were details that made my job not easy (hence, my review of 5/10 for suggesting it to others). Once implemented, Livefyre is a great product (notice my overall review is higher), but based on my experience with implementation, it certainly requires a senior developer's dedicated time and patience to set up exactly as desired. For smaller companies with small/simple user bases and websites, the process may be more straightforward, but from my experience, it wasn't out-of-the-box at all.
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Optimizely
Well suited to an organisation who wants a real presence and a superior customer experience when visiting your website. Very modern look and feel and is great for hosting videos and specialist graphics. It is hard to fault the product and it is up there amongst the best in the market
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Pros
Adobe
  • It provides and allows comments and comment management that is fast, seamless and shareable.
  • Having used disquss, WordPress comments and many others I like Livefyre better for its seamless integration and transparency
  • It is really nice that they have a range of services from free to enterprise with increasing functionality and benefits.
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Optimizely
  • A centralized UI to maintain multiple websites using a common entry point.
  • Page types and blocks that can be highly customized using .NET code, but at the same time allows checks and validations when being created by Marketing/Content Users.
  • A very good set of extra libraries/add-ons that allows to expand website functionality in a very short period of time (Content APIs, Personalization, A/B Testing, Social)
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Cons
Adobe
  • Implementation was not easy. Although flexible, I personally wrote at least 1,400 lines of code to get this implemented over a few week's time.
  • The social login aspect is cool, but again, hard to implement. They did not write any of those modules, although they could have. This required senior-level developmental skills and a knowledge of how social media is interfaced with programmatically. Lots of questions arose from this and it was difficult to implement with virtually no help from Livefyre, other than to provide the hooks into their system for when users were validated. I had to write at least 2 separate login/redirection scripts to accomplish this flow.
  • CSS tweaking was tricky. We could override lots of common CSS classes, but to get things just the way we wanted it, I ended up writing LOTS of jQuery listeners and functions to transform the output into exactly what we wanted. This was a surprise since the software was sold to us as being 'fully customizable'.
  • Documentation was sufficient, but not great. Getting the flow of the callbacks that are fired wasn't clear at first, and sometimes did not work as expected.
  • It should be noted that, after this review was published, Livefyre contacted me stating they now have better documentation and process for implementation (for version V3, specifically) and urged me to revise this review. However, I can only write of my experience with V2, and it WAS difficult to implement over 3 weeks of dedicated time. Another developer on my team implemented version V3 and his evaluation is very similar to mine, claiming much difficulty with the CSS customization.
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Optimizely
  • On the technical side, Spire is all built on React Redux, so there's a React framework and then Optimizely built their own framework on top of that React implementation, which is, I'd say customized and non-standard. So learning that as a developer is usually a four to five month learning curve. So that is a con where it's not a standard React redux implementation.
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Likelihood to Renew
Adobe
We feel we have a real partnership with Livefyre and we both make each other better. Their customer service has been phenomenal even during a time of rapid growth.
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Optimizely
Since I work on the implementation side of things, and do not directly own licensing for Ektron CMS, I have to base this rating off of how I think it will be received or presented to customers looking to start a new site deployment. I try to remain CMS agnostic, though my specialty is with the .NET and Microsoft stack. Because of the experience I have working with Ektron, I tend to be more forgiving with the shortcomings as I am familiar with how to work around them or past them from experience. Being familiar with the community available also helps, as you become familiar with the best approaches to find solutions to your issues. Each product has it's ups and downs and all of them are only going to be as good as the company or development team implementing them can make them. This is EXTREMELY important to remember when choosing a CMS, as it can make or break your expensive investment.
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Usability
Adobe
It's really easy to implement that app but should improve some analytics.
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Optimizely
The Opti CMS is pretty easy to use once you get used to it. Setting up the experience editor takes some time and difficult to follow and do in a group setting. We found working one on one or in smaller groups works better
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Reliability and Availability
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
Unplanned outages or errors are fairly rare in our instance. And when there are issues, they're usually fixed fairly quickly
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Support Rating
Adobe
From purchasing to implementation, the customer service/support was really perfect!
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Optimizely
I attended multiple trainings/tutorials early in the process. The vendor-supplied content about Optimizely was engaging for users/attendees (I often analyze training content, compliance programs, governance plans), which helps our OCM people by having good "word of mouth" about the product long before a rollout ever happens. I actually when the user-focused portion of the Optimizely Academy twice in 2022 to ensure I had a grasp on operability and to be able to support the training and OCM efforts
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Online Training
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
Ektron is one of the best solution for .Net platform. Over the years have improved the performance issues that the previous versions had. My only complain is right now you can't do Page builder pages if you choose to have a MVC architecture
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Implementation Rating
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
I was not fully involved.
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Alternatives Considered
Adobe
We felt Livefyre was more innovative and better at SEO. It felt like we were working with a partner for the long haul who was interested in our business and how to improve it.
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Optimizely
Optimizely CMS is part of a more composable suite when it comes to DXPs. With that, some other systems like Sitecore Experience Platform are monoliths, which makes the development and maintenance of those products fairly complex (this includes system architecture). In our experience, Optimizely makes it simpler to implement solutions in a rapid manner and "tack on" additional products if needed as organizations grow and are able to leverage that functionality.
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Return on Investment
Adobe
  • The heavy work is already done given that we take the time to implement.
  • Very useful insights and AI powered delivery.
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Optimizely
  • The positive is on ROI as we can get more done without needing to go through 3rd party or know Code to create and add content.
  • Workflows could use improvement. I don't know that there are workflows that I'm aware of.
  • Make it easier to connect to 3rd party software like Hubspot, Magento, email services, etc.
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ScreenShots

Adobe Experience Manager Livefyre Screenshots

Screenshot of

Optimizely Content Management System Screenshots

Screenshot of Marketer-Friendly Interface: A low/no-code interface lets content editors manage their day-to-day.Screenshot of On-page & in-context editing: Content can be created and edited with a full view into how it appears, wherever it's published.Screenshot of Drag-and-drop layouts: Layouts and drag-and-drop functionality to test creative limits.Screenshot of Content TypesScreenshot of DashboardScreenshot of Templates