Adobe Experience Manager vs. Adobe XD

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Experience Manager
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Adobe Experience Manager is a combined web content management system and digital asset management system. The combined applications of Adobe Experience Manager Sites and Adobe Experience Manager Assets is offered by the vendor as an end-to-end solution for managing and delivering marketing content.N/A
Adobe XD
Score 7.2 out of 10
N/A
Adobe XD is a prototyping and UX/UI option for website and mobile application design, featuring a range of UI tools and and templates, a versatile artboard and contextual layer panels, and deep integration with Adobe's creative suite of products for fast import of objects from these applications.
$33.99
per month per license
Pricing
Adobe Experience ManagerAdobe XD
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Individual
$9.99 ($119.88)
per month (annual, prepaid)
Students & Teachers - All Apps
$19.99 ($239.88)
per month, annual plan (for the year)
Business - Single App
$33.99
per month per license
Business - All Apps
$79.99
per month per license
Schools & Universities - Institution Wide
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe Experience ManagerAdobe XD
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe Experience ManagerAdobe XD
Considered Both Products
Adobe Experience Manager
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
All very competent, but different tools for different purposes.
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
AEM is the only customer experience manager I have used.
Adobe XD

No answer on this topic

Features
Adobe Experience ManagerAdobe XD
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
8.4
38 Ratings
3% above category average
Adobe XD
-
Ratings
Role-based user permissions8.438 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
8.0
33 Ratings
1% below category average
Adobe XD
-
Ratings
API7.829 Ratings00 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language8.129 Ratings00 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
7.5
38 Ratings
4% above category average
Adobe XD
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG editor7.433 Ratings00 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness6.734 Ratings00 Ratings
Admin section7.034 Ratings00 Ratings
Page templates7.637 Ratings00 Ratings
Library of website themes7.326 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design7.835 Ratings00 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.135 Ratings00 Ratings
Form generator7.629 Ratings00 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
7.3
37 Ratings
8% above category average
Adobe XD
-
Ratings
Content taxonomy7.731 Ratings00 Ratings
SEO support7.133 Ratings00 Ratings
Bulk management7.236 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions7.534 Ratings00 Ratings
Community / comment management7.130 Ratings00 Ratings
User Ratings
Adobe Experience ManagerAdobe XD
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(219 ratings)
5.5
(34 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(7 ratings)
7.7
(3 ratings)
Usability
8.1
(180 ratings)
5.5
(3 ratings)
Availability
8.6
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.2
(11 ratings)
8.3
(16 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.7
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
9.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe Experience ManagerAdobe XD
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
I'll answer the second one because I mean, the first one I don't have an issue with. The second scenario is we oftentimes have the need to spin off very small campaign style sites or sites that generate leads but are unbranded and that sort of thing. So that's hard to do in AEM because you have to then create another organization within AEM to do that. And we're talking about sites that are maybe five to 10 pages in size. So we've been investigating Edge, but then that's a different workflow, so we'd have to train people on that. So it would be nice if there was something within the AEM structure that could allow you to do something very similar to Edge, where you make some small micro sites that are not necessarily branded, that you could still host within the platform and not have to retrain everybody on a completely different platform.
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Adobe
If its already part of your organization, and they have a license for Creative Cloud, its worth learning. It doesnt take long to get started, but compared to other software in the same field, its lacking in many ways, from quality of life features to just simply not having the option for Darkmode. Even for website design, UX/UI, and mocking up proof-of-concepts, there are much better tools like Figma.
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Pros
Adobe
  • It allows us to scale so that we can make a change on a global footer. And it applies to all of the different property websites. It allows us to set up components and compartmentalize things in a way. The big thing is that it's scalable. And then it also ties into Adobe Analytics and other Adobe products. So we are a complete Adobe shop. Every Adobe product that we can use, we use. I don't think we do it for marketing so much, but for doing target testing and analytics, data scientists are using the same product and so it all speaks.
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Adobe
  • Easy and simple animations.
  • Good tool for website mock-ups.
  • Easy user interface and tools that are like most Adobe products.
  • You can share a dev link and it displays all assets for developers to download or user like it's very own style guide.
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Cons
Adobe
  • There are some glitches in permissions inheritance that require us to toggle a save on permissions in groups that inherit from a group that was recently updated.
  • Large packages require stopping the workflow launcher OSGi components or many workflows will slow down the server.
  • Locked pages are hard to find unless I use /siteadmin... I often hear that the CQ tools will go away, but if we lose that, some small things might be harder to do, like finding locked pages.
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Adobe
  • Doesn’t have image editing tools, so having to go back to Photoshop or Lightroom just to make a sight edit can be a pain.
  • Could add some text editing functionality. It feels silly that I have to draw a line under text when I should just be able to underline.
  • Would be nice to have some real-time collaboration functionality.
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Likelihood to Renew
Adobe
We had and still have a fantastic experience using Adobe CQ. Lots of flexibility, great integration with other Adobe products we already use and a powerful technology make it a great fit for our corporate environment. Also as the community grows, it makes it easier to network with other developers and users to get new ideas on how to continue to get the best out of the software.
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Adobe
We utilize many of the applications in the Adobe CC suite and our usage of this application came about simply because it was the one that was already paid for. Bearing that in mind we will definitely be renewing the software upon the expiration of the licensing. I am not sure if this is the solution we would go with were it not already included, we would have to evaluate all other options
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Usability
Adobe
Adobe Experience Manager overall is fairly easy to use and caters to a wide range of users when it comes to their technical abilities. It has the flexibility to enable UI/UX designers to pop in and easily design new content with drop in components. It also has sufficient capabilities for those who are more technically inclined and want to dig more into custom code or solutions
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Adobe
Adobe XD is basically on life-support now, there are much better software out there that do everything XD can do, and a few that you don't even have to pay a monthly subscription fee on. While Adobe XD is great as shortcuts that are used in other CC software works, and its integration with CC is great. But it still lacks compared to its closest competitor.
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Reliability and Availability
Adobe
Being part of Adobe Suite means you are already notified when the tool has any outages. However, I have never faced unplanned outages. Whenever you face any issue with the site, it is clearly stated if there were any planned outages and how quickly you will be back to normal. So, I will say that even the outages are planned and managed in a great way like their other services.
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Adobe
No answers on this topic
Performance
Adobe
With respect to performance, Adobe experience manager is one of the best in the CMS space. We didn't observe frequent slowness on platform, however the systems which are accessing experience manager should be of good specifications without which slowness would be observed. Adobe experience manager works well in integration with other solutions, unless the destination application is designed to trigger frequent calls to AEM.
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Adobe
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Adobe
Adobe Experience Manager, in all its capacity, is a great alternative to any other CMS you are using. It helps in rapid development and makes life easier for maintaining the website for multi-language sites. Technical know-how is eliminated at content authoring. Better documentation in terms of live examples with videos would be appreciated.
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Adobe
I have not had a need to connect with the Adobe XD support team as of yet, but from past experience when dealing with the other products, the support has been very very good, and I would have no reason to think that this product would be any different. There are a good number of training videos on the Adobe site for this product as well as on other social media sites so a quick search should let you find the answers in several different ways.
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Implementation Rating
Adobe
Depending on your individual needs, It is really quite simple to create an authoring experience for a website that looks really good. I have been part of many implementations and many teams and have seen many projects that were super successful and others that were not implemented well. AEM has room for a lot of flexibility in the implementation process compared to other CMS like SharePoint
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Adobe
Implementation was a snap
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Alternatives Considered
Adobe
SSO is one fits all, so we don't have to have a separate SSO for each application of Adobe The integration with Analytics works perfectly and bring directly value really quickly Target remains more complicated to set up, but can also bring a lot of value once integrated with the rest of the Adobe platform The fact that the solution is Cloud services is also a big advantage for maintenance
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Adobe
Before XD came to the company, screens were designed in Illustrator or Photoshop and a PDF presentation was generated, which was extremely time-consuming. XD saved us a lot of time (and money) by generating interactive prototypes, which are much more tangible for the client than a PDF. The "fight" with Figma is frequent. Both have features in which they are better than their competition. And, while I still choose Adobe XD, don't rule out moving to Figma with its multiple updates.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Adobe
Instead of being directly involved in the tool purchase, I am involved in analysis or what we can use to maximize the tool. Small organizations may find it expensive. However, if the team or organization focuses more on your ROI or the features you will get, then it will definitely be worth it. Pricing is based on a number of factors, including team size or the use of the tool. The user can select the pricing option that best fits their needs based on the number of form submissions they make or the number of pages they wish to publish on their global/multisite sites.
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Adobe
No answers on this topic
Professional Services
Adobe
The professional services team within adobe is one of the best in terms of technical and solutioning knowledge. However, considering the billing charges of adobe professional services team, it is always recommended to involve them during platform initial setup or when a complex solution is to be built with platform customizations.
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Adobe
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Adobe
  • too soon to tell on increased conversion rates based on external marketing factors in play but having increased visibility into customer engagement trends will most likely lead to improvement of our conversion rates.
  • There have been productivity gains from the perspective of actually migrating all of our externally managed sites to the same in-house Adobe Experience Manager platform and then being able to utilize those universal components.
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Adobe
  • Ease of use means we are up and running in no time.
  • Integrates and is a part of the Adobe CC platform (which we already subscribe to) so there was no additional cost.
  • Online proofing and developer handoff links are the icing on the cake. Keeps everything in one place.
  • Handles all our assets (mostly created in Illustrator) like a dream. Even imports native Photoshop docs, too, so that saves us so much time round tripping.
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ScreenShots

Adobe Experience Manager Screenshots

Screenshot of AEM Forms - Creates an adaptive formScreenshot of AEM Forms - themes libraryScreenshot of AEM Forms - where to create a templateScreenshot of AEM Forms - the interactive communications editorScreenshot of Adobe Experience Manager Sites - document-based authoring enables marketers to create and publish content with familiar tools.Screenshot of Adobe Experience Manager Sites - Universal Editor, an advanced visual editor, empowers marketers to edit and publish content.