Adobe Experience Manager vs. Drupal

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Experience Manager
Score 8.1 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
Drupal
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Drupal is a free, open-source content management system written in PHP that competes primarily with Joomla and Plone. The standard release of Drupal, known as Drupal core, contains basic features such as account and menu management, RSS feeds, page layout customization, and system administration.N/A
Pricing
Adobe Experience ManagerDrupal
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe Experience ManagerDrupal
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 ManagerDrupal
Considered Both Products
Adobe Experience Manager
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
Flawless management of digital assets and content supporting personalized content delivery. Seamless navigation and user experience on AEM platform WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor makes AEM stands out from the crowd which is not available in the Drupal Headless …
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
Adobe Experience Manager is an enterprise digital marketing platform that has an edge over other CMS platforms in multiple ways 1. Easy content authoring 2. Pre-defined authoring and publishing workflows 3. In-built multi-site authoring 4. Support for multi-lingual websites.
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
WordPress has been there in the market for a while but the impact Adobe Experience Manager is creating is so much better. The way to understand the shift in trend can be seen in big companies migrating to Adobe Experience Manager. In comparison to WordPress, the Adobe …
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
First of all, I would say the technological advancement it has. AEM consists of a comprehensive web content management system, including more marketing-friendly site templates, easy-to-use developer tools, and AI-powered content generation tools for [a] better customer …
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
The main reason why we acquired Adobe Experience Manager with a lot of peace of mind is that it has very good recommendations from other people, we took the exhaustive task of investigating very well its operation, advantages and disadvantages and from all the descriptions we …
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
Ease of setup and use makes Adobe Experience Manager one of the best content management systems that is available in the market. The fact that the underlying frameworks are largely open source, helps in facilitating third party integrations more seamlessly. The default options …
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
Much simpler than SharePoint and by far much easier to develop as well. Getting a unique look and feel into a SharePoint is like pulling teeth compared to Adobe Experience Manager. I also felt that the authoring experience was simpler and easier in Adobe Experience Manager as …
Drupal
Chose Drupal
Drupal is the king of enterprise opensource content management systems. It is the most robust and comes from the most forward thinking community. Drupal 8 is designed for the next evolution in web design and development. WordPress and Joomla! are stuck in the web 2.0 revolution …
Chose Drupal
It came down to budget which is why we normally target Drupal for small to mid-sized engagements.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Adobe Experience ManagerDrupal
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
7.7
38 Ratings
5% below category average
Drupal
9.9
65 Ratings
20% above category average
Role-based user permissions7.738 Ratings9.965 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
7.9
33 Ratings
2% above category average
Drupal
9.3
62 Ratings
18% above category average
API7.829 Ratings9.058 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language8.029 Ratings9.753 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
7.4
38 Ratings
3% below category average
Drupal
9.0
68 Ratings
17% above category average
WYSIWYG editor7.433 Ratings8.961 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness6.734 Ratings8.966 Ratings
Admin section6.934 Ratings8.868 Ratings
Page templates7.537 Ratings8.967 Ratings
Library of website themes7.226 Ratings8.658 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design7.735 Ratings9.663 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.235 Ratings8.467 Ratings
Form generator7.529 Ratings9.663 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
7.1
37 Ratings
4% below category average
Drupal
9.1
67 Ratings
21% above category average
Content taxonomy7.531 Ratings9.663 Ratings
SEO support6.933 Ratings8.962 Ratings
Bulk management7.036 Ratings9.659 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions7.334 Ratings8.761 Ratings
Community / comment management6.930 Ratings8.961 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Adobe Experience ManagerDrupal
Small Businesses
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 9.6 out of 10
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.4 out of 10
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.3 out of 10
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Adobe Experience ManagerDrupal
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(56 ratings)
9.2
(77 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(5 ratings)
8.2
(18 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(21 ratings)
10.0
(9 ratings)
Availability
8.6
(5 ratings)
9.7
(6 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(5 ratings)
8.9
(4 ratings)
Support Rating
7.2
(11 ratings)
5.0
(8 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
6.0
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.7
(4 ratings)
5.1
(8 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
9.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Professional Services
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe Experience ManagerDrupal
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
When it comes to maintaining and managing content and multiple web pages, it’s a fantastic tool that’s relatively easy to use. It is very intuitive and has a lot of great features for beginners, and can be customized for robust features. It may not be best suited for small companies with very simple websites, given the cost.
Read full review
Drupal.org
Well, I'm definitely biased, I've been working with Drupal for 12+ years, and I can say it's appropriate for any size/scale of a project, whether it's a small catalog website or a huge corporation. If I want to dial it down to a specific use case, Drupal is best what most customers/clients that have high-security standards, and need to have extensive editorial experience and control over their website's architecture. Due to its core design, Drupal can connect with each part of its own and any external third-party resources quite easily. For a less-suited scenario, I might say that if you don't have enough budget to get proper work done, sometimes just using WordPress with a pre-designed theme might sound better to you, but if you have the budget and the time, always go with Drupal
Read full review
Pros
Adobe
  • Content and assets are managed effectively with AEM, which allows team members to utilize this content effectively.
  • Moreover, as it is part of the Adobe suite, its integration with other Adobe products such as ACS is very easy and effective, compared with others.
  • Components availability
Read full review
Drupal.org
  • Content Types... these are amazing. Whereas a more simplistic CMS like Wordpress will basically allow you to make posts and build pages, Drupal 8 gives you the ability to define different types of content that behave differently, and are served up differently in different areas of the website.
  • Extensibility... it scales, ohhhh does it scale. They've really figured out server-side caching, and it makes all the difference. Once a page has been cached, it's available instantly to all users worldwide; and when coupled with AWS, global redundancy and localization mean that no matter where you're accessing the site, it always loads fast and crisp.
  • Workflows... you have the ability to define very specific roles and/or user-based editorial workflows, allowing for as many touchpoints and reviews between content creation and publication as you'll require.
Read full review
Cons
Adobe
  • The new Touch UI interface could use a lot of improvement. Many of it is smaller detail items/features, but when using the system extensively it can become cumbersome.
  • There is a bit of a learning curve because of the depth of what Adobe Experience Manager can do. Even basic editing and page creation, while relatively simple at the most basic level, is not as intuitive and easy to use as other systems like Wordpress.
  • Development can be complicated. Although I've not personally done much in terms of dev work, my experience and what I've heard from my colleagues indicates that there are some complexities that make it not as easy to develop in as other systems.
  • The source edit option within the rich text editor does not include syntax coloring for the code, or even a different serif/monospaced font. It is the same sans serif font as the regular rich text, which makes it hard to read.
Read full review
Drupal.org
  • Security and new release notifications are a hassle as they happen too often
  • Allowing them to write PHP modules is a big advantage, but sometimes integrating them is a small challenge due to the version the developer is working on.
  • Steep learning curve, but worth it
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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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Drupal.org
The time and money invested into this platform were too great to discontinue it at this point. I'm sure it will be in use for a while. We have also spent time training many employees how to use it. All of these things add up to quite an investment in the product. Lastly, it basically fulfills what we need our intranet site to do.
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Usability
Adobe
AEM provided me with a better experience in terms of deliveries, feedback, and progress tracking. It not only increases engagement but also provides us with various analytics of traffic visits, and the asset management is superb overall. By adding the minor details of assets, we can easily search them in the main search bar set on top of assets.
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Drupal.org
It's a great CMS platform and there are a ton of plugins to add some serious functionality, but the security updates are too complex to implement and considering the complexity of the platform, security updates are a must. I don't want my site breached because they make it too difficult to keep it up to date.
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Reliability and Availability
Adobe
When it comes to availability, adobe experience manager is the best with little to no downtime at least during business hours. Considering the enterprise scale and critical business solutions built on experience manager, availability was our primary requirement during CMS evaluation and adobe fits best on this parameter. If there's a planned upgrade, adobe would make sure they do it in non-business hours.
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Drupal.org
Drupal itself does not tend to have bugs that cause sporadic outages. When deployed on a well-configured LAMP stack, deployment and maintenance problems are minimal, and in general no exotic tuning or configuration is required. For highest uptime, putting a caching proxy like Varnish in front of Drupal (or a CDN that supports dynamic applications).
Read full review
Performance
Adobe
Page load time is important to me for search engine optimization reasons. I cannot say I have been particularly impressed by Adobe Experience Manager in this area so far. When using tools like Google's PageSpeed Insights, the reports received on our AEM pages have suggested there is a lot of room for improvement, especially when assessing mobile performance.
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Drupal.org
Drupal page loads can be slow, as a great many database calls may be required to generate a page. It is highly recommended to use caching systems, both built-in and external to lessen such database loads and improve performance. I haven't had any problems with behind-the-scenes integrations with external systems.
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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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Drupal.org
As noted earlier, the support of the community can be rather variable, with some modules attracting more attraction and action in their issue queues, but overall, the development community for Drupal is second to none. It probably the single greatest aspect of being involved in this open-source project.
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In-Person Training
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
I was part of the team that conducted the training. Our training was fine, but we could have been better informed on Drupal before we started providing it. If we did not have answers to tough questions, we had more technical staff we could consult with. We did provide hands-on practice time for the learners, which I would always recommend. That is where the best learning occurred.
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Online Training
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
The on-line training was not as ideal as the face-to-face training. It was done remotely and only allowed for the trainers to present information to the learners and demonstrate the platform online. There was not a good way to allow for the learners to practice, ask questions and have them answered all in the same session.
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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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Drupal.org
Plan ahead as much you can. You really need to know how to build what you want with the modules available to you, or that you might need to code yourself, in order to make the best use of Drupal. I recommend you analyze the most technically difficult workflows and other aspects of your implementation, and try building some test versions of those first. Get feedback from stakeholders early and often, because you can easily find yourself in a situation where your implementation does 90% of what you want, but, due to something you didn't plan for, foresee, or know about, there's no feasible way to get past the last 10%
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Alternatives Considered
Adobe
I think AEM is specific to the client's needs and is not necessarily comparable to all other platforms. However, when compared feature to feature I think AEM many times is a leader in the industry. While WordPress has progressed in the WYSIWYG interface it is not there still today and this is truly where AEM shines against all of the other CMS platforms.
Read full review
Drupal.org
Drupal is community-backed making it more accessible and growing at a faster rate than Sitefinity which is a proprietary product built on .NET. Drupal is PHP-based using some but not all Symphony codebase. Updates for Drupal are frequent and so are feature adds.
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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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Drupal.org
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
Drupal is well known to be scalable, although it requires solid knowledge of MySQL best practices, caching mechanisms, and other server-level best practices. I have never personally dealt with an especially large site, so I can speak well to the issues associated with Drupal scaling.
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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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Drupal.org
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Adobe
  • We have been able to meet our first objective of rolling out a site to replace our current Students site well within time parameters
  • We were able to deploy the site to replace our County Offices within three months, and the users have been able to turn out acceptable content
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Drupal.org
  • Drupal has allowed us to build up a library of code and base sites we can reuse to save time which has increased our efficiency and thus had a positive financial impact.
  • Drupal has allowed us to take on projects we otherwise would not have been able to, having a further impact.
  • Drupal has allowed us to build great solutions for our clients which give them an excellent ROI.
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ScreenShots