Adobe Experience Manager vs. Optimizely Web Experimentation

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Experience Manager
Score 7.9 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
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Optimizely Web Experimentation empowers teams to conduct experiments (without having to rely on developer resources) in order to test various user interactions, make website changes backed by data, and personalize customer experiences.N/A
Pricing
Adobe Experience ManagerOptimizely Web Experimentation
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe Experience ManagerOptimizely Web Experimentation
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe Experience ManagerOptimizely Web Experimentation
Considered Both Products
Adobe Experience Manager
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
This tool was not very helpful. We switched to unbounce since Experience Manager was not a complete solution. Our team members have worked with several of these tools and found this one to be the least comprehensive.
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
We use AEM so Adobe Target would be a natural choice, it integrates naturally with the Experience Fragments and all the content we already hold there. However - with extensions - we've been able to unlock a similar workflow to be able to seamlessly test. Optimizely has the …
Chose Optimizely Web Experimentation
Significantly easier user-inferface, and ability for folks throughout an organization to use and report on.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Adobe Experience ManagerOptimizely Web Experimentation
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
8.4
38 Ratings
5% above category average
Optimizely Web Experimentation
-
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
Optimizely Web Experimentation
-
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
1% below category average
Optimizely Web Experimentation
-
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
3% above category average
Optimizely Web Experimentation
-
Ratings
Content taxonomy7.731 Ratings00 Ratings
SEO support7.133 Ratings00 Ratings
Bulk management7.136 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions7.534 Ratings00 Ratings
Community / comment management7.130 Ratings00 Ratings
Testing and Experimentation
Comparison of Testing and Experimentation features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
-
Ratings
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.0
92 Ratings
7% below category average
a/b experiment testing00 Ratings9.392 Ratings
Split URL testing00 Ratings8.574 Ratings
Multivariate testing00 Ratings8.877 Ratings
Multi-page/funnel testing00 Ratings8.272 Ratings
Cross-browser testing00 Ratings7.450 Ratings
Mobile app testing00 Ratings7.638 Ratings
Test significance00 Ratings8.584 Ratings
Visual / WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings8.076 Ratings
Advanced code editor00 Ratings7.568 Ratings
Page surveys00 Ratings7.017 Ratings
Visitor recordings00 Ratings8.418 Ratings
Preview mode00 Ratings8.082 Ratings
Test duration calculator00 Ratings6.956 Ratings
Experiment scheduler00 Ratings8.154 Ratings
Experiment workflow and approval00 Ratings6.537 Ratings
Dynamic experiment activation00 Ratings7.434 Ratings
Client-side tests00 Ratings9.250 Ratings
Server-side tests00 Ratings9.119 Ratings
Mutually exclusive tests00 Ratings8.437 Ratings
Audience Segmentation & Targeting
Comparison of Audience Segmentation & Targeting features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
-
Ratings
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.6
86 Ratings
2% below category average
Standard visitor segmentation00 Ratings8.985 Ratings
Behavioral visitor segmentation00 Ratings8.365 Ratings
Traffic allocation control00 Ratings9.481 Ratings
Website personalization00 Ratings7.957 Ratings
Results and Analysis
Comparison of Results and Analysis features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
-
Ratings
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.3
84 Ratings
3% below category average
Heatmap tool00 Ratings9.113 Ratings
Click analytics00 Ratings8.733 Ratings
Scroll maps00 Ratings8.017 Ratings
Form fill analysis00 Ratings8.326 Ratings
Conversion tracking00 Ratings8.744 Ratings
Goal tracking00 Ratings8.473 Ratings
Test reporting00 Ratings8.176 Ratings
Results segmentation00 Ratings8.048 Ratings
CSV export00 Ratings7.648 Ratings
Experiments results dashboard00 Ratings8.049 Ratings
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User Ratings
Adobe Experience ManagerOptimizely Web Experimentation
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(83 ratings)
8.7
(177 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.8
(6 ratings)
8.5
(45 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(48 ratings)
9.0
(57 ratings)
Availability
8.6
(5 ratings)
10.0
(7 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(5 ratings)
7.3
(6 ratings)
Support Rating
7.4
(11 ratings)
10.0
(16 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.7
(2 ratings)
8.0
(11 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
9.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(89 ratings)
Professional Services
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe Experience ManagerOptimizely Web Experimentation
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
So one of the primary focuses in the company has been SEO, and it does not seem well suited to SEO. For instance, how we set up the alt image tags. It's pretty tricky and there are multiple steps to do that. So I would like to see an Adobe Experience Manager that is more focused on out-of-the-box solutions for SEO, schema coding, alt image tags, and other sorts of SEO functionality to have that more built into the vanilla version of the product. Well suited? It's very good at scalability. And because we're managing such a large number of hotel properties, it works well for an enterprise.
Read full review
Optimizely
This is our second testing platform, and is by far the best we have leveraged. Its intuitive in how you are able to build tests. Tracking is easy to set up within the visual editor or as a capability in URL tracking. The reporting tab does need more filtering capabilities for custom metrics.
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Pros
Adobe
  • It is able to support our incoming volume. We're one of the largest in what we do in the country, and we've not had any issues in terms of how it performs, or how it scales our customers coming in. It's a fairly stable platform. It is also a very intuitive platform in us being able to give our business users the ability to come make changes and request additions without going through a huge lift in getting those requests implemented. It has also been a very developer-friendly platform for my team to be able to develop, adapt, and build. We're also expanding on being able to use AEM both as a pure content management solution and also as a headless content solution. So that way we are trying to build a unified content platform that would allow us to create, publish, and manage content across channels from one place. So it's fairly intuitive that way. It's fairly scalable. Obviously, the modern tooling helps, but overall I think it's been a good experience.
Read full review
Optimizely
  • Considers every kind of experiment from simple code change, code additions, code removal, javascript functions, CSS changes, and split landing redirects.
  • Very friendly UC interface for easy navigation of implementation of pages, click events, experiment set up, and metric set up.
  • The ability to let me know when something has reach stat sig without having to do complicated math on my own
  • ability to carry UTM parameters through landing page redirects with a click of a button.
Read full review
Cons
Adobe
  • I think some of the key things that can be done better is today we have more point solutions for different things like personalization. We have Adobe Target and for email marketing, we have Adobe Campaign Marketer and all that kind of stuff. But truly I have worked both as an implementation partner for Adobe as well as now I'm a client of Adobe. Being in both those shoes, I can say that we can do a lot better in terms of beefing up the capabilities of AEM, bringing personalization and search and content search experience closer together. It would definitely put Adobe Experience Manager in a different league if we can bring all those personalization capabilities together. I think initially the content management systems, the market was mostly meant to serve static sites. It never matured into that full-scale content personalization being married together. I think that's one area where if those integrations rather than being point solutions, if those capabilities can be made more native to AEM, I think it would definitely be a big sell for a lot of customers.
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Optimizely
  • Hard to use extensions without some knowledge of HTML/CSS
  • Inconsistent user counts between GA & Optimizely when it comes to calculating MAUs, hard to be able to forecast budget and overages when our source of truth (GA) differs from our testing platform (Optimizely)
  • Impressions model doesn't support scaling personalization experiences - hard to run a serious data driven testing program when you have to cut tests short before 14 days (ideal length to get to any statistical read) in order to save on impressions
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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.
Read full review
Optimizely
Because it's an incredible and essential tool for my line of work as a conversion optimization specialist. Really couldn't do my job nearly as effectively without it. It's paid for itself many times over and I feel like I'm only beginning to unlock the tools potential.
Read full review
Usability
Adobe
From our learning curve until we got better. I'd say as we're moving forward and we're making more customizations and we're getting used to it, I'd say it's about a seven or an eight. But as more innovations and more information comes out from Adobe as they make more changes and they make improvements, I'd say they're getting probably about an eight right now.
Read full review
Optimizely
Usability is mostly great. I like the WYSIWYG functionality and adding in real code is simple as well. It's easy to target specific pages or audiences. I've knocked a couple of points off because of how difficult it is to set up URL redirect experiments, confusion around creating pages, and lack of data that can be further analyzed.
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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.
Read full review
Optimizely
I would rate Optimizely Web Experimentation's availability as a 10 out of 10. The software is reliable and does not experience any application errors or unplanned outages. Additionally, the customer service and technical support teams are always available to help with any issues or questions.
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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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Optimizely
I would rate Optimizely Web Experimentation's performance as a 9 out of 10. Pages load quickly, reports are complete in a reasonable time frame, and the software does not slow down any other software or systems that it integrates with. Additionally, the customer service and technical support teams are always available to help with any issues or questions.
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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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Optimizely
They always are quick to respond, and are so friendly and helpful. They always answer the phone right away. And [they are] always willing to not only help you with your problem, but if you need ideas they have suggestions as well.
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Online Training
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
The tool itself is not very difficult to use so training was not very useful in my opinion. It did not also account for success events more complex than a click (which my company being ecommerce is looking to examine more than a mere click).
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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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Optimizely
In retrospect: - I think I should have stressed more demo's / workshopping with the Optimizely team at the start. I felt too confident during demo stages, and when came time to actually start, I was a bit lost. (The answer is likely I should have had them on-hand for our first install.. they offered but I thought I was OK.) - Really getting an understanding / asking them prior to install of how to make it really work for checkout pages / one that uses dynamic content or user interaction to determine what the UI does. Could have saved some time by addressing this at the beginning, as some things we needed to create on our site for Optimizely to "use" as a trigger for the variation test. - Having a number of planned/hoped-for tests already in-hand before working with Optimizely team. Sharing those thoughts with them would likely have started conversations on additional things we needed to do to make them work (rather than figuring that out during the actual builds). Since I had development time available, I could have added more things to the baseline installation since my developers were already "looking under the hood" of the site.
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Alternatives Considered
Adobe
At Canadian Tire Financial, in the time I've been there, we've always used AEM, but in past places I've used WordPress, I've used Squarespace. Things that are more general user-friendly where you're like building your own blog or you're creating a small business website where it's basically just text, you're not intaking information or something like that. I think the customization options in AEM are huge. My experiences with WordPress were pretty straightforward. Again, it was like, I don't know, like college newspaper website or something like that where you're just like putting content up for people to look at. You're not necessarily taking in any other information. Maybe you might allow people to log in or something and save articles or something pretty straightforward, but then even then I remember that stuff taking me forever to do, to figure out and scroll through tons and tons and tons of documentation. It's just not fun. No one enjoys doing that and then even then you might not have the answer available to you. And that's so frustrating. Hey, it's super user-friendly, figuring out the content editor is pretty straightforward. You're not clicking around and being, "what the heck am I looking at?" Or you're not looking at a bazillion menus to be like, "maybe the thing I want is in here." I can't stand that. I want to be able to look at a page, see what I'm going to be getting in production, and then publish it. I don't want to look around in menus to figure out how to add something to a page.
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Optimizely
Overall, the tools we compared against were great, but we went with Optimizely because it has all the features we needed and has the market leadership that gave us trust we would be successful in our experimentation efforts.
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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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Optimizely
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
While granted, I am not the one making the changes to deploy the software; it seems basically as simple as placing the optimized snippet on your site. If you place it in the header, it should reach across your entire site easily. I do think the test setup can be a bit temperamental at times, and having too many cooks in the kitchen can lead to errors. So, I would caution how many people have the access needed to make actual changes.
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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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Optimizely
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Adobe
  • This actually has been great for our websites. In the time that I've been with the company, we've seen at least the profitability of our websites because we are measuring that through analytics. We've seen it double since using it. We were using it when I first started with the company, but we've gotten better at how we're using it and really optimizing the use as well as the design. I think that that's made a huge difference. We've seen a huge jump in the performance of our websites with maintaining users and the e-commerce side of it.
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Optimizely
  • Customer retention: We've reduced subscription service client churn by 20%+ using optimized unsubscribe flows.
  • Risk mitigation: Testing into full site redesigns has saved clients millions of dollars.
  • Feature prioritization: Identifying what painted door changes add value has allowed developers to focus on changes that add hundreds of thousands or even millions to the bottom line.
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ScreenShots

Optimizely Web Experimentation Screenshots

Screenshot of the visual editor, used to make changes to the appearance and layout of a website.Screenshot of the results dashboard that displays experiment results.Screenshot of the integrations page, where integrations can be enabled.