Adobe Experience Manager vs. Progress Sitefinity vs. Umbraco CMS

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.

Incentivized

Progress Sitefinity remains a little heavyweight for sites that require basic text content, or a limited number of pages. However, its flexibility (including the range of different content types if supports) make it a good choice for any organization requiring advanced content management capabilities at an affordable price.

Incentivized

Umbraco CMS is the perfect tool for a company that is looking to keep their website updated. The simple to use tools and templates means updating and creating new pages is easy. The WYSIWYG editor is a nice feature, however, for accessibility, there should be some more guidance on what is suitable to be used on the CMS.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• 'Low-code structured content' (dynamic content types) is one of Sitefinity's most powerful features that allows you to structure content according to business needs, while at the same time dampening editorial freedom to ensure accessibility, meta enhancement, SEO and API consumption can be achieved.
• Sitefinity's content provider model allows us to flexibly (by means of admin interface) easily aggregate or separate content sharing within a multi-site instance.
• This proofs particularly powerful in emerging situations where there suddenly is a demand for content sharing across countries or regions.
• Adaptability at its core.
• While there's never a perfect fit for everything, it allows for easy code customization and extension being a .NET application at heart. Giving it a corporate edge over other custom solutions, whether it is on the development side or deployment side (on premise, IaaS or Azure DevOps Paas). And it has enabled us to put the system to use in its core feature - which is to manage content, where on other occasions we were able to take full advantage of its features such as A/B testing and personalization.

• Quick to learn. For most if cases, developer needs to know Razor coding.
• Doesn't require back-end programming.
• Has build in users management (developers, content managers) and members management consoles (users of the site).
• Clear admin tool (especially in version 7)
• Fast.
• Creating code from scratch, so it is easier to create clean code.

• Can sometimes be difficult to troubleshoot bugs/issues as they arise
• Sometimes difficult to set up restrictions on how components can be designed to make sure they fit in with existing content
• While the integration with Adobe target works fairly well, the process can be a bit opaque and hard to understand, making it difficult to troubleshoot when issues arise

Incentivized

• Diagram or illustrate more use cases for server setups, and managing of upgrades.
• I'd like to see the ability to synchronize from one server to multiple others at once.
• Implementation assistance as part of the purchase rather than farming out to 3rd party, although they did answer every question we asked in order to determine our best architecture setup.

Incentivized

• Speed for older sites - Umbraco content can load slowly if you have thousands of pages of content. Of course, this would not be a problem for simpler websites
• Complexity - since the product is free out-of-the-box, it will take technical expertise to get Umbraco setup properly

Incentivized

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.

Pricing makes this a no brainer. Not the best CMS, but with work arounds and some fumbling around we are able to make it do what we want it to do

Incentivized

It depends if it is from an administrator point of view or from a business content author point of view. I think from business author point of view the solution is good and with the GEN AI capabilities coming it is doing better and better, however from an administration point of view there are still a lot of improvements to ease the maintenance of user access management and as well as the integration configuration aspect.

Incentivized

Very big fan of this CMS, as it allows scalability, performance, and everything else. The support is great whenever we need it. As a marketer, the digital/marketing side of things is very easy to use and we've seen strong results from an SEO and marketing perspective. I can't speak to the developer/creative side too much, but in talking with these teams, they do recommend the tool as well.

Incentivized

Umbraco CMS effectively addresses enterprise content management needs. It's quite mature .NET based CMS, standing out as a leader among its competitors. Websites built with Umbraco are blazing fast. Extensive customization capabilities, and user-friendly content publishing interface makes it an ideal choice for businesses looking for a mature CMS solution.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Has been solid for us on availability

Occasionally, errors will appear in the admin that make it impossible to work without developer support.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

A bit sluggish sometimes as the compiler works.

Working in the admin panel (adding / reviewing / editing content) is very slow. The public facing site speed is dependent on what the pages are doing and how well the code was written (whether it is optimized for speed).

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Support can be pretty good, even though, depending on the level of licensing, it can take longer to hear back from their team. They do have a phone option, which works well. Overall, they are knowledgeable, and helpful when needed. At times, support is able to access the system directly and troubleshoot critical items when needed.

Support for Umbraco-owned paid plugins is nonexistent.

Incentivized

Online training is often based on older versions of the platform. So, you'll have to fill in the gaps on your own.

Incentivized

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

N/A - I was not part of the implementation team. We have had this internally for over 5 years. Based on my experience, ensure that you have documentation on the initial implementation and subsequent upgrades. I would also recommend to have all the documentation on how and why the system was implemented the way it was

Incentivized

Spend the time to wireframe the content structure prior to diving in. This helps speed the process of implementation and it serves as documentation for end users.

Incentivized

Overall, I prefer AEM as an enterprise site management tool. It allows levels of access control and delegation, while leaving the server management and updates to a specialized team. I do miss the flexibility of being able to search and replace that I have in a WordPress site, and I miss the ability to have one file for redirects like I had in percussion

Incentivized

It is hands down just easier for our customers to use. The interface and the page builder experience is much better than what we have used in the past and has many enterprise features even in the lower price-point

Incentivized

Umbraco's templating is far superior than WordPress, Drupal and Joomla, but it's update process is WAY behind those platforms. The release schedule of Umbraco is way to often and most releases are to fix something missed in the previous release and not an improvement or new feature of the CMS

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.

Incentivized

Seems pretty scalable.

Without significant development, the product does not scale well.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Sitefinity has reduced the amount of time it takes to edit and publish content, which has enabled us to get information out more quickly.
• Sitefinity allowed us to establish a consistent and modern brand identity and apply it across multiple websites.

Incentivized

• Has helped us to create more engaging pages that push people to complete the online forms
• We have seen more people buy from us since we launched our new look website
• We can easily update the content without waiting for the development team to make changes

Incentivized