Adobe Experience Manager vs. Sitecore Digital Experience Platform

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
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
The Sitecore Experience Platform (Sitecore XP) is a digital experience platform used to build websites and create customer experiences online. The solution boasts fast content authoring, built-in personalization features, testing and other optimizations, as well as analytics and marketing features.N/A
Pricing
Adobe Experience ManagerSitecore Digital Experience Platform
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe Experience ManagerSitecore Digital Experience Platform
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 ManagerSitecore Digital Experience Platform
Considered Both Products
Adobe Experience Manager
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
We have selected Adobe Experience Manager for its unified compliance-ready tool kit (e.g AI-driven personalization, RBI- compliant multilingual templates) and enterprise scalability.
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
End to end capabilities as well as integrations with upstream and downstream systems to make work flows, easier and faster time to market
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
They all do the same thing pretty much, but we are on the Adobe architecture so it made sense to go with AEM
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
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
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
It really comes down to how much money you are willing to spend (Adobe is more) and the skill set of your developers (Sitecore is .NET vs. Adobe is Java).
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
Of all the different CMS tools I have used and implemented, Adobe Experience Manager (CQ) is the most robust and feature-full. The reliance on Apache Technologies was a real smart decision for CQ's architecture which ensured future scalability, testability and extensibility.
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
Features
Adobe Experience ManagerSitecore Digital Experience Platform
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
8.4
38 Ratings
2% above category average
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
9.6
32 Ratings
15% above category average
Role-based user permissions8.438 Ratings9.632 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
8.0
33 Ratings
3% below category average
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
9.7
29 Ratings
16% above category average
API7.829 Ratings9.928 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language8.129 Ratings9.526 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
7.5
38 Ratings
2% above category average
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
8.7
32 Ratings
17% above category average
WYSIWYG editor7.433 Ratings8.232 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness6.734 Ratings8.530 Ratings
Admin section7.034 Ratings8.631 Ratings
Page templates7.637 Ratings9.229 Ratings
Library of website themes7.326 Ratings8.417 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design7.835 Ratings8.528 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.135 Ratings8.930 Ratings
Form generator7.629 Ratings9.429 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
7.3
37 Ratings
6% above category average
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
8.9
31 Ratings
25% above category average
Content taxonomy7.731 Ratings9.229 Ratings
SEO support7.133 Ratings8.827 Ratings
Bulk management7.236 Ratings8.825 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions7.534 Ratings8.529 Ratings
Community / comment management7.130 Ratings9.127 Ratings
Results and Analysis
Comparison of Results and Analysis features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
-
Ratings
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
7.5
11 Ratings
6% below category average
Conversion tracking00 Ratings7.710 Ratings
Test reporting00 Ratings7.511 Ratings
Funnel Analysis00 Ratings7.211 Ratings
User Segmentation00 Ratings7.511 Ratings
Digital Experience Platform
Comparison of Digital Experience Platform features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
-
Ratings
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
8.1
13 Ratings
11% below category average
Campaign management00 Ratings7.813 Ratings
Cloud enablement00 Ratings8.413 Ratings
Content aggregation00 Ratings8.313 Ratings
Content classification00 Ratings8.313 Ratings
Multi-channel content personalization00 Ratings7.913 Ratings
Customer data analytics00 Ratings7.412 Ratings
DXP Third-Party Integrations00 Ratings7.613 Ratings
Multi-website management00 Ratings8.712 Ratings
Digital asset management00 Ratings8.313 Ratings
Editorial workflows and task management00 Ratings8.112 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Adobe Experience ManagerSitecore Digital Experience Platform
Small Businesses
Bloomreach - The Agentic Platform for Personalization
Bloomreach - The Agentic Platform for Personalization
Score 8.9 out of 10
Bloomreach - The Agentic Platform for Personalization
Bloomreach - The Agentic Platform for Personalization
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Adobe Experience ManagerSitecore Digital Experience Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(173 ratings)
9.2
(42 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(6 ratings)
8.2
(10 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(134 ratings)
9.0
(17 ratings)
Availability
8.6
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.2
(11 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.7
(2 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
9.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe Experience ManagerSitecore Digital Experience Platform
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.
Read full review
Sitecore
Sitecore offers Content Hub with Product Content Management and Content Management Platform. The Digital Experience Platform and Content Hub can both host structured content and publish the finalized version to Experience Edge. Both platforms offer different ways to manage content. During a technical and business evaluation, the evaluation panel must understand the difference between a Content Modelling focused approach, or a layout management focused approach. Sitecore Digital Experience Platform is also best not to be used to host many files and images in the Media Library. That responsibility should be offloaded to a digital asset management company like Sitecore Content Hub DAM. The technology evaluation panel must also understand how to work with a Headless CMS, where the HEAD needs to be hosted, and the costs associated with the HEAD. Composable DXP is fantastic, but everyone must understand the various cost components. Marketers and the data team will need to go into the CDP and Personalize the platform with an excellent understanding of how a composable "installation" works. All the Martech vendors have similar challenges that data and development teams need to work through with a full experience. Any CDP/analytics platform will, at some stage, require further data enrichment from other sources. Understanding the Sitecore Search features and limitations is also essential.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Sitecore
  • Comprehensive Solution: Sitecore offers a fully integrated suite of products that cover the full spectrum of DXP capabilities, including search, personalization experimentation and more, delivering a complete composable DXP solution for customers.
  • Beyond Headless: XM Cloud provides more than just headless capabilities, featuring in-built tools like authoring host, page editor, etc., enabling faster and more powerful implementations.
  • Focus on AI: Sitecore has now got an excellent AI offering called Stream; it looks promising; however, it would be too early to give feedback on the same.
  • Customization: Sitecore's backend is highly customizable, allowing for deep modifications through pipelines and patch configurations.
Read full review
Cons
Adobe
  • 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
Read full review
Sitecore
  • Experience Editor is a little old fashioned and sometimes slow to use.
  • Bulk operations in the Content Editor
  • Sitecore serialization is should be part of the Content Editor to provide visual reference for items which are serialized and will be overwritten by future deployments similar to what Unicorn does so well
Read full review
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
Sitecore
Sitecore has proven that it can deliver on its promise of a robust, reliable enterprise CMS solution with plenty of features. Also, they keep updating it with more and better features. Now that we are highly trained on it we have started on getting the most out of it and we plan to keep doing more of that in the future.
Read full review
Usability
Adobe
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.
Read full review
Sitecore
Once you learn how to use the platform and can put a solid strategy in place to manage it long-term, it becomes a lot easier to use. The tricky part is working with resources who are familiar with the platform to navigate some of the common implementation and configuration pitfalls. Although Sitecore has worked very hard to overcome some of these from their earlier product versions by creating wizards and improving their support documentation, at the end of the day it is still a very complex and powerful system that needs to be implemented carefully in order to foster the best possible user experience for authors. So it could be rated very usable or not usable at all based on how much planning took place and the quality of the implementation.
Read full review
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
Sitecore
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.
Read full review
Sitecore
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.
Read full review
Sitecore
1. Customized software development & maintenance. 2. Technology Consulting - Consulting-based services for technology solutions data engineering or cloud solutions. 3. Used for tapping into multiple data sources such as CRM and marketing automation systems and, creating automated data extracts with a high-end visual representation of data. 4. Implemented for scheduling an existing report to automatically refresh and be delivered to specific users at a specific regular interval.
Read full review
Online Training
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Sitecore
Sitecore captures and remembers every single interaction your customers and prospects have in any part of the system, allowing you to build comprehensive, ever-learning profiles of each individual. From email marketing, to social media, to online shopping, Sitecore remembers where each interaction left off so you can automatically continue the conversation. Sitecore helps you manage your content for each and every experience your customers enjoy. Customize what content you want and the system will take care of how it's displayed.
Read full review
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
Read full review
Sitecore
Make sure you work with a partner that can help you take advantage of the entire platform. Specifically we see a lot of customers not taking advantage of Sitecore DMS and thus missing a huge opportunity. Sitecore is a platform that is meant to be constantly optimized and improved upon.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Adobe
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
Read full review
Sitecore
Sitefinity is improving but at the time of decision making it had nothing that could compare with the A/B testing and personalisation features that Sitecore offers. This was a key differentiator and ultimately ensured Sitecore was purchased. WordPress isn't really comparable and isn't within our technology stack, which is mostly Microsoft.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Sitecore
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.
Read full review
Sitecore
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.
Read full review
Sitecore
  • ROI depends on what features the customer wants to leverage from Sitecore. Sitecore is not just a CMS. It's CEP platform which comes with Analytics, Personalization, A/B Testing, and Email for marketers modules etc., out of the box.
  • Based on my experience some of the customers lean towards third party services. This is primarily due to lack of the understanding of these features. If a customer leverages these out of the box features ROI will be high. It depends on how much is being [sent] to third parties services.
  • Sitecore has very good accelerators in the market. These accelerators allows you to create response sites very quickly. If a simple campaign site takes 50K to build the site may save at least 50% of that cost. Examples of site accelerators are Brainjocks, Keystone, Cognifide etc.
Read full review
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.