Adobe Experience Manager vs. WordPress

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Experience Manager
Score 8.0 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
WordPress
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Wordpress is an open-source publishing platform popular with bloggers, and a content management system, known for its simplicity and modifiability. Websites may host their own blogging communities, controlling and moderating content from a single dashboard.N/A
Pricing
Adobe Experience ManagerWordPress
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe Experience ManagerWordPress
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 ManagerWordPress
Considered Both Products
Adobe Experience Manager
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
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 …
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
AEM exceeds WordPress on customizability. It is the backbone for the many modules and APIs we need to run our business.
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
WordPress is easier to understand and use than AEM, and the cost is less compared to AEM. WordPress is better with iOS and Android, but AEM is better for larger applications.
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
Adobe Experience Manager has more robust features than WordPress or Oracle. It also has powerful integrations with other Adobe products in the Experience Cloud and Creative Cloud, which make it a very comprehensive marketing tool solution. Its ability to handle communities of …
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
I've done numerous implementations using WordPress (a free open source CMS that many medium sized companies are leveraging) and found that it's really awkward for non-technical users. Adobe Experience Manager is a much more friendly piece of software for managing large and …
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
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 …
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
You don´t need to constantly update or add new "plugins" to editor. You just need to set up the style of your page and then you can start to populate content. The integration with e-commerce was made by It team but it works fine with other internal systems on the company.
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
I think AEM is more robust for an enterprise-sized company. It has more security around it, and then definitely you have to have enough knowledge to be able to use it and then interact. It enables a lot of the integration with other third-party tools. So we use Salesforce and …
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
I can’t even compare. You pay for what you get, and Adobe has a wealth of knowledge and features that separate it from its competitors. All their products easily integrate and support their ecosystem.
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
AEM provides a sustainable quality of work that goes long-lasting, and we don't need to worry about future updates as AEM gives time-to-time security, patch, and platform updates. Not only updates, AEM introduces new features every now and then, which not only encourage its …
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
Adobe Experience Manager proofs to be the right solution for large corporations with multiple business units and brands, since most of the functionalities are oriented to that. Other similar tools are more basic with regards to the available options and are also not that …
Chose Adobe Experience Manager
eZ Platform was found to be open while having set template structure but the costs soon ramped up while scaling it to enterprise level, while integrating other platforms including a number of Adobe products proved difficult with compromises to be had along the way - Adobe …
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
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.
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
I would say that Adobe CQ and WordPress come in neck and neck. They both have easy to understand dashboards, and both require a knowledge of a specific programming language. If you are more comfortable with JSP and Java, Adobe CQ is right for you; if you are more of a PHP …
WordPress
Chose WordPress
WordPress is much more user-friendly than systems such as AEM and Oracle, and thus more accessible and easy to onboard people to. It is also much more budget-friendly. WordPress is the most widely-used CMS on the market for a reason. WordPress does lack the power and other …
Chose WordPress
We selected WordPress because of the community, flexibility, and cost. With the main reason being the community and support system that exists. This means we can find talent to make custom plugins, customize themes, and maintain the website easily and on a reasonable budget.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Adobe Experience ManagerWordPress
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
8.4
38 Ratings
6% above category average
WordPress
8.2
127 Ratings
2% above category average
Role-based user permissions8.438 Ratings8.2127 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
8.0
33 Ratings
1% above category average
WordPress
6.4
104 Ratings
18% below category average
API7.829 Ratings6.394 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language8.129 Ratings6.679 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
7.5
38 Ratings
0% above category average
WordPress
8.1
133 Ratings
6% above category average
WYSIWYG editor7.433 Ratings8.3120 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness6.734 Ratings7.3121 Ratings
Admin section7.034 Ratings8.6131 Ratings
Page templates7.637 Ratings8.3128 Ratings
Library of website themes7.326 Ratings8.5130 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design7.835 Ratings8.6129 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.135 Ratings8.5125 Ratings
Form generator7.629 Ratings6.3104 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
7.3
37 Ratings
5% above category average
WordPress
7.9
131 Ratings
7% above category average
Content taxonomy7.731 Ratings7.0113 Ratings
SEO support7.133 Ratings8.2118 Ratings
Bulk management7.136 Ratings7.5100 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions7.534 Ratings8.5121 Ratings
Community / comment management7.130 Ratings8.5120 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Adobe Experience ManagerWordPress
Small Businesses
Progress Sitefinity
Progress Sitefinity
Score 7.7 out of 10
Divi
Divi
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Adobe Experience ManagerWordPress
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(83 ratings)
8.9
(169 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.8
(6 ratings)
9.4
(36 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(48 ratings)
9.6
(16 ratings)
Availability
8.6
(5 ratings)
9.5
(3 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(5 ratings)
8.6
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
7.4
(11 ratings)
10.0
(10 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.7
(2 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
9.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe Experience ManagerWordPress
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.
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Automattic
If your business relies heavily on content creation, and particularly on blog posts, then WordPress is really the best option you have. But if you don't have a blog, you only need static pages, or you want to build an eCommerce site, then you might want to explore other alternatives.
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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.
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Automattic
  • WordPress is incredibly easy to set up and get running with little to no technical knowledge. Most web hosts will do it for you, since it's so easy.
  • With thousands of themes available for free and for low cost, WordPress can accommodate any design you can imagine.
  • The community behind WordPress is generous, and there are loads of educational opportunities both online and in person to learn and connect with other users.
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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Automattic
  • WordPress breaks often so you need to have someone who understands how to troubleshoot, which can take time and money.
  • Some plugins are easier to customize than others, for example, some don't require any coding knowledge while others do. This can limit your project if you are not a coder.
  • WordPress can be easily hacked, so you also need someone who can ensure your sites are secure.
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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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Automattic
My rating is based on the knowledge I have of the community that WordPress has had built around it for years now. It's as solid as it comes when you talk about community involvement and expansion. There's no other CMS out there that can match-up with it, hands down.
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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.
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Automattic
It's a sophisticated but easy to use piece of software. Many of the content addition pieces are familiar from other pieces of software so there isn't a huge learning curve. And for new areas, there is a lot of info on WordPress.org as well as other WordPress help sites.
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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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Automattic
Anyone can visit WordPress.org and download a fully functional copy of WordPress free of charge. Additionally, WordPress is offered to users as open-source software, which means that anyone can customize the code to create new applications and make these available to other WordPress users.
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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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Automattic
Mostly, any performance issues have to do with using too many plugins and these can sometimes slow down the overall performance of your site. It is very tempting to start adding lots of plugins to your WordPress site, however, as there are thousands of great plugins to choose from and so many of them help you do amazing things on your site. If you begin to notice performance issues with your WordPress site (e.g. pages being slow to load), there are ways to optimize the performance of your site, but this requires learning the process. WordPress users can learn how to optimize their WordPress sites by downloading the WPTrainMe WordPress training plugin (WPTrainMe.com) and going through the detailed step-by-step WordPress optimization tutorials.
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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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Automattic
WordPress itself only has community service so your experience will depend on where you turn. Online, through forums and community boards, support is rudimentary but effective. You can easily turn to your local community and find exceptional individuals who know and use WordPress regularly for more advanced, inexpensive, support. I'm rating this less than 10 because of the lack of any formal support provided by a company.
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In-Person Training
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Automattic
Varies by the person providing training. High marks as it's incredibly easy to find experienced individuals in your community to provide training on any aspect of WordPress from content marketing, SEO, plugin development, theme design, etc. Less than 10 though as the training is community based and expectations for a session you find may fall short.
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Online Training
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Automattic
It is very easy to find online resources to learn how to do just about anything with WordPress.
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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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Automattic
WordPress is not a great solution if you have: 1) A larger site with performance / availability requirements. 2) Multiple types of content you want to share - each with its own underlying data structure. 3) Multiple sites you need to manage. For very small sites where these needs are not paramount, WordPress is a decent solution
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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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Automattic
We have considered and operated within Shopify and Squarespace. Both serve their purpose for niche clients, but we do recommend WordPress as being the superior option. We find that WordPress is easier to use and offers maximum scalability while the others are more challenging to design, code, configure and launch.
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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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Automattic
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Adobe
No answers on this topic
Automattic
WordPress is completely scalable. You can get started immediately with a very simple "out-of-the box" WordPress installation and then add whatever functionality you need as and when you need it, and continue expanding. Often we will create various WordPress sites on the same domain to handle different aspects of our strategy (e.g. one site for the sales pages, product information and/or a marketing blog, another for delivering products securely through a private membership site, and another for running an affiliate program or other application), and then ties all of these sites together using a common theme and links on each of the site's menus. Additionally, WordPress offers a multisite function that allows organizations and institutions to manage networks of sites managed by separate individual site owners, but centrally administered by the parent organization. You can also expand WordPress into a social networking or community site, forums, etc. The same scalability applies to web design. You can start with a simple design and then scale things up to display sites with amazing visual features, including animations and video effects, sliding images and animated product image galleries, elements that appear and fade from visitor browsers, etc. The scaling possibilities of WordPress are truly endless.
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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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Automattic
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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Automattic
  • WordPress helps us reduce website management costs because we can oversee updates in-house.
  • WordPress is easy to use, reducing the amount of time we spend on website management.
  • The ease of use enables us to offer website management for clients, helping us grow our capabilities/business.
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ScreenShots