Adobe Target vs. HCL Unica

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Target
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
Adobe Test and Target is an A/B, multi-variate testing platform which Adobe acquired as part of the Omniture platform in 2009. It is now part of the Adobe Marketing Cloud. It offers tight integration with Adobe analytics and content management products.N/A
HCL Unica
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
HCL Unica (acquired by HCL Technologies from IBM in late 2018) is a suite of enterprise marketing management tools including marketing automation with cross-channel campaign management, budgeting and forecasting, project workflow management, asset management, brand management and spend management.N/A
Pricing
Adobe TargetHCL Unica
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe TargetHCL Unica
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
Adobe TargetHCL Unica
Testing and Experimentation
Comparison of Testing and Experimentation features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Target
8.1
9 Ratings
6% below category average
HCL Unica
-
Ratings
a/b experiment testing8.59 Ratings00 Ratings
Split URL testing8.28 Ratings00 Ratings
Multivariate testing8.28 Ratings00 Ratings
Multi-page/funnel testing7.36 Ratings00 Ratings
Cross-browser testing8.65 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile app testing8.65 Ratings00 Ratings
Test significance7.69 Ratings00 Ratings
Visual / WYSIWYG editor7.78 Ratings00 Ratings
Advanced code editor8.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Page surveys7.84 Ratings00 Ratings
Visitor recordings8.24 Ratings00 Ratings
Preview mode8.28 Ratings00 Ratings
Test duration calculator8.18 Ratings00 Ratings
Experiment scheduler8.19 Ratings00 Ratings
Experiment workflow and approval7.96 Ratings00 Ratings
Dynamic experiment activation7.84 Ratings00 Ratings
Client-side tests8.57 Ratings00 Ratings
Server-side tests7.74 Ratings00 Ratings
Mutually exclusive tests8.28 Ratings00 Ratings
Audience Segmentation & Targeting
Comparison of Audience Segmentation & Targeting features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Target
8.4
9 Ratings
5% below category average
HCL Unica
-
Ratings
Standard visitor segmentation8.69 Ratings00 Ratings
Behavioral visitor segmentation8.28 Ratings00 Ratings
Traffic allocation control8.69 Ratings00 Ratings
Website personalization8.18 Ratings00 Ratings
Results and Analysis
Comparison of Results and Analysis features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Target
8.1
9 Ratings
5% below category average
HCL Unica
-
Ratings
Heatmap tool8.24 Ratings00 Ratings
Click analytics7.37 Ratings00 Ratings
Scroll maps7.84 Ratings00 Ratings
Form fill analysis8.74 Ratings00 Ratings
Conversion tracking8.28 Ratings00 Ratings
Goal tracking8.28 Ratings00 Ratings
Test reporting8.59 Ratings00 Ratings
Results segmentation8.28 Ratings00 Ratings
CSV export7.37 Ratings00 Ratings
Experiments results dashboard8.49 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Adobe TargetHCL Unica
Small Businesses
Convert Experiences
Convert Experiences
Score 9.5 out of 10
HubSpot Marketing Hub
HubSpot Marketing Hub
Score 8.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Kameleoon
Kameleoon
Score 9.5 out of 10
LeanData
LeanData
Score 9.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Kameleoon
Kameleoon
Score 9.5 out of 10
Adobe Marketing Cloud
Adobe Marketing Cloud
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Adobe TargetHCL Unica
Likelihood to Recommend
6.8
(36 ratings)
9.0
(15 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
6.3
(24 ratings)
8.7
(11 ratings)
Usability
1.1
(4 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Availability
6.1
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
3.5
(9 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
6.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.2
(5 ratings)
7.2
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe TargetHCL Unica
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
If you're using the Adobe stack and tools to power your website, Target is a great solution to implement. I've utilized Target within two organizations, one running on Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), and the other on Adobe Magento. I don't see how companies could harness the full capacity of Target without also having Adobe Analytics integrated. This is their 'secret sauce' and might not be a good solution for companies who are invested in Google Analytics 360. Integration was straightforward but did require support from the Adobe team to implement successfully. While Target is a great tool for digital teams to support, you'll need your tech team aligned and available to support implementation.
Read full review
HCL Technologies
I think it is wel suited for a business with a lot of one on one relations in the database. For example a supermarket that sells products to a client and gives a reduction on that product. It is nice if the selection process is not to complex and does not involve to many calculations. It is also nice if it is very clear what you want to follow up. In our environment we have lots of many-to-many relations. for example one product is held by more then one client. And that client might have more of those products with other clients. These kind of situation demands for a lot of calculations with derived fields(*), and there things go far too slow. Unica is probably not such a good solution for us, because our environment is too complex, and so is to process of creating the selection, we often have to change things in the selection flows. Because of the complexity it is difficult to see what the flow is exactly doing afterwoods, it also takes to much time to modify existing campaigns. The interface is not handy to work with, if you have long lists of variables, of tables or derived fields(*) you have to scroll through trough them, you can not really search them or reorder them. You can not drag and drop fields or other objects like derived fields in the flow, what would be easy if you have to make frequent changes to the proces flow. When you copy objects something the content of the object changes because the links with other objects or lost. (*) derived field: field to calculate something
Read full review
Pros
Adobe
  • This application gives us an incredible integration with Adobe Analytics that allows its operation to be the best and determine the performance of our website.
  • It offers us an analysis based on user behavior and a web page customization option to adapt and meet the needs of those users.
Read full review
HCL Technologies
  • Ability to translate Multiple SQL queries into a very easy to use visual GUI.
  • Provides the ability to pre-define segments, run them once in off hours, store them in their own system tables for quick youth and a significant reduction in CPU utilization on the database.
  • It’s use of Reusable objects. Including user variables to pre-define calculations one time, macros that you can create and pass values to parameterize the SQL code And the creation of templates to easily replicate work.
  • It’s ability to bring in external data on the fly that can very easily be mapped into any flowchart.
  • It’s flexibility and creating UNIX script via triggers to automate sending of files to multiple vendors with different FTP sites
  • It’s flexibility in the output layouts that it can create.
Read full review
Cons
Adobe
  • This is something a lot of testing tools struggle with, but I think the WYSIWYG ("What you see is what you get") editor - or Visual Experience Composer (VEC) in Adobe terminology - could definitely use some work. It's a struggle to execute many tests beyond simple copy, color, placement changes, and even the features that do exist are often clunky if not altogether broken.
  • The interface itself can be a bit counterintuitive in certain parts. If you are familiar with other tools, it's likely middle of the road in this respect; think much easier to understand than Monetate for instance, but a far cry from the simplicity of an Optimizely.
  • It can be a bit buggy from time to time. The worst example is the frequency at which the tool will fail to save due to an error, but not inform you of this until you try to save, at which point your only option is to log out, log back in, and make all of your updates once again. It can become an extreme pain point at times, and I personally have just gotten into the habit of saving every couple of minutes to avoid a massive loss of productivity.
Read full review
HCL Technologies
  • Greater integration of real time (Interact) capabilities with outbound channels, in particular IBM eMessage Email & SMS delivery.
  • Additional outbound channels to be integrated into eMessage, including Facebook Fanpage & Twitter DM broadcasts. At the moment these are possible only through custom additional integration.
  • Support for additional marketing database technology, e.g. MySQL, Exasol, ParAccel, WX2.
  • Provision of database technology with software purchase, as Web technology (IBM WebSphere Express) is supplied for free, but no database is supplied - since IBM also market DB2, which is a supported technology it seems a shame.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Adobe
We have a team of people trained on how to use the application and it integrates well with the other Adobe products we use. Our future roadmap of testing will require some complex scenarios which we hope Target will be able to accomplish
Read full review
HCL Technologies
There are three main factors to renew a licence: 1) Cost to migrate to another platform would be rather expensive and time consuming, plus the requirement of retraining employees to use a new tool 2) It has been proven time and time again that it is a market leader in the space (10 years +) 3) It can be built upon, with the addition of additional IBM EMM modules - despite theories it does have very strong digital capabilities.
Read full review
Usability
Adobe
Can be difficult to learn, but once you understand Mboxes and the nuances of the system it's very user friendly
Read full review
HCL Technologies
I think it is easy to use, if you don't have to do to complex selections.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Adobe
i don't think we use the full functionalities of the tool, but to use the full functions, it's almost impossible (Too hard)
Read full review
HCL Technologies
No answers on this topic
Performance
Adobe
The bottleneck is never the software program
Read full review
HCL Technologies
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Adobe
On several occasions, we have had the need to ask for help from the Adobe Target support team, and I must say that they have provided us with an excellent experience, as they take care of solving the problems quickly and with high precision
Read full review
HCL Technologies
I didn't use the Unica support since it is with IBM, only before.
Read full review
In-Person Training
Adobe
The instructor that came to train us was awesome and this training was very useful. I would recommend it for anyone who is going to be using this software. I only mark it lower because it is an added expense to an already expensive product, and a lot of the training covered the "Target" portion of the software (which again, we didn't use)
Read full review
HCL Technologies
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Adobe
The training was very easy to understand, however it would have been more useful to my development team than me. It was also primarily over-the-phone, which is never as easy to follow as in-person. We ended up scheduling and paying for an in-person training session to supplement the online/phone training because it wasn't helpful enough.
Read full review
HCL Technologies
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Adobe
Implement using a global mBox on the page so you can change any and everything over the traditional method. Traditional method is good if you do not have technical web dev resources, do not know Javascript/jQuery, or you have money to blow on mBox calls. Global deployment reduces mBox calls and allows you to touch many parts of the page easily. A lot more customizable
Read full review
HCL Technologies
- We had to rebuild a part of the datamart afterwards to tighten up and simplify the selection process. But as it was too time consuming to rebuild all the existing campaigns, we no run campaigns on different versions of the datamart. - The response tracking of the campaigns never worked out well, it was impossible to implement a direct response where there is a link between the lead and the response in our operational process
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Adobe
We seriously considered another software but because we use so many other Adobe products this made the most sense for us. If you are not dependent on other Adobe software and are a smaller company, in my opinion, Target may not be the best fit.
Read full review
HCL Technologies
The contact history and the response history are so powerful. You can track whatever you want to help the call center to push relevant offers to our customer. In addition, predictive models can be built, with patience, in IBM Campaign. If you have some complaints from the call center about any campaigns, you can easily validate it into the contact or response history.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Adobe
  • We have been able to run specific A/B tests that have shown an increase in conversion, which in turn has led to very large banked sales numbers for the year.
  • We have been able to prove that using and automated Merchandising process did not decrease conversion. This allowed us to greatly increase efficiency by opening up resource time.
Read full review
HCL Technologies
  • It helps my clients drive their business which in turn, drives more profit for them.
  • It helps my clients determine what works, and what doesn't work, in terms of their social marketing campaigns.
  • It helps navigate proper budgeting through determining what clients' users respond to, and what they find unique.
Read full review
ScreenShots

HCL Unica Screenshots

Screenshot of End-to-end campaign managementScreenshot of Faster campaign creation