Contentful vs. Optimizely Content Management System

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Contentful
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Contentful is a cloud based CMS solution that provides the ability to manage content across multiple platforms.The editing interface allows for managing content interactively and provides developers the ability to deliver the content with the programming language and template framework of their choice.
$489
Optimizely Content Management System
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) is used to deliver digital experiences across channels and devices with a marketer-friendly interface, AI-generated insights that drive real-time personalization, and flexible content delivery options—including headless delivery.N/A
Pricing
ContentfulOptimizely Content Management System
Editions & Modules
Team
489/month
Community
Free
Enterprise
Custom
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ContentfulOptimizely Content Management System
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalRequired
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ContentfulOptimizely Content Management System
Considered Both Products
Contentful

No answer on this topic

Optimizely Content Management System
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Good value for the cost.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Out of those listed, only Umbraco is applicable as it can be directly compared to Optimizely CMS (with the other 3 being Headless solutions, which should instead be compared with Optimizely Headless, which I haven't worked with)
Umbraco offers a really visual experience and far …
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
We have used it for so long and had a lot of knowledge about Episerver.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
ContentfulOptimizely Content Management System
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Contentful
8.0
9 Ratings
0% below category average
Optimizely Content Management System
8.5
120 Ratings
6% above category average
Role-based user permissions8.09 Ratings8.5120 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Contentful
8.1
10 Ratings
5% above category average
Optimizely Content Management System
8.1
118 Ratings
5% above category average
API8.79 Ratings7.9113 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language7.57 Ratings8.287 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Contentful
8.0
11 Ratings
5% above category average
Optimizely Content Management System
7.6
136 Ratings
0% below category average
WYSIWYG editor7.34 Ratings7.7126 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness9.07 Ratings7.8115 Ratings
Admin section8.79 Ratings7.9124 Ratings
Page templates7.64 Ratings8.0124 Ratings
Library of website themes7.52 Ratings6.662 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design8.26 Ratings7.9119 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.510 Ratings8.1124 Ratings
Form generator7.01 Ratings6.989 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Contentful
8.3
10 Ratings
12% above category average
Optimizely Content Management System
7.6
127 Ratings
4% above category average
Content taxonomy8.59 Ratings8.1117 Ratings
SEO support7.78 Ratings7.6118 Ratings
Bulk management7.76 Ratings7.099 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions8.77 Ratings7.7101 Ratings
Community / comment management9.01 Ratings7.882 Ratings
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Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
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User Ratings
ContentfulOptimizely Content Management System
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(11 ratings)
8.7
(161 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(30 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(30 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.2
(4 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(6 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
ContentfulOptimizely Content Management System
Likelihood to Recommend
Contentful
Well suited for our needs of multiple images for auto auctions from a variety of sellers. Pointing them to one platform is easier than attempting to use a variety of platforms as we were doing before (email, slack, Dropbox and Google Drive would randomly be used by a variety of employees )
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Optimizely
Well suited to an organisation who wants a real presence and a superior customer experience when visiting your website. Very modern look and feel and is great for hosting videos and specialist graphics. It is hard to fault the product and it is up there amongst the best in the market
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Pros
Contentful
  • Flexible. This CMS can be easily extended and provide access to dynamic content
  • Simple. The WYSWG is very easy to work with and identifying pages and content in the system is fairly easy
  • Clean Interface. The interface is clean and uncluttered keeping focus on the content and not other factors.
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Optimizely
  • A centralized UI to maintain multiple websites using a common entry point.
  • Page types and blocks that can be highly customized using .NET code, but at the same time allows checks and validations when being created by Marketing/Content Users.
  • A very good set of extra libraries/add-ons that allows to expand website functionality in a very short period of time (Content APIs, Personalization, A/B Testing, Social)
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Cons
Contentful
  • Contentful uses "references" to allow you to build very modular content. If I have a "slider" content type, I can create a "slide" content type which references a "button" content type, and so forth. This works well, but I occasionally wish there was a better solution for one-off content, like a settings page. Currently, this is done for creating an entire content type called "settings" with a single entry. Not a big deal, but not ideal, either.
  • There are a few quirks with GatsbyJS integration, etc, but these issues are being fixed and improved upon very quickly.
  • A minor gripe, but Contentful does not have a way to organize fields within an entry. Entries with many fields are somewhat tiresome to scroll through.
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Optimizely
  • On the technical side, Spire is all built on React Redux, so there's a React framework and then Optimizely built their own framework on top of that React implementation, which is, I'd say customized and non-standard. So learning that as a developer is usually a four to five month learning curve. So that is a con where it's not a standard React redux implementation.
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Likelihood to Renew
Contentful
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
Since I work on the implementation side of things, and do not directly own licensing for Ektron CMS, I have to base this rating off of how I think it will be received or presented to customers looking to start a new site deployment. I try to remain CMS agnostic, though my specialty is with the .NET and Microsoft stack. Because of the experience I have working with Ektron, I tend to be more forgiving with the shortcomings as I am familiar with how to work around them or past them from experience. Being familiar with the community available also helps, as you become familiar with the best approaches to find solutions to your issues. Each product has it's ups and downs and all of them are only going to be as good as the company or development team implementing them can make them. This is EXTREMELY important to remember when choosing a CMS, as it can make or break your expensive investment.
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Usability
Contentful
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
The Opti CMS is pretty easy to use once you get used to it. Setting up the experience editor takes some time and difficult to follow and do in a group setting. We found working one on one or in smaller groups works better
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Reliability and Availability
Contentful
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
Unplanned outages or errors are fairly rare in our instance. And when there are issues, they're usually fixed fairly quickly
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Support Rating
Contentful
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
I attended multiple trainings/tutorials early in the process. The vendor-supplied content about Optimizely was engaging for users/attendees (I often analyze training content, compliance programs, governance plans), which helps our OCM people by having good "word of mouth" about the product long before a rollout ever happens. I actually when the user-focused portion of the Optimizely Academy twice in 2022 to ensure I had a grasp on operability and to be able to support the training and OCM efforts
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Online Training
Contentful
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
Ektron is one of the best solution for .Net platform. Over the years have improved the performance issues that the previous versions had. My only complain is right now you can't do Page builder pages if you choose to have a MVC architecture
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Implementation Rating
Contentful
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
I was not fully involved.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Contentful
In the past we've used WordPress to manage documentation content. WordPress was more flexible than Contentful but also prone to inconsistencies and we ended having a lot of hacks to accomplish various WordPress tricks. With Contentful there's less ambiguity so content producers are less likely to go astray. We also have our own in-house programmatic template solution for managing content, but this was a previous pain point when we needed to get the dev team to do a deploy for every content change.
Read full review
Optimizely
Optimizely CMS is part of a more composable suite when it comes to DXPs. With that, some other systems like Sitecore Experience Platform are monoliths, which makes the development and maintenance of those products fairly complex (this includes system architecture). In our experience, Optimizely makes it simpler to implement solutions in a rapid manner and "tack on" additional products if needed as organizations grow and are able to leverage that functionality.
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Return on Investment
Contentful
  • Positive - new hires are able to get onboarded quicker with us using Contentful
  • Positive - we can customize the journey of what modules/material the user sees after a course/video/article
  • Positive - it's been an overall game changer when hiring external candidates who need extensive training
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Optimizely
  • The positive is on ROI as we can get more done without needing to go through 3rd party or know Code to create and add content.
  • Workflows could use improvement. I don't know that there are workflows that I'm aware of.
  • Make it easier to connect to 3rd party software like Hubspot, Magento, email services, etc.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Contentful Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of

Optimizely Content Management System Screenshots

Screenshot of Marketer-Friendly Interface: A low/no-code interface lets content editors manage their day-to-day.Screenshot of On-page & in-context editing: Content can be created and edited with a full view into how it appears, wherever it's published.Screenshot of Drag-and-drop layouts: Layouts and drag-and-drop functionality to test creative limits.Screenshot of Content TypesScreenshot of DashboardScreenshot of Templates