Crownpeak CMS vs. Optimizely Content Management System

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Crownpeak CMS
Score 7.2 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Crownpeak CMS is a composable, enterprise-ready content management system that empowers global teams to seamlessly orchestrate personalized digital experiences across all content channels. Marketing teams can create, manage, and monitor inclusive, accessible, and transactional experiences fast without compromising on functionality, security, or service.N/A
Optimizely Content Management System
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) is purpose-built for marketers, and fully composable for developers. The CMS supports the end-to-end content lifecycle, helping users to deliver on-brand, high-impact digital experiences that 'wow' audiences.N/A
Pricing
Crownpeak CMSOptimizely Content Management System
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Crownpeak CMSOptimizely Content Management System
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeRequired
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Crownpeak CMSOptimizely Content Management System
Considered Both Products
Crownpeak CMS
Chose Crownpeak CMS
Crownpeak DXM has a better total cost of ownership with a real and straightforward SaaS model for version updates. DXM has a better composable enterprise capability, allowing for easier and more effective API integrations. Crownpeak partner relationships are more open and …
Optimizely Content Management System
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
I've only briefly reviewed Sitecore and Crownpeak as a comparison for episerver, and after reading other reviews that I mostly agreed with I came to the same conclusion about episerver. Their flaws are there but not something that is holding them back more than any other …
Features
Crownpeak CMSOptimizely Content Management System
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Crownpeak CMS
8.9
25 Ratings
8% above category average
Optimizely Content Management System
8.5
167 Ratings
3% above category average
Role-based user permissions8.925 Ratings8.5167 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Crownpeak CMS
8.0
22 Ratings
3% above category average
Optimizely Content Management System
8.0
164 Ratings
3% above category average
API7.819 Ratings8.0157 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language8.120 Ratings7.9125 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Crownpeak CMS
8.1
27 Ratings
4% above category average
Optimizely Content Management System
7.8
192 Ratings
1% above category average
WYSIWYG editor7.726 Ratings7.7176 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness7.626 Ratings8.2164 Ratings
Admin section8.325 Ratings8.1176 Ratings
Page templates8.427 Ratings8.2170 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design8.425 Ratings7.9174 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.527 Ratings8.2170 Ratings
Form generator7.823 Ratings6.8129 Ratings
Library of website themes00 Ratings7.496 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Crownpeak CMS
7.9
27 Ratings
6% above category average
Optimizely Content Management System
7.6
178 Ratings
3% above category average
Content taxonomy7.725 Ratings8.1163 Ratings
SEO support8.524 Ratings7.1162 Ratings
Bulk management8.122 Ratings7.0135 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions7.321 Ratings7.6141 Ratings
Community / comment management00 Ratings7.9116 Ratings
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User Ratings
Crownpeak CMSOptimizely Content Management System
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(30 ratings)
8.6
(221 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(5 ratings)
9.7
(34 ratings)
Usability
8.2
(16 ratings)
8.5
(90 ratings)
Availability
8.6
(2 ratings)
9.2
(4 ratings)
Performance
8.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.6
(27 ratings)
10.0
(8 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.2
(2 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(15 ratings)
6.4
(2 ratings)
Configurability
8.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.6
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Crownpeak CMSOptimizely Content Management System
Likelihood to Recommend
Crownpeak
Crownpeak DXM is a great solution if you are looking for a flexible platform that allows engineers to quickly develop while also making it easy for content authors to work especially in scenarios where you need multi-language support. It is also good for scenarios where you want a cloud-based solution and are looking for just one vendor to handle hosting and offer the CMS.
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Optimizely
If you want to build a website quickly there are plenty of ways to do so with some great examples and plenty of support both from the company and in the forums. if you want to build a more complex structure you can but be ready to spend the time to build exactly what you need as a solid foundation goes a massive way before building out content and making those choices early and sticking with them helps
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Pros
Crownpeak
  • Build & manage digital experiences without dependency on your IT team
  • Built-in Digital Quality tool (DQM) tool allows you to check the quality of content and any accessibility issues and immediately flag any issues before publishing.
  • Build websites with the component-based technology and spend less effort in creating the best user experience for the end-user
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Optimizely
  • I think the user interface for content admins is very good and very competitive. And compared to other providers, the technology that CMS in particular has. So the way it integrated the net ecosystem is very well because it follows the MBC pattern. So basically it just allows really simple implementations for what would normally be complex components on any other sort of vendor that's out there.
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Cons
Crownpeak
  • Crownpeak moved to a web browser admin tool in 2018, which has made the admin experience much better, but there are still a couple of features missing from the browser version that won't arrive until later in 2019.
  • Integration with 3rd party digital asset management tools would be great.
  • Smoother integration with source control would be nice.
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Optimizely
  • Magento did have some nice tools for creating product groups or carousels for promotion. Opti seems to be lacking in that.
  • A blog - maybe this is available and we don't have it installed, but a searchable blog would be very appreciated.
  • Structured Data/MicroData - maybe it's our install, but this seems to be missing
  • Meta data: we have access to limited types and need to make a request from IT, it would be nice to be able to access more to adjust for SEO needs.
  • When in a folder on the BLOCKS tab, it would be wonderful to hit the MEDIA tab and stay in that same folder.
  • I have some less technical people that will make folders with spaces - which Opti handles, but it would be great if it wouldn't accept a space or gave an error message not to use them.
  • I think I know why the extra code is added to urls and image links, but it causes issues when taking things from our testing site to the live site. For example, I need to copy the Navigation from Inspect Element on testing to put it in production. I have learned to work around it, but it's not my favorite.
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Likelihood to Renew
Crownpeak
None of our Crownpeak clients are currently thinking about replatforming.
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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
Crownpeak
Crownpeak DXM is a flexible easy to use CMS platform speaking to the most challenging localization scenarios. Crownpeak users have the freedom to integrate DXM platform with their existing technology at no cost. Moving from legacy systems to the Saas platform is painless and cost-effective. Extensive targeting and personalization options are something that users will benefit from.
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Optimizely
From our editors perspective they find the CMS system easy and to clear to use. Our developers find it very easy to design on and appreciate the level of service support available. It's also always evolving and getting better every year. We find this investment reassuring and encourages us to try keep pace and see how we can continue to push the envelope and continue to improve all aspect of our websites and online touch points.
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Reliability and Availability
Crownpeak
We have never encountered any issues with the availability.
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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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Performance
Crownpeak
Pages load very fast on production (assuming you develop with basic SEO practices in place) due to Crownpeak's publishing architecture. The slide downside is that publishing can be a bit slow at times.
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Optimizely
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Crownpeak
Crownpeak DXM's service and support are outstanding. We have immediate access to both the tech support team and the software engineering team. We can get a support person on the phone whenever needed, and we can schedule impromptu training sessions at any time. Best support I have ever received from a platform provider in 20 years of software and application development.
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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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In-Person Training
Crownpeak
We received on-site training from Crownpeak, the trainer had touched upon every possible scenario and provided great insights about the product & ease of implementation.
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Optimizely
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Crownpeak
My team left training with a solid understanding of how to use the product and the developer training ended with a test to ensure the ability to properly develop was learned properly. Recently, Crownpeak has added a self-paced training option which makes it extremely flexible to on-board new developers.
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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
Crownpeak
SaaS model is perfect for us to avoid slow and costly version updates to get access to new features and functions. Crownpeak is a true SaaS model, so we get all the good new stuff without the need to invest in effort, time or money. this frees our teams to focus on content creation and deployment, which is pretty fast because the DXM publishes straight to html through the headless model.
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Optimizely
I was not fully involved.
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Alternatives Considered
Crownpeak
I was not at this team within my organization during the evaluation period of Crownpeak. However, my previous team used Sitecore. Crownpeak is a bit easier to use from a UI perspective and has more creative options within the tool. Sitecore's clunky UI also was a reason I found out later why we ended up using Crownpeak as our DXM.
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Optimizely
Optimizely Content Management System is much more feature rich, and less complex that the other CMS platforms we have used. Optimizely Content Management System is more intuitive in how the content is structured and how easy it is to pull blocks of content to create the layout of a page.
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Scalability
Crownpeak
In some recent projects we have delivered to our clients, we were able to roll out sites in shorter time period due the scalability of the Crownpeak's DXM solution.
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Optimizely
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Crownpeak
  • I'm pretty sure it raises our back-end development costs by making the development process (of creating input forms and producing outputs from the content) more complicated and painful than it needs to be.
  • It helps lock our clients in to us because not a whole lot of agencies have Crownpeak expertise.
  • It helps our clients not have to deal with their own IT teams, which they tend to dislike working with.
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Optimizely
  • Flexibility with design that allows us to work towards our mission of 'Tennis Opened Up'
  • Speed of deploying content, meaning users can really on us for the most up-to-date content on tennis in Britain
  • Ability to have different logged-in areas for different user groups, allowing us to create more bespoke and personalised experiences
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ScreenShots

Optimizely Content Management System Screenshots

Screenshot of Content delivery: Developers can use modern GraphQL and REST APIs to query content from any source and send it to any channel or device.Screenshot of User roles and permissionsScreenshot of (SaaS CMS): Visual Builder: Add an image: Optimizely Visual Builder offers a range of editing features designed to make content creation and layout building intuitive and accessible to both technical and non-technical users. A drag-and-drop system is used to add, move, and rearrange elements within the layout, for quick and flexible content organization.Screenshot of (SaaS CMS): Visual Builder: Create an experience: Create an Experience functionality in Optimizely Visual Builder offers a code-free way to build and manage captivating digital experiences. It offers pre-built content blocks or elements (like text, images, buttons, forms, etc.) that can be positioned on the page layout as desired. Visual Builder offers extensive options to customize the appearance and behavior of these elements. Users can modify colors, fonts, sizes, animations, and even add interactive features providing flexibility in arranging content, accommodating various design needs and responsiveness across different screen sizes.Screenshot of (SaaS CMS): Visual Builder: Publish: The Visual Builder displays changes in real-time as they are made. This includes side-by-side previews for different devices like desktops, tablets, and mobiles. Before publishing, the Interactive Preview mode can be used to test elements like forms, buttons, and other interactive components to ensure they work as expected on the live site. Changes can then be published directly from the Visual Builder interface, making them instantly available to site visitors.Screenshot of the central location to manage assets, editing and publishing content.