Crownpeak CMS vs. Optimizely Web Experimentation

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 Web Experimentation
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Whether launching a first test or scaling a sophisticated experimentation program, Optimizely Web Experimentation aims to deliver the insights needed to craft high-performing digital experiences that drive engagement, increase conversions, and accelerate growth.N/A
Pricing
Crownpeak CMSOptimizely Web Experimentation
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Crownpeak CMSOptimizely Web Experimentation
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Crownpeak CMSOptimizely Web Experimentation
Features
Crownpeak CMSOptimizely Web Experimentation
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Crownpeak CMS
8.9
25 Ratings
8% above category average
Optimizely Web Experimentation
-
Ratings
Role-based user permissions8.925 Ratings00 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 Web Experimentation
-
Ratings
API7.819 Ratings00 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language8.120 Ratings00 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 Web Experimentation
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG editor7.726 Ratings00 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness7.626 Ratings00 Ratings
Admin section8.325 Ratings00 Ratings
Page templates8.427 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design8.425 Ratings00 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.527 Ratings00 Ratings
Form generator7.823 Ratings00 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 Web Experimentation
-
Ratings
Content taxonomy7.725 Ratings00 Ratings
SEO support8.524 Ratings00 Ratings
Bulk management8.122 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions7.321 Ratings00 Ratings
Testing and Experimentation
Comparison of Testing and Experimentation features of Product A and Product B
Crownpeak CMS
-
Ratings
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.0
163 Ratings
5% below category average
a/b experiment testing00 Ratings9.0163 Ratings
Split URL testing00 Ratings8.5135 Ratings
Multivariate testing00 Ratings8.4139 Ratings
Multi-page/funnel testing00 Ratings7.9126 Ratings
Cross-browser testing00 Ratings8.197 Ratings
Mobile app testing00 Ratings8.175 Ratings
Test significance00 Ratings8.4147 Ratings
Visual / WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings8.1133 Ratings
Advanced code editor00 Ratings8.0125 Ratings
Page surveys00 Ratings6.217 Ratings
Visitor recordings00 Ratings8.418 Ratings
Preview mode00 Ratings7.6145 Ratings
Test duration calculator00 Ratings7.9112 Ratings
Experiment scheduler00 Ratings8.2112 Ratings
Experiment workflow and approval00 Ratings7.890 Ratings
Dynamic experiment activation00 Ratings7.574 Ratings
Client-side tests00 Ratings7.896 Ratings
Server-side tests00 Ratings7.250 Ratings
Mutually exclusive tests00 Ratings8.180 Ratings
Audience Segmentation & Targeting
Comparison of Audience Segmentation & Targeting features of Product A and Product B
Crownpeak CMS
-
Ratings
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.2
152 Ratings
7% below category average
Standard visitor segmentation00 Ratings8.4147 Ratings
Behavioral visitor segmentation00 Ratings7.7122 Ratings
Traffic allocation control00 Ratings9.1144 Ratings
Website personalization00 Ratings7.8111 Ratings
Results and Analysis
Comparison of Results and Analysis features of Product A and Product B
Crownpeak CMS
-
Ratings
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.3
149 Ratings
4% below category average
Heatmap tool00 Ratings9.313 Ratings
Click analytics00 Ratings8.833 Ratings
Scroll maps00 Ratings8.517 Ratings
Form fill analysis00 Ratings8.072 Ratings
Conversion tracking00 Ratings8.744 Ratings
Goal tracking00 Ratings8.2127 Ratings
Test reporting00 Ratings7.9137 Ratings
Results segmentation00 Ratings7.7103 Ratings
CSV export00 Ratings7.9102 Ratings
Experiments results dashboard00 Ratings8.049 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Crownpeak CMSOptimizely Web Experimentation
Small Businesses
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 10.0 out of 10
Convert Experiences
Convert Experiences
Score 9.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Dynamic Yield
Dynamic Yield
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Dynamic Yield
Dynamic Yield
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Crownpeak CMSOptimizely Web Experimentation
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(30 ratings)
8.7
(253 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(5 ratings)
9.4
(51 ratings)
Usability
8.2
(16 ratings)
10.0
(58 ratings)
Availability
8.6
(2 ratings)
10.0
(7 ratings)
Performance
8.2
(2 ratings)
7.3
(6 ratings)
Support Rating
7.6
(27 ratings)
10.0
(16 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.2
(2 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(15 ratings)
8.0
(11 ratings)
Configurability
8.2
(2 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.6
(2 ratings)
8.0
(162 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Crownpeak CMSOptimizely Web Experimentation
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
I think it can serve the whole spectrum of experiences from people who are just getting used to web experimentation. It's really easy to pick up and use. If you're more experienced then it works well because it just gets out of the way and lets you really focus on the experimentation side of things. So yeah, strongly recommend. I think it is well suited both to small businesses and large enterprises as well. I think it's got a really low barrier to entry. It's very easy to integrate on your website and get results quickly. Likewise, if you are a big business, it's incrementally adoptable, so you can start out with one component of optimizing and you can build there and start to build in things like data CMS to augment experimentation as well. So it's got a really strong a pathway to grow your MarTech platform if you're a small company or a big company.
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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
  • The Platform contains drag-and-drop editor options for creating variations, which ease the A/B tests process, as it does not require any coding or development resources.
  • Establishing it is so simple that even a non-technical person can do it perfectly.
  • It provides real-time results and analytics with robust dashboard access through which you can quickly analyze how different variations perform. With this, your team can easily make data-driven decisions Fastly.
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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
  • JavaScript is hard to implement sometimes especially for JQuery elements
  • ROI reporting should be part of the overall experimentation reporting
  • CMP integration: where we can easily show status of test on the HPT request
  • CMS integration
  • More widgets like social proof banners, etc.
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Likelihood to Renew
Crownpeak
None of our Crownpeak clients are currently thinking about replatforming.
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Optimizely
I rated this question because at this stage, Optimizely does most everything we need so I don't foresee a need to migrate to a new tool. We have the infrastructure already in place and it is a sizeable lift to pivot to another tool with no guarantee that it will work as good or even better than Optimizely
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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
Optimizely Web Experimentation's visual editor is handy for non-technical or quick iterative testing. When it comes to content changes it's as easy as going into wordpress, clicking around, and then seeing your changes live--what you see is what you get. The preview and approval process for sharing built experiments is also handy for sharing experiments across teams for QA purposes or otherwise.
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Reliability and Availability
Crownpeak
We have never encountered any issues with the availability.
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Optimizely
I would rate Optimizely Web Experimentation's availability as a 10 out of 10. The software is reliable and does not experience any application errors or unplanned outages. Additionally, the customer service and technical support teams are always available to help with any issues or questions.
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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
I would rate Optimizely Web Experimentation's performance as a 9 out of 10. Pages load quickly, reports are complete in a reasonable time frame, and the software does not slow down any other software or systems that it integrates with. Additionally, the customer service and technical support teams are always available to help with any issues or questions.
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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
They always are quick to respond, and are so friendly and helpful. They always answer the phone right away. And [they are] always willing to not only help you with your problem, but if you need ideas they have suggestions as well.
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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
The tool itself is not very difficult to use so training was not very useful in my opinion. It did not also account for success events more complex than a click (which my company being ecommerce is looking to examine more than a mere click).
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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
In retrospect: - I think I should have stressed more demo's / workshopping with the Optimizely team at the start. I felt too confident during demo stages, and when came time to actually start, I was a bit lost. (The answer is likely I should have had them on-hand for our first install.. they offered but I thought I was OK.) - Really getting an understanding / asking them prior to install of how to make it really work for checkout pages / one that uses dynamic content or user interaction to determine what the UI does. Could have saved some time by addressing this at the beginning, as some things we needed to create on our site for Optimizely to "use" as a trigger for the variation test. - Having a number of planned/hoped-for tests already in-hand before working with Optimizely team. Sharing those thoughts with them would likely have started conversations on additional things we needed to do to make them work (rather than figuring that out during the actual builds). Since I had development time available, I could have added more things to the baseline installation since my developers were already "looking under the hood" of the site.
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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
The ability to do A/B testing in Optimizely along with the associated statistical modelling and audience segmentation means it is a much better solution than using something like Google Analytics were a lot more effort is required to identify and isolate the specific data you need to confidently make changes
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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
We can use it flexibly across lines of business and have it in use across two departments. We have different use cases and slightly different outcomes, but can unify our results based on impact to the bottom line. Finally, we can generate value from anywhere in the org for any stakeholders as needed.
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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
  • We're able to share definitive annualized revenue projections with our team, showing what would happen if we put a test into Production
  • Showing the results of a test on a new page or feature prior to full implementation on a site saves developer time (if a test proves the new element doesn't deliver a significant improvement.
  • Making a change via the WYSIWYG interface allows us to see multiple changes without developer intervention.
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ScreenShots

Optimizely Web Experimentation Screenshots

Screenshot of AI-Powered Experimentation with Opal:

- Instant Test Ideas: Generates high-quality A/B test ideas based on any goals and audience insights.
- Smarter Experimentation: The AI can suggest impactful variations, reducing guesswork and increasing test velocity.
- More Than Just Ideas: From hypothesis generation to analyzing results, Opal helps optimize every stage of the experimentation process.Screenshot of the Web Experimentation Visual Editor :

- Tweak experiments using the visual editor or dive into custom code when needed.
- Modify elements, update styling, or add dynamic behaviors.
- Ensure perfect variations while keeping control over every detail of the experiment.Screenshot of AI Content Suggestions:

- Generates copy variations to supercharge experiments.
- The AI suggests high-impact messaging for tests when hovering over a field.
- AI-powered content suggestions help skip the brainstorming process.Screenshot of Advanced Audience Targeting:

- Delivers personalized experiences by targeting users based on behaviors, attributes, and real-time conditions.
- Defines precise audience segments using first-party data, geolocation, and device type.
- Can test and optimize for different audience groups to maximize impact and engagement.Screenshot of Custom Templates in the Visual Editor:

- Offers pre-built templates for common test setups.
- Standardized variations and maintains brand integrity with reusable templates.
- Templates can be customized visually or tweak them with code for full flexibility.Screenshot of the Web Experimentation Results Page:

- Data visualizations help interpret experiment performance.
- Displays which variations are winning with built-in statistical significance calculations.
- Results can be filtered by audience segments, events, and conversions to uncover key trends.