Elementor is a Wordpress page builder and creative toolkit from the company of the same name in Israel.
$49
per year
Optimizely Content Management System
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Optimizely's Content Management System (CMS) is purpose-built for marketers, and fully composable for developers. The CMS supports the end-to-end content lifecycle so users can deliver on-brand, high-impact digital experiences that 'wow' audiences.
I would recommend this for the ease of use and price. It is a good value for any website developer or designer to be able to create multiple websites a year with super simple coding. If you've got a way to speed up your website without using WP Rocket, then it's even better! I think this software is specifically made for someone with a coding background and would recommend that you have a background with Wordpress to make using this software even easier
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
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)
More integration with 3rd party form plugins like Gravity Forms
Sometimes it gets confusing working with template features like headers. Editing in one place may accidentally affect the entire site and it is not always clear.
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.
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.
Elementor is one of those website builders that is really easy to get started with. The drag and drop features make it easy to create attractive and creative webpages for even the non-website designer. Some of the features available are not easy to find or easy to discover when you first start using Elementor. Practice makes perfect.
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
There support is slow and at times can be frustrating and this is why many prefer to air out their frustrations within the Facebook group community. I tend to give up as when I'm working on something and something goes wrong I need the help straight away. I do not have the patience to wait anymore.
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
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
Thrive Leads and thrive architect is a pain to update, they've changed version and name in recent years. I am unable to update because every time there was an upgrade or new release of the plugin it caused issues with my website's functionality which has left me stuck updating old versions that don't work anymore. With Elementor i haven't had this issue.
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.
Elementor has made it possible for our non-profit to stand out in the non-profit space in which we operate. Our website was highly flexible and looked great, which provided confidence to our donors.
Elementor has never been a weak spot in the security of our website. We've had several attempted attacks against our website and yet everything was remained locked down.
We have only used the free version of Elementor, so it has kept our costs low and allowed us to have a professional looking website, but being able to put more money towards our charitable cause rather than IT.
