TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    HCL Digital Experience

    Score9.9 out of 10
    N/AHCL Digital Experience is based on the former IBM Web Content Manager and IBM WebSphere Portal products, acquired by HCL Technologies from IBM in late 2018. The product allows the user to create, manage and deliver engaging omnichannel digital experiences to audiences with responsive content, targeted offers, seamlessly integrated applications and consistent branding across channels (web, mobile, and hybrid mobile/web applications and more).N/A

    Plone

    Score10 out of 10
    N/APlone is a free and open source content management system built on top of the Zope application server. Plone can be used for any kind of website, including blogs, internet sites, webshops, and internal websites.N/A
    Pricing
    HCL Digital ExperiencePlone
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    HCL Digital ExperiencePlone
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    HCL Digital ExperiencePlone
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of HCL Digital Experience and Plone
    Feature
    HCL Digital Experience
    5.0
    5 Ratings
    47% below category average
    Plone
    10.0
    5 Ratings
    19% above category average
    Role-based user permissions5.05 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of HCL Digital Experience and Plone
    Feature
    HCL Digital Experience
    4.1
    5 Ratings
    64% below category average
    Plone
    10.0
    5 Ratings
    25% above category average
    API4.14 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language4.15 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Web Content Creation
    Comparison of Web Content Creation features of HCL Digital Experience and Plone
    Feature
    HCL Digital Experience
    2.9
    5 Ratings
    84% below category average
    Plone
    9.4
    6 Ratings
    18% above category average
    WYSIWYG editor7.04 Ratings10.06 Ratings
    Code quality / cleanliness3.15 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Admin section3.15 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Page templates1.15 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Library of website themes1.15 Ratings5.05 Ratings
    Mobile optimization / responsive design4.04 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Publishing workflow1.14 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Form generator3.02 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Web Content Management
    Comparison of Web Content Management features of HCL Digital Experience and Plone
    Feature
    HCL Digital Experience
    1.9
    5 Ratings
    111% below category average
    Plone
    9.4
    5 Ratings
    22% above category average
    Content taxonomy1.15 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    SEO support2.15 Ratings10.04 Ratings
    Bulk management2.13 Ratings10.05 Ratings
    Availability / breadth of extensions2.14 Ratings8.05 Ratings
    Community / comment management2.13 Ratings9.05 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    HCL Digital ExperiencePlone
    Small Businesses
    Yext
    Score6.8 out of 10
    Umbraco CMS
    Score7 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Square Online
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Progress Sitefinity
    Score7.9 out of 10
    RWS Tridion Sites
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    HCL Digital ExperiencePlone
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (11 ratings)
    10.0
    (13 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    5.7
    (6 ratings)
    10.0
    (11 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    HCL Digital ExperiencePlone
    Likelihood to Recommend
    HCLSoftware
    HCL DX does really well at managing and maintaining the site. It allows the business to basically maintain the site while IT spent time developing new and enhanced functions. The main issue I currently have with HCL DX is not directly with the product but it does play a role. It is difficult finding skilled resources to support HCL DX in my experience.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Plone
    The larger your organization, the more appropriate Plone will be. This is not to say that Plone is a worse choice for small websites, only that the minimum investment for a Plone site is certainly higher than for other platforms. If you already use Plone for your site and are looking for a redesign or an overhaul, I would only advise switching to a different platform such as WordPress or Drupal if your organization is downsizing. For any other situation, Plone is the natural choice for your growth.
    Read full review
    Pros
    HCLSoftware
    • With Version 8.5, IBM Web Content Manager introduced in place editing capabilities which allow authors to make content edits on sections of the page instead of going to the content itself. This feature allows authors to make changes in context of the page and preview changes within the actual look and feel of a live page.
    • Projects provide a collaborative atmosphere for the author community so that authors can interact and work as a team to manage inter-dependent content changes under one project and publish all changes at once, instead of working separately on individual content changes. This brings awareness across authors in an organization and easy knowledge share.
    • IBM Digital Data Connector is a cool feature that allows [users] to integrate external content sources onto the portal using IBM Web Content Manager presentation components. This allows UI/UX designers to present integrated external data in any manner they want, manage UI changes with an underlying approval process and leverage syndication to push changes live immediately.
    • IBM Web Content Manager offers a targeted content feature that allows business users to deliver personalized content to customers based on customer demographic information, browsing history and other transaction related information. Any rules created follow the publishing process thereby making it just a configurable item resulting in less turn around to turn on the feature on a website.
    • IBM Web Content Manager offers 'multi lingual solution' out of the box which allows content creation for almost all popular languages.
    • Syndication feature has improved a lot and it now provides a detailed views comprising of 'failed items', 'items that have syndicated successfully, 'items in queue'. Failed items view provides detailed and clear cut information of what resulted in failure helping IT to troubleshoot problems easily.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Plone
    • Plone is a folder-based system, organising content in a similar way desktop-users are doing for the last two decades. No need to teach non-tech customers some relational-database like paradigm for content management.
    • Plone is secure. It is the most secure CMS you can get your hands on.
    • Plone is flexible, and makes fast development easy.
    Read full review
    Cons
    HCLSoftware
    • IBM Web Content Manager should provide some easily usable connectors through a GUI to connect to bring content from custom data sources including connecting to Salesforce and custom databases.
    • Should further optimize and enhance creation of rich and responsive content driven UIs on various digital channels.
    • Should further optimize and enhance content personalization features.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Plone
    • Not everything is configurable or editable by Plone, and when you need to adjust or add custom pieces in, you need to deal with Zope. Zope has an ugly, confusing and difficult UI and structure as a backend.
    • Using 3rd party products is difficult to do - there are a few different ways to get them installed, all of which take a bit of luck to get right.
    • Building custom products for Plone is not fun. You've got to deal with an archaic framework to tie in that is not well documented (there is documentation about many things, but not great documentation and there are a lot of holes in the documentation).
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    HCLSoftware
    IBM products always moves forward to adapt to new requirements and technologies. I have used versions 6, 6.1, 7 and 8 of IBM WCM, and I know IBM is ready to revamp the tool based on emerging needs, and still provide the capabilities to migrate your old system to the newer versions.
    Read full review
    Plone
    We have critical systems running on Plone so will need it in the future.
    Free to use since its Open source, so we don't have to worry about licence costs.
    We know how to use and develop Plone and it has no limits.
    Read full review
    Usability
    HCLSoftware
    New versions has increased user experience facilitating usability.
    Read full review
    Plone
    Compared to the amount of Plone sites, users and customizations we have in our organization, the amount of support requests and training needed is really small.
    The new user interface in Plone 6 is even better, it is super fast, has lots of different blocks for enhancing the page, has flexible layout system and is easy to extend with more features.
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    HCLSoftware
    No answers on this topic
    Plone
    Our Plone sites are very robust. We have critical systems on Plone and we have been running sites on Plone for over 20 years with very little unexpected downtime.
    Read full review
    Performance
    HCLSoftware
    No answers on this topic
    Plone
    Plone is very intensive in its operations, and if not configured well it can be slow. However it is designed and built with speed in mind and with proper use of coding, templates and caching can perform extremely well under high loads. It is capable of scaling to very high load availability environments with no specific coding requirements.
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    HCLSoftware
    We had some issues related with performing and the support was suitable and sucessful.
    Read full review
    Plone
    There are not too many Plone companies in the world. But the ones who are, are high level professionals
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    HCLSoftware
    No answers on this topic
    Plone
    I have been participating Plone training and the trainers have always been professional. Materials were good and the instructions clear
    Read full review
    Online Training
    HCLSoftware
    No answers on this topic
    Plone
    Well organized, professional training with good materials and instructions
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    HCLSoftware
    Implementation was successful due to Websphere application server used.
    Read full review
    Plone
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    HCLSoftware
    Magento and Prestashop are E-commerce CMS platforms. They are used in a different scale of application than WCM.
    Concerning Joomla, it's a useful CMS forsmaller website. Once again this is an other scale of application than WCM Liveray can compete WCM 7 concerning the : ¤ specific development ¤ security ¤ responsive
    Read full review
    Plone
    Drupal: Plone is cheaper, so with Drupal is more complex to reach the required ROI. However, Drupal has a lower learning curve WordPress: For our necessities it has a more expensive learning curve than plone. Joomla, is easier to use. However, it have some issues on security and web content where Plone is much better
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    HCLSoftware
    No answers on this topic
    Plone
    Plone has no limits. We have massive sites and can run them just fine
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    HCLSoftware
    • Negative: Very complex architecture for on-premise deployments (too many servers to installed)
    • Positive: Easy customization
    • Negative: Architecture limited to cloud solutions
    • WCM is an old product and needs an update
    • Blog, and community are not integrated in Digital Manager for discussion
    • Templates are not available to integrate basic services (FileNet, more complex BPM , e-commerce)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Plone
    • The impact Plone has had at the University of Oshkosh is as follows: this software allows student workers to learn about IT departments and CMS's in a user-friendly way. It gives many students great jobs that look great on their resumes.
    • Since there are great training manuals for Plone, there is increased employee efficient in the workplace. Training doesn't take long, and if there's ever a question, the Plone manual is a great tool to refer to.
    • If an employee using Plone quits, its easy to find someone to replace them with quick training and great resources.
    Read full review
    ScreenShots