Likelihood to Recommend I would recommend GraphCMS to anyone who is also using Gatsby to build their website. If not, I would recommend them to consider GraphCMS but also consider other options. GraphCMS is a tool in which you are responsible to make the most out of it, but sometimes this requires more time and knowledge than a normal engineer may be able to handle. But with more time and attention, the reward of off-lifting content creation from the developers is a huge time saver in the long run.
Read full review 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
Read full review Pros GraphCMS is easy to work with from the "non-engineer" side of things. GraphCMS is very flexible on what data models we can create and how those models are formed. GraphCMS uses Graph API, which is easy to write (compared to older API patterns). Read full review 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) Read full review Cons GraphCMS is very expensive at the enterprise level. GraphCMS requires deep knowledge of the system and requires lots of time to be efficient with it (especially around creating specific data patterns/relationships). Multiple times a day, the system will give us errors when attempting to save something but the errors are unclear as to what went wrong (can be irritating). Read full review 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. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Usability 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
Read full review Reliability and Availability Unplanned outages or errors are fairly rare in our instance. And when there are issues, they're usually fixed fairly quickly
Read full review Support Rating 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
Read full review Online Training 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
Read full review Implementation Rating I was not fully involved.
Read full review Alternatives Considered We picked GraphCMS since it used Graph API and easily integrated it into our Gatsby website. It was also cheap (free) and easy to test out the product, making it easier to prove to our company we should pay for the product in the long run. Lastly, it seems to have a bunch of support from other developers which makes us confident will be around for a while (and we won't need to replace it anytime soon). Note: I also looked at Directus and DatoCMS but these were not options within TrustRadius
Read full review 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.
Read full review Return on Investment Better use of time for our engineers in the long run. More control of content for people outside of the engineer team. Allows people to edit the content on their own, so they don't need to wait until a developer is available to add something to the website. Read full review 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 Optimizely Content Management System Screenshots