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Adobe Experience Manager vs. Optimizely Content Management System

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Adobe Experience Manager

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/AAdobe Experience Manager is a combined web content management system and digital asset management system. The combined applications of Adobe Experience Manager Sites and Adobe Experience Manager Assets is offered by the vendor as an end-to-end solution for managing and delivering marketing content.N/A

    Optimizely Content Management System

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AOptimizely 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
    Adobe Experience ManagerOptimizely Content Management System
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Adobe Experience ManagerOptimizely Content Management System
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeRequired
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Adobe Experience ManagerOptimizely Content Management System
    Considered Both Products
    Adobe
    Chose Adobe Experience Manager
    AEM feels more enterprise ready
    Incentivized
    Chose Adobe Experience Manager
    They all do the same thing pretty much, but we are on the Adobe architecture so it made sense to go with AEM
    Incentivized
    Chose Adobe Experience Manager
    Adobe Experience Manager is above the rest. Best in business
    Incentivized
    Chose Adobe Experience Manager
    The main reason why we acquired Adobe Experience Manager with a lot of peace of mind is that it has very good recommendations from other people, we took the exhaustive task of investigating very well its operation, advantages and disadvantages and from all the descriptions we …
    Incentivized
    Optimizely
    Chose Optimizely Content Management System
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Chose Optimizely Content Management System
    We selected Optimizely Content Management system for their ease of use and their other offerings like content marketing platform which helps us to keep everything under one roof.
    Incentivized
    Chose Optimizely Content Management System
    Optimizely came out ahead of other products evaluated across all parameters and the cost model was in line with the budget. The usability was a key factor as well as it was important for our marketing team to be able to self serve as opposed to using external firms. The …
    Incentivized
    Chose Optimizely Content Management System
    Optimizely Content Management System is on par with these other platforms. They all have the strengths and weaknesses so it comes down to what features work best for your needs.
    Incentivized
    Chose Optimizely Content Management System
    Better multi-tenant solution with easier + more flexible authoring experience. .Net based and we are .net shop. Overwhelming client interview feedback was that Optimizely Content Management System was right fit for our use cases.
    Incentivized
    Chose Optimizely Content Management System
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Chose Optimizely Content Management System
    I think Optimizely has the best set of tools synthesized together to form a full product suite.
    Incentivized
    Chose Optimizely Content Management System
    Night and day. The Opti CMS is so much more usable and functional and built for our needs. The customizable templates and shared blocks are game changers.
    Incentivized
    Chose Optimizely Content Management System
    Optimizely Content Management System is much more straightforward, clean, and easier to understand.
    Incentivized
    Chose Optimizely Content Management System
    Optimizely Content Management System is definitely better than any of the above. Especially compared against Sitecore, Optimizely Content Management System has the fastest setup time and offers a whole lot of customizability where Sitecore needs a lot of work to achieve similar …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    95%
    Would buy again
    180 Answers
    97%
    Would buy again
    170 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    145 Answers
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    144 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    184 Answers
    93%
    Happy with the feature set
    164 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    90%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    113 Answers
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    104 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    87%
    Implementation went as expected
    125 Answers
    86%
    Implementation went as expected
    120 Answers
    Features
    Adobe Experience ManagerOptimizely Content Management System
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Adobe Experience Manager and Optimizely Content Management System
    Feature
    Adobe Experience Manager
    8.4
    38 Ratings
    4% above category average
    Optimizely Content Management System
    8.4
    169 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Role-based user permissions8.438 Ratings8.4169 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Adobe Experience Manager and Optimizely Content Management System
    Feature
    Adobe Experience Manager
    8.0
    33 Ratings
    0% above category average
    Optimizely Content Management System
    7.8
    166 Ratings
    0% below category average
    API7.829 Ratings7.8159 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language8.129 Ratings7.8127 Ratings
    Web Content Creation
    Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Adobe Experience Manager and Optimizely Content Management System
    Feature
    Adobe Experience Manager
    7.5
    38 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Optimizely Content Management System
    7.7
    194 Ratings
    2% below category average
    WYSIWYG editor7.433 Ratings7.6178 Ratings
    Code quality / cleanliness6.734 Ratings7.9166 Ratings
    Admin section7.034 Ratings8.0178 Ratings
    Page templates7.637 Ratings8.0172 Ratings
    Library of website themes7.326 Ratings7.497 Ratings
    Mobile optimization / responsive design7.835 Ratings7.9176 Ratings
    Publishing workflow8.135 Ratings8.1172 Ratings
    Form generator7.629 Ratings6.4131 Ratings
    Web Content Management
    Comparison of Web Content Management features of Adobe Experience Manager and Optimizely Content Management System
    Feature
    Adobe Experience Manager
    7.3
    37 Ratings
    10% above category average
    Optimizely Content Management System
    7.5
    180 Ratings
    0% below category average
    Content taxonomy7.731 Ratings8.0165 Ratings
    SEO support7.133 Ratings7.1164 Ratings
    Bulk management7.236 Ratings6.9137 Ratings
    Availability / breadth of extensions7.534 Ratings7.5142 Ratings
    Community / comment management7.130 Ratings8.0117 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Adobe Experience ManagerOptimizely Content Management System
    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
    Adobe Experience ManagerOptimizely Content Management System
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.6
    (220 ratings)
    8.6
    (223 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.0
    (7 ratings)
    9.8
    (34 ratings)
    Usability
    8.1
    (181 ratings)
    8.5
    (92 ratings)
    Availability
    8.6
    (5 ratings)
    9.2
    (4 ratings)
    Performance
    8.0
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.2
    (11 ratings)
    10.0
    (8 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (4 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    5.0
    (3 ratings)
    6.4
    (2 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Professional Services
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Adobe Experience ManagerOptimizely Content Management System
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Adobe
    I'll answer the second one because I mean, the first one I don't have an issue with. The second scenario is we oftentimes have the need to spin off very small campaign style sites or sites that generate leads but are unbranded and that sort of thing. So that's hard to do in AEM because you have to then create another organization within AEM to do that. And we're talking about sites that are maybe five to 10 pages in size. So we've been investigating Edge, but then that's a different workflow, so we'd have to train people on that. So it would be nice if there was something within the AEM structure that could allow you to do something very similar to Edge, where you make some small micro sites that are not necessarily branded, that you could still host within the platform and not have to retrain everybody on a completely different platform.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Adobe
    • It allows us to scale so that we can make a change on a global footer. And it applies to all of the different property websites. It allows us to set up components and compartmentalize things in a way. The big thing is that it's scalable. And then it also ties into Adobe Analytics and other Adobe products. So we are a complete Adobe shop. Every Adobe product that we can use, we use. I don't think we do it for marketing so much, but for doing target testing and analytics, data scientists are using the same product and so it all speaks.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Adobe
    • There are some glitches in permissions inheritance that require us to toggle a save on permissions in groups that inherit from a group that was recently updated.
    • Large packages require stopping the workflow launcher OSGi components or many workflows will slow down the server.
    • Locked pages are hard to find unless I use /siteadmin... I often hear that the CQ tools will go away, but if we lose that, some small things might be harder to do, like finding locked pages.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Adobe
    We had and still have a fantastic experience using Adobe CQ. Lots of flexibility, great integration with other Adobe products we already use and a powerful technology make it a great fit for our corporate environment. Also as the community grows, it makes it easier to network with other developers and users to get new ideas on how to continue to get the best out of the software.
    Read full review
    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.
    Read full review
    Usability
    Adobe
    Adobe Experience Manager overall is fairly easy to use and caters to a wide range of users when it comes to their technical abilities. It has the flexibility to enable UI/UX designers to pop in and easily design new content with drop in components. It also has sufficient capabilities for those who are more technically inclined and want to dig more into custom code or solutions
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Adobe
    Being part of Adobe Suite means you are already notified when the tool has any outages. However, I have never faced unplanned outages. Whenever you face any issue with the site, it is clearly stated if there were any planned outages and how quickly you will be back to normal. So, I will say that even the outages are planned and managed in a great way like their other services.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    Unplanned outages or errors are fairly rare in our instance. And when there are issues, they're usually fixed fairly quickly
    Read full review
    Performance
    Adobe
    With respect to performance, Adobe experience manager is one of the best in the CMS space. We didn't observe frequent slowness on platform, however the systems which are accessing experience manager should be of good specifications without which slowness would be observed. Adobe experience manager works well in integration with other solutions, unless the destination application is designed to trigger frequent calls to AEM.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Adobe
    Adobe Experience Manager, in all its capacity, is a great alternative to any other CMS you are using. It helps in rapid development and makes life easier for maintaining the website for multi-language sites. Technical know-how is eliminated at content authoring. Better documentation in terms of live examples with videos would be appreciated.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Adobe
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Adobe
    Depending on your individual needs, It is really quite simple to create an authoring experience for a website that looks really good. I have been part of many implementations and many teams and have seen many projects that were super successful and others that were not implemented well. AEM has room for a lot of flexibility in the implementation process compared to other CMS like SharePoint
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    I was not fully involved.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Adobe
    SSO is one fits all, so we don't have to have a separate SSO for each application of Adobe The integration with Analytics works perfectly and bring directly value really quickly Target remains more complicated to set up, but can also bring a lot of value once integrated with the rest of the Adobe platform The fact that the solution is Cloud services is also a big advantage for maintenance
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Adobe
    Instead of being directly involved in the tool purchase, I am involved in analysis or what we can use to maximize the tool. Small organizations may find it expensive. However, if the team or organization focuses more on your ROI or the features you will get, then it will definitely be worth it. Pricing is based on a number of factors, including team size or the use of the tool. The user can select the pricing option that best fits their needs based on the number of form submissions they make or the number of pages they wish to publish on their global/multisite sites.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    No answers on this topic
    Professional Services
    Adobe
    The professional services team within adobe is one of the best in terms of technical and solutioning knowledge. However, considering the billing charges of adobe professional services team, it is always recommended to involve them during platform initial setup or when a complex solution is to be built with platform customizations.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Optimizely
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Adobe
    • too soon to tell on increased conversion rates based on external marketing factors in play but having increased visibility into customer engagement trends will most likely lead to improvement of our conversion rates.
    • There have been productivity gains from the perspective of actually migrating all of our externally managed sites to the same in-house Adobe Experience Manager platform and then being able to utilize those universal components.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Adobe Experience Manager Screenshots

    Screenshot of AEM Forms - Creates an adaptive formScreenshot of AEM Forms - themes libraryScreenshot of AEM Forms - where to create a templateScreenshot of AEM Forms - the interactive communications editorScreenshot of Adobe Experience Manager Sites - document-based authoring enables marketers to create and publish content with familiar tools.Screenshot of Adobe Experience Manager Sites - Universal Editor, an advanced visual editor, empowers marketers to edit and publish content.

    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.