Optimizely Content Management System vs. Sitecore Digital Experience Platform

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Optimizely Content Management System
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Optimizely 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
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
The Sitecore Experience Platform (Sitecore XP) is a digital experience platform used to build websites and create customer experiences online. The solution boasts fast content authoring, built-in personalization features, testing and other optimizations, as well as analytics and marketing features.N/A
Pricing
Optimizely Content Management SystemSitecore Digital Experience Platform
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Optimizely Content Management SystemSitecore Digital Experience Platform
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Optimizely Content Management SystemSitecore Digital Experience Platform
Considered Both Products
Optimizely Content Management System
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
End of day, the real boon of Optimizely Content Management System is not simply the management of the content, but the speed of both deployment and performance across the board. Significant difference between the old SiteCore CMS we previously used in just about every single …
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Episerver outranks these products in most cases. There are some functions in each product that you would love in Episerver but when you sum it up Episerver is the greatest :)
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
I think Optimizely does well connecting tools and processes into one ecosystem.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
We chose Optimizely (at the time Episerver) after rigorous evaluation and due to overall impression that it was the right long term fit.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Optimizely Content Management System fits our needs best being fully customisable and modular.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Optimizely Content Management has more content marketing features
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
I've used a lot of content management systems, like Sitecore, WordPress, everything. I think this one is the easiest for different teams to use. So between marketing, customer service, and IT, everyone from different backgrounds can use this.
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.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
I think Optimizely has the best set of tools synthesized together to form a full product suite.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
It's a good way to diversify, however it all depends on personal liking of architect which CMS framework to use. However I personally like Optimizely CMS as it's easy to learn and develop.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
I think Optimizely is better because of its product roadmap and proven history of innovation. The product and support teams are easier to work with than other competitors I've used. Great customer support.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Preference in .Net and the limited functionality of saas offerings like Kentico has kept us on Episerver. Investigation is constant in searching for a solid .Net core solution that is headless first, and provides a similar admin experience to Episerver with a site tree …
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Sitecore is leaps and bounds ahead as far as personalization and profiling are concerned. They also have much more extensible publishing options. But we know (and many clients know) that it is a.) Expensive and b.) Incredibly time consuming to implement.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
I've only briefly reviewed Sitecore and Crownpeak as a comparison for episerver, and after reading other reviews that I mostly agreed with I came to the same conclusion about episerver. Their flaws are there but not something that is holding them back more than any other …
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Ultimately it depends on needs. Price point for Episerver can be similar to Sitecore and is definitely less than Adobe. I think Episerver is strong because the product isn't looking to replace powerful systems (email, etc.) which is why their add-ons are so successful. Sitecore
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
I believe that EPiServer is here to stay; and, we routinely see them competing against other similar .NET technology platforms in this space (IE: Sitecore & Ektron). Experis has been following the Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave reviews; and, EPiServer is well …
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Epi is cheaper. But very comparable functionality.
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
Chose Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
Sitecore DXP stands out from the other products in terms of reusability, faster time to market, it's extensive feature capabilities.
Chose Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
The XM cloud technology stack is ahead of the platforms and its data structure is easier to learn.
Chose Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
Other tools lack one or the other and fail to provide a comprehensive best experience for everyone - content authors, marketers and developers. Sitecore comes with out of the box authoring host, best content authoring and WYSIWYG editing experience and much more.
Chose Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
Launchrock, Webdam, eZ, crownpeak, SignalMind
Features
Optimizely Content Management SystemSitecore Digital Experience Platform
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Optimizely Content Management System
8.5
167 Ratings
3% above category average
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
9.6
32 Ratings
16% above category average
Role-based user permissions8.5167 Ratings9.632 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Optimizely Content Management System
8.0
164 Ratings
3% above category average
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
9.7
29 Ratings
16% above category average
API8.0157 Ratings9.928 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language7.9125 Ratings9.526 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Optimizely Content Management System
7.8
192 Ratings
1% above category average
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
8.7
32 Ratings
14% above category average
WYSIWYG editor7.8176 Ratings8.232 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness8.1164 Ratings8.530 Ratings
Admin section8.1176 Ratings8.631 Ratings
Page templates8.2170 Ratings9.229 Ratings
Library of website themes7.496 Ratings8.417 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design7.9174 Ratings8.428 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.2170 Ratings8.830 Ratings
Form generator6.8129 Ratings9.429 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Optimizely Content Management System
7.6
178 Ratings
3% above category average
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
8.8
31 Ratings
22% above category average
Content taxonomy8.1163 Ratings9.229 Ratings
SEO support7.1162 Ratings8.827 Ratings
Bulk management7.0135 Ratings8.725 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions7.6141 Ratings8.529 Ratings
Community / comment management7.9116 Ratings8.927 Ratings
Results and Analysis
Comparison of Results and Analysis features of Product A and Product B
Optimizely Content Management System
-
Ratings
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
7.5
11 Ratings
6% below category average
Conversion tracking00 Ratings7.710 Ratings
Test reporting00 Ratings7.511 Ratings
Funnel Analysis00 Ratings7.211 Ratings
User Segmentation00 Ratings7.511 Ratings
Digital Experience Platform
Comparison of Digital Experience Platform features of Product A and Product B
Optimizely Content Management System
-
Ratings
Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
8.1
13 Ratings
11% below category average
Campaign management00 Ratings7.813 Ratings
Cloud enablement00 Ratings8.413 Ratings
Content aggregation00 Ratings8.313 Ratings
Content classification00 Ratings8.313 Ratings
Multi-channel content personalization00 Ratings7.913 Ratings
Customer data analytics00 Ratings7.412 Ratings
DXP Third-Party Integrations00 Ratings7.613 Ratings
Multi-website management00 Ratings8.712 Ratings
Digital asset management00 Ratings8.313 Ratings
Editorial workflows and task management00 Ratings8.112 Ratings
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User Ratings
Optimizely Content Management SystemSitecore Digital Experience Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(221 ratings)
9.2
(42 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.7
(34 ratings)
8.2
(10 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(90 ratings)
9.0
(17 ratings)
Availability
9.2
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(8 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Online Training
10.0
(4 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
6.4
(2 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Optimizely Content Management SystemSitecore Digital Experience Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
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
Read full review
Sitecore
Sitecore offers Content Hub with Product Content Management and Content Management Platform. The Digital Experience Platform and Content Hub can both host structured content and publish the finalized version to Experience Edge. Both platforms offer different ways to manage content. During a technical and business evaluation, the evaluation panel must understand the difference between a Content Modelling focused approach, or a layout management focused approach. Sitecore Digital Experience Platform is also best not to be used to host many files and images in the Media Library. That responsibility should be offloaded to a digital asset management company like Sitecore Content Hub DAM. The technology evaluation panel must also understand how to work with a Headless CMS, where the HEAD needs to be hosted, and the costs associated with the HEAD. Composable DXP is fantastic, but everyone must understand the various cost components. Marketers and the data team will need to go into the CDP and Personalize the platform with an excellent understanding of how a composable "installation" works. All the Martech vendors have similar challenges that data and development teams need to work through with a full experience. Any CDP/analytics platform will, at some stage, require further data enrichment from other sources. Understanding the Sitecore Search features and limitations is also essential.
Read full review
Pros
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.
Read full review
Sitecore
  • Comprehensive Solution: Sitecore offers a fully integrated suite of products that cover the full spectrum of DXP capabilities, including search, personalization experimentation and more, delivering a complete composable DXP solution for customers.
  • Beyond Headless: XM Cloud provides more than just headless capabilities, featuring in-built tools like authoring host, page editor, etc., enabling faster and more powerful implementations.
  • Focus on AI: Sitecore has now got an excellent AI offering called Stream; it looks promising; however, it would be too early to give feedback on the same.
  • Customization: Sitecore's backend is highly customizable, allowing for deep modifications through pipelines and patch configurations.
Read full review
Cons
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.
Read full review
Sitecore
  • Experience Editor is a little old fashioned and sometimes slow to use.
  • Bulk operations in the Content Editor
  • Sitecore serialization is should be part of the Content Editor to provide visual reference for items which are serialized and will be overwritten by future deployments similar to what Unicorn does so well
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
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
Sitecore
Sitecore has proven that it can deliver on its promise of a robust, reliable enterprise CMS solution with plenty of features. Also, they keep updating it with more and better features. Now that we are highly trained on it we have started on getting the most out of it and we plan to keep doing more of that in the future.
Read full review
Usability
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.
Read full review
Sitecore
Once you learn how to use the platform and can put a solid strategy in place to manage it long-term, it becomes a lot easier to use. The tricky part is working with resources who are familiar with the platform to navigate some of the common implementation and configuration pitfalls. Although Sitecore has worked very hard to overcome some of these from their earlier product versions by creating wizards and improving their support documentation, at the end of the day it is still a very complex and powerful system that needs to be implemented carefully in order to foster the best possible user experience for authors. So it could be rated very usable or not usable at all based on how much planning took place and the quality of the implementation.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
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
Sitecore
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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
Read full review
Sitecore
1. Customized software development & maintenance. 2. Technology Consulting - Consulting-based services for technology solutions data engineering or cloud solutions. 3. Used for tapping into multiple data sources such as CRM and marketing automation systems and, creating automated data extracts with a high-end visual representation of data. 4. Implemented for scheduling an existing report to automatically refresh and be delivered to specific users at a specific regular interval.
Read full review
Online Training
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
Sitecore
Sitecore captures and remembers every single interaction your customers and prospects have in any part of the system, allowing you to build comprehensive, ever-learning profiles of each individual. From email marketing, to social media, to online shopping, Sitecore remembers where each interaction left off so you can automatically continue the conversation. Sitecore helps you manage your content for each and every experience your customers enjoy. Customize what content you want and the system will take care of how it's displayed.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Optimizely
I was not fully involved.
Read full review
Sitecore
Make sure you work with a partner that can help you take advantage of the entire platform. Specifically we see a lot of customers not taking advantage of Sitecore DMS and thus missing a huge opportunity. Sitecore is a platform that is meant to be constantly optimized and improved upon.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
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.
Read full review
Sitecore
Sitefinity is improving but at the time of decision making it had nothing that could compare with the A/B testing and personalisation features that Sitecore offers. This was a key differentiator and ultimately ensured Sitecore was purchased. WordPress isn't really comparable and isn't within our technology stack, which is mostly Microsoft.
Read full review
Return on Investment
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
Read full review
Sitecore
  • ROI depends on what features the customer wants to leverage from Sitecore. Sitecore is not just a CMS. It's CEP platform which comes with Analytics, Personalization, A/B Testing, and Email for marketers modules etc., out of the box.
  • Based on my experience some of the customers lean towards third party services. This is primarily due to lack of the understanding of these features. If a customer leverages these out of the box features ROI will be high. It depends on how much is being [sent] to third parties services.
  • Sitecore has very good accelerators in the market. These accelerators allows you to create response sites very quickly. If a simple campaign site takes 50K to build the site may save at least 50% of that cost. Examples of site accelerators are Brainjocks, Keystone, Cognifide etc.
Read full review
ScreenShots

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.