Adobe Analytics vs. Parse.ly

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Analytics
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Adobe acquired Omniture in 2009 and re-branded the platform as SiteCatalyst. It is now part of Adobe Marketing Cloud along with other products such as social marketing, test and targeting, and tag management. SiteCatalyst is one of the leading vendors in the web analytics category and is particularly strong in combining web analytics with other digital marketing capabilities like audience management and data management. Adobe Analytics also includes predictive marketing capabilities that help…N/A
Parse.ly
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Parse.ly is a content optimization platform for online publishers. It provides in-depth analytics and helps maximize the performance of the digital content. It features a dashboard geared for editorial and business staff and an API that can be used by a product team to create personalized or contextual experiences on a website.
$499
per month
Pricing
Adobe AnalyticsParse.ly
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe AnalyticsParse.ly
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalRequired
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe AnalyticsParse.ly
Considered Both Products
Adobe Analytics
Chose Adobe Analytics
Versus the other two analytics tools used by my organization, Adobe Analytics provides more in-depth and "fine-tunable" analytics. It is used as the official source of data when conducting reports for company data. Adobe Analytics is also the official tool used in my …
Parse.ly
Chose Parse.ly
Adobe Analytics is our organization's "official" data source and provides a much more in-depth feature set and customizable reporting tool. It's much less user-friendly than Parse.ly but can provide more detailed reporting. Google Analytics is used by my organization as a …
Chose Parse.ly
Parse.ly seems to be more user-friendly than Adobe and is on the same user-friendly level as Chartbeat. Chartbeat had features that I would love to see integrated into Parse.ly like an overlay feature that showed where website users were dropping from that page. Chartbeat also …
Chose Parse.ly
Parsely has the best UI, best reports, best real-time data, and the best historical data that I've used. I'd never go back to any of the tools I've used before.
Chose Parse.ly
As GA and AA are more general purpose digital analytics tools, they can be configured to do any type of web analytics tracking. However, Parse.ly is custom-made for editorial teams and newsrooms. Parse.ly is far more intuitive and easy to use. It's a fantastic tool for …
Chose Parse.ly
It's not as powerful or reliable as Google Analytics (e.g. it's missing demographic data, and doesn't integrate with Google Search Console or AdWords), but it meets most of the basic requirements that we need. It's a difference user experience in general, and slightly more …
Chose Parse.ly
Parse.ly is made for non-data people!
Features
Adobe AnalyticsParse.ly
Web Analytics
Comparison of Web Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Analytics
7.9
99 Ratings
2% below category average
Parse.ly
7.6
7 Ratings
6% below category average
Lead Conversion Tracking7.590 Ratings6.23 Ratings
Bounce Rate Measurement7.796 Ratings6.85 Ratings
Device and Browser Reporting8.397 Ratings8.36 Ratings
Pageview Tracking8.695 Ratings8.26 Ratings
Event Tracking8.495 Ratings7.85 Ratings
Reporting in real-time6.993 Ratings8.46 Ratings
Referral Source Tracking8.093 Ratings7.66 Ratings
Customizable Dashboards8.294 Ratings7.66 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Adobe AnalyticsParse.ly
Small Businesses
StatCounter
StatCounter
Score 9.0 out of 10
StatCounter
StatCounter
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Optimal
Optimal
Score 8.6 out of 10
Optimal
Optimal
Score 8.6 out of 10
Enterprises
Optimal
Optimal
Score 8.6 out of 10
Optimal
Optimal
Score 8.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Adobe AnalyticsParse.ly
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(280 ratings)
7.8
(82 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.5
(139 ratings)
8.7
(32 ratings)
Usability
8.2
(132 ratings)
7.7
(35 ratings)
Availability
8.1
(12 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(42 ratings)
7.8
(35 ratings)
In-Person Training
1.1
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
3.0
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
7.3
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Professional Services
7.9
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe AnalyticsParse.ly
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
About two years ago, we transitioned our property from a three-star hotel to a four-star resort after a multi-million-dollar renovation. In the conversion, we wanted to start reaching out to a younger, affluent demographic that had the means to spend for vacation in a resort area. First and foremost, we want to see if vacations are being booked by desktop computers, laptops or mobile phones. With Adobe Analytics, we can see how a Guest books a room. What do they view? What rooms types do they like? Are they comparing rooms and if they give up searching, where are they else looking and are they coming back. It is a feature where how can we complete the sale? The new process we are also trying to keep Guests on the site is ending our relationship with OpenTable and doing all our resort restaurant reservations in-house. If the Guests were exclusively using OpenTable, we could not track where else on our resort site they are going? Finally, what marketing promotional rates are getting the most drive from
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Parse.ly
Parse.ly is a great tool for publishers who want to track engagement and audience behaviour across websites. With Parse.ly, we can easily track metrics like pageviews, time spent on page, and scroll depth to see which content is resonating with our audience and optimize our content strategy accordingly. Our marketers found Parse.ly to be an excellent tool for tracking the effectiveness of our campaigns. We can use Parse.ly to track metrics like referral sources, conversion rates, and engagement by audience segment to see which channels and tactics are driving the most engagement and conversions.
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Pros
Adobe
  • This product, Adobe Analytics, does a great job of helping us. I think it, it, it does an excellent job of outlining every step of the user journey, as well as giving a good, strong framework to work with as it relates to attribution, attribution of marketing data, and marketing channels, and how, where our users are coming from, how effective those marketing activities are.
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Parse.ly
  • Firstly, the platform is super easy to use, it is user-friendly and easy to navigate through.
  • Secondly, the platform also provides you the option to use filters to your best fit and adjust the filters according to what data you want to look at.
  • Thirdly, it enables the user to have live feedback on their articles and see what can be improved going forward to address the need of the readers.
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Cons
Adobe
  • The tool is heavily a drag and drop kind of dashboard. You're building dashboards on the fly. So oftentimes, I learn my process and how to do things I'm comfortable with, that I can repeat, and get those answers on a consistent basis. But oftentimes, I may not find it easy to take it to the next level. So, areas that can improve are recommending or suggesting. Here's what you might try to improve in this report that you're looking at. Try adding in this metric, or try splicing it this way. Oftentimes, I feel like it requires me to go off and learn these techniques on the side, versus having them right there within the tool. Those recommendations, those helpful tips, and tricks.
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Parse.ly
  • A more readily understandable visual guide to a visitor's pathway through your site would help understand what keeps a reader on-site.
  • The total page view number for the day should be more readily visible--on the overview page, not just by going to Posts>Historical.
  • Maintain the archive for longer than a year under all plans--it's a shame to lose year-on-year data quickly.
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Likelihood to Renew
Adobe
We need it to discover threats long before they become a loophole in the security ecosystem. Also, it is very much compliant with customer standards and expectations. It provides marketing intelligence through in-depth analysis. Overall, a very good product to gain customer attention and thereby improve market
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Parse.ly
As an employee, this is difficult for me to comment as I am not directly funding or making these business decisions. However, it is a tool many get on with for surface level data that is useful to editorial teams.
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Usability
Adobe
It is necessary to have a minimum knowledge on tracking tools so you can use the tool on full performance. It is not an introduction tool, so please bear that in mind. Once you got the knowledge you just need a small training on how to create your custom reports, where to find the components you need and how to add them to your dashboard. Then you share your report or create a rule for periodic sharing and it's done. Finally, if you have a lot of data stored the tool might be a little slower but that's ok.
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Parse.ly
The Parse.ly platform is very user-friendly and easy to use. User management is simple, and reporting setup only takes a few minutes. They provide very helpful documentation for implementing the scripts on your site and have great customer support to help with custom development such as implementing their content recommendation engine.
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Reliability and Availability
Adobe
I do not ever recall a time when Adobe Analytics was unavailable to me to use in the 8 or so years I have been an end user of the product. My most-used day-to-day analytics tool Parse.ly however, generally has a multiple hours planned offline maintenance every two to four weeks, and sometimes has issues collecting realtime analytics that last anywhere between 15 minutes to an hour, and happen anywhere between 1 to 5 times a month.
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Parse.ly
No answers on this topic
Performance
Adobe
Again, no issues here. Performance within the day updates hourly. other reports are updated overnight and available to access by the next morning. Pages load quickly, the site navigates easily and the UX is quite straightforward to get command over. On this front, I give Adobe kudos for building a great experience to work within
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Parse.ly
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Adobe
Support for Adobe Analytics is ok, it used to be worse years ago. Now, the technology team at Adobe is way more knowledgeable on the product itself as well as the implementation. They also study your custom implementation and have good knowledge of where your company stands. Dedicated support is something worth considering.
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Parse.ly
I rate this question this way solely because I haven't requested any support. I feel where I will eventually get support would be when we take Parse.ly up on some training that is being offered. We are looking to do that at some point after the first of the year and when our schedules support it.
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In-Person Training
Adobe
It was a one-day training several years ago that cost the organization several thousand dollars. There were only about 10 people in the training class. Adobe tried to cram so much information into that one-day class that none of our users felt like they really learned anything helpful from the experience. Follow-up training is too expensive
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Parse.ly
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Adobe
The online training for Adobe SiteCatalyst consists of short product videos. These are ok, but only go so far. For a while Adobe charged a fee for this, but recently made these available for free. There are many great blog posts that help users learn how to apply the product as well.
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Parse.ly
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Adobe
One of the benefits and obstacles to successfully using Adobe Analytics is a great / more accurate implementation, make sure your analytics group is intimate with the details of the implementation and that the requirements are driven by the business.
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Parse.ly
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Adobe
We evaluated and we currently use Mixpanel and we have Google Analytics on a couple of our properties. And honestly, once you get the hang of the Adobe Analytics workspace, the other products really don't stack up against it because the segmentation and the ability to create reports pretty rapidly are invaluable.
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Parse.ly
Parse.ly does pretty well compared to Chartbeat, particularly when it comes to historical information and analysis options that are easy for employees to use after some short training. The onboarding for Parse.ly is intuitive, and the scheduled reports take away basically all of the inconvenience associated with regular metrics reviewing. But Chartbeat wins in its social audience tracking because it can source traffic to a specific social post, which can show you exactly how your audience is coming to your content and where you need to put your content to be sure you get that audience.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Adobe
Adobe Analytics is relatively affordable compared to other tools, given it provides a range of flexible variables to use that I have not found in any other tools so far. It is worth investing in if your company is medium or large-sized and brings a steady flow of revenue. For small companies, it can be overpriced.
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Parse.ly
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Adobe
My organization uses Adobe Analytics across a multitude of brand portfolios. Each brand has multiple websites, mobile apps and some even have connected TV apps/channels on Roku and similar devices. Adobe can handle the multitude of properties that have simple, small(ish) websites and the larger brand properties that include web, mobile and connected TVs/OTT devices.
Each of those larger brands has multiple categories and channels to keep track of. We can see the data by channel/device or aggregate all the data together. This gives our executive teams the full picture and the departmental teams the view they need to see their own performance.
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Parse.ly
No answers on this topic
Professional Services
Adobe
The professional services team is one of the best teams for complex adobe analytics implementations, especially for clients having multiple website and mobile applications. However, the cost of professional services is a bit high which makes few clients opt out of it, but for large scale implementations they are very helpful
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Parse.ly
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Adobe
  • I'd say business results. We tend to see better media and marketing engagement as a result of using Adobe Analytics, and that's largely because we can measure the effectiveness of campaigns and we can figure out which ones are driving better engagement, whether it's top of funnel or bottom of funnel. That's probably the biggest business result we see. It's obviously we even use it for other non-traditional use cases like AB testing to figure out which experience is a better or not, that type of thing.
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Parse.ly
  • Sometimes in meetings our editorial director will point out stories that didn't perform well. To us, that means readers don't really care about the topic, so we'll pivot away from writing about that in the future. That might not be "business objectives" though.
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ScreenShots

Adobe Analytics Screenshots

Screenshot of the Alert Builder in Adobe Analytics.Screenshot of an Analysis Workspace Training Tutorial in Adobe AnalyticsScreenshot of attribution in Adobe AnalyticsScreenshot of the Segment Builder in Adobe AnalyticsScreenshot of anomaly detection in Adobe AnalyticsScreenshot of the Alert Builder in Adobe Analytics

Parse.ly Screenshots

Screenshot of Overview in full-screen mode: Many Parse.ly pages, like the Overview, are TV-ready. Keep your entire team up-to-date with live, full-screen dashboards on TVs in your office.Screenshot of Overview screen: See a snapshot of what your audience is paying attention to today so you can make fast decisions about what content to produce or distribute. Customize it to show only what your team cares about by filtering it to a particular author, section, or tag. You can pick what stats and listings are displayed.Screenshot of Real-time posts page: See what’s gathering steam so you can capitalize on attention to every post, campaign, or section.
Real-time data includes the last 24 hours and updates every five seconds. It can be seen, filtered, and sorted on most screens.Screenshot of Historical posts page: Explore historical trends by post, author, section, topic, referrer, or campaign. Compare today’s performance to last week, month, or year.Screenshot of Campaign tracking: Easily tie in your off-site promotion to engagement with your on-site content using UTM parameters.Screenshot of Multi-channel tracking: Track all your content in one place, no matter where it lives.
Compare how your content performances on various distributed channels including your website, AMP, Facebook Instant Articles, and Apple News.