TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Crownpeak CMS

Score7.2 out of 10

51 Reviews and Ratings

What is Crownpeak CMS?

Crownpeak CMS is a composable, enterprise-ready content management system that empowers global teams to seamlessly orchestrate personalized digital experiences across all content channels. Marketing teams can create, manage, and monitor inclusive, accessible, and transactional experiences fast without compromising on functionality, security, or service.

Top Performing Features

  • Role-based user permissions

    Permissions to perform actions or access or modify data are assigned to roles, which are then assigned to users, reducing complexity of administration.

    Category average: 8.3

  • Publishing workflow

    The software allows users to set up a custom workflow for updating the website, including approval processes.

    Category average: 8

  • SEO support

    The CMS helps users create the right website infrastructure (pagination, page headers, titles, meta tags, url structure, etc.) to increase the site’s visibility in search engine results.

    Category average: 7.6

Areas for Improvement

  • Content taxonomy

    Users can create multiple levels and types of content categories including tags.

    Category average: 7.9

  • Code quality / cleanliness

    Code generated by WYSIWYG editor is clean and validates according to W3C standards.

    Category average: 8

  • Availability / breadth of extensions

    There is a broad library of extensions, plug-ins, modules or add-ons that allow users to easily customize their websites without building custom code.

    Category average: 7.5

Crownpeak DXM (SaaS, headless, adaptable, interoperable)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Crownpeak DXM for website design and build implementations for our client's customer marketing in the UK, Europe, and the USA. Crownpeak delivers on our core customer marketing principles - European GDPR compliance, and the principle of capturing customer data as part of transparent value exchange is baked into the platform. Their partner relationship and technical roles understand what marketers need from a WCMs investment. We're able to collaborate with them to tailor solutions for client best-fit. DXM is composable too, so we have the flexibility of integrations with several best-of-breed APIs across CRM, PIM, DAM, Commerce already in place. The SaaS model, means we get version updates with new features and functions without our developers getting involved in integration and update tasks. We know exactly what year-on-year platform costs will be, so we can plan content marketing and CRM budgets - rather than spending time and money on developer tasks associated with version updates.

Pros

  • Due to the headless nature of the platform, publishing is super fast straight to HTML.
  • One repository of content capable of feeding different applications across different languages.
  • Flexibility of integrations fits well with the compossible enterprise model

Cons

  • Back end look and feel is a little dated, could do with some updating on interface design.
  • Navigating content tree's can be a little long winded with deeper content sites, although it's hard to see a way around this.

Return on Investment

  • Total cost of ownership model has removed nasty upgrade surprises and freed us up to plan and spend budget on customer content marketing.
  • True SaaS model has removed developer time, effort and cost on version upgrades, reducing total annual cost of ownership.
  • Flexibility of 3rd party integrations (composable API model) is a cost effective way to avoid the cost and restrictions of single monolithic enterprise systems, so we can be flexible and cost efficient, working with 3rd party investments our clients have in legacy systems.
  • DQM - content, search and accessibility quality checkpoints - saves time and money on QA and optimisation, as well as ensuring brand safety on key content.

Alternatives Considered

Episerver Digital Experience Cloud

Usability

Other Software Used

Salesforce Experience Cloud (formerly Salesforce Community Cloud), Optimizely Content Cloud (formerly Episerver Content Cloud), WordPress

Crownpeak in Real Life

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As a digital consulting agency, we provide technology development for a variety of pharma clients. We recommend and deploy Crownpeak DXM as an enterprise solution for efficient and effective content and asset management and website development. Our most current deployment is for an international bio technology firm. We have deployed Crownpeak as the content management solution across the entire enterprise and across all brands. The benefits include content and asset re-use, reduced maintenance and support costs, and measurably faster times to market.

Our last three deployments have have included multiple brands, within the same company. The ability to leverage the Component Library, adn re-use standardized componets, has been a huge advantage. In terms of speed to market and reduced cost of ownership.

Pros

  • Component re-use.
  • Scalable platform.
  • Very robust suite of development and post-development tools.
  • Excellent training and support.
  • Built-in support for IP management and geo fencing
  • Multi-language support
  • A-B comparisons of designs

Cons

  • Additional integrations with 3rd party tools and systems.

Return on Investment

  • Reduced cost of ownership.
  • Consistent UX across brands.
  • Faster time to market.

Alternatives Considered

Sitecore Experience Manager, Adobe Experience Manager and Bloomreach Experience (brX)

Usability

Other Software Used

Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Zeplin, Drupal, InVision, Jira Software

A Powerful Platform to Rapidly Create Your Digital Experiences

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have implemented Crownpeak DXM for our client's organizations. This includes the development of websites, campaign sites, etc. Crownpeak DXM allows us to design, develop, manage and publish content across multiple channels, and in multiple languages in a very rapid and agile manner. From an architecture standpoint, Crownpeak DMS supports headless and server-rendered architectures which are nice to have that flexibility. In either approach, Crownpeak DMS handles taking care of CMS security, applying patches, performing upgrades, etc. One business challenge that Crownpeak DXM is a great fit for is when organizations need a complementary CMS in order to handle quickly changing needs that might otherwise not be accomplished on their primary CMS.

Pros

  • Speed and agility of developing solutions
  • Headless architecture
  • Support for latest security and privacy rules

Cons

  • Content taxonomy has a learning curve

Return on Investment

  • Faster delivery of web sites and content
  • Drastically reduced time in upgrades
  • Engineers new to the platform are able to become productive quickly

Usability

Enterprise Level CMS functionalities with Saas infrastructure!

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use Crownpeak DXM for some of our clients. For the clients that we provide web content management services via the Crownpeak DXM, they use the platform all across the whole organization also in different languages. The tools provide a seamless content management operations process; the workflow structure and content management process allow non-technical users to create state-of-the-art customer experiences with limited teams. In-built DQM (Digital Quality Management) tool gives the marketing teams the ability to audit their content for accuracy and accessibility. The system has a decoupled deployment structure; as content authors, we are able to create, manage and push content globally (in various languages) with fewer efforts and shorter turnaround times when it comes to delivering complex digital projects without any IT involvement.

Pros

  • Build & manage digital experiences without dependency on your IT team
  • Built-in Digital Quality tool (DQM) tool allows you to check the quality of content and any accessibility issues and immediately flag any issues before publishing.
  • Build websites with the component-based technology and spend less effort in creating the best user experience for the end-user

Cons

  • Platform can be slow sometimes.
  • Training materials are limited

Return on Investment

  • Improved accessibility scores of many of our clients
  • Improved all over digital experience of our clients
  • Huge cost savings due to SaaS as no upgrades needed
  • Shorter time to market ability with accelerators
  • Add more websites quickly without incurring extra cost

Usability

Other Software Used

Crownpeak Digital Quality Management (DQM)

Crownpeak DXM - Truly SaaS!

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are a Crownpeak partner and implement DXM for various clients. Typically it is used by the marketing, or digital, department on behalf of the whole organization. It serves as a the backbone for the web presence for a business. i.e., it's the product that allows a business to maintain its website easily and effectively, refreshing content as needed.

Pros

  • The SaaS platform eliminates the headache of upgrades and patches and allows businesses to just focus on the site development and day-to-day management.
  • Crownpeak's technical support team is always prompt with answering any question or issue that arises.

Cons

  • The lack of real-time debugging may contribute to additional development effort at times.
  • Although its my understanding that its being addressed, the publishing queue can be slow at times during extremely heavy publishing loads.

Return on Investment

  • Our clients have seen a lower cost of ownership due to fully SaaS platform.
  • Our clients appreciate eliminating the need for painful upgrades.

Alternatives Considered

Sitecore Experience Platform, Kentico Xperience, Episerver Digital Experience Cloud, Ektron Web Content Management System (Discontinued) and WordPress

Usability