Optimizely - One CMS, Multiple Solutions
May 09, 2023

Optimizely - One CMS, Multiple Solutions

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Ektron Web CMS

Overall Satisfaction with Optimizely Content Management System

We maintain around a dozen different brand websites, all offering different job positions in the Healthcare industry. Optimizely helps us to deliver a different set of content and ways to apply using a code base, which helps a lot in terms of creating content new features that can be used across different business lines. We also use Optimizely to create content that gets delivered to our mobile application using their Content Delivery API, which can also be personalized according to the User preferences and needs.

Pros

  • 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)

Cons

  • The Admin CMS UI can be faster and be better organized. It does feel like left behind when compared to the Content Management UI.
  • Page and Blocks Previews can be a tad hard to render properly when Content is complex.
  • We use a lot of ReactJS in our Blocks, that can be challenging to integrate properly in the Content Management UI.
  • Since having a single code base, now we have less bugs than ever when deploying new features.
  • A very clean API integration (with very little extra code needed) to expose/manage Content for our Mobile Application.
  • The CMS Content Management is quite fast to response and easy to work with. Our internal end Users are quite happy with the CMS Content Management tools.
We use their Content Delivery API to expose content to our Mobile Application. This way we can deploy new Content real time to Mobile Users with no IT interaction.

Optimizely Forms are a great tool to collect information that then can submitted to multiple sources. We have several forms connected to different CRMs and internal systems. Those forms allow updates with little effort once created.
We can share Content in a simple way, and we can offer a more customized experience using Optimizely products in faster way.
Because there was a need to have a single code base for multiple sites, we spend around 3 months designing all initial features to be shared. We also have a lot of front end functionality to be implemented, like a full job search feature and forms submitting data to different end points. Then it took us around 5 more months to develop all these features. We got our first site in about 8 months, but then subsequent websites were able to be down in 45 days. Last ones we were able to get them out in less than a month.

Do you think Optimizely Content Management System delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Optimizely Content Management System's feature set?

Yes

Did Optimizely Content Management System live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Optimizely Content Management System go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Optimizely Content Management System again?

Yes

Our choice to migrate all our websites to Optimizely was based largely on their MVC .NET architecture that allowed us to create many reusable templates for multiple sites at once. Our main goal was to simplify delivery and code maintenance: we went from needing hours to deploy changes affecting all our sites, to only need 20 minutes.

Optimizely is good for complex solutions, where a lot of customization is needed on a website or web application (i.e. several block types/controls that need to be reusable and customized). For a simple brochure website, with a few dynamic pages, this can be an overkill solution.

Optimizely Content Management System Feature Ratings

WYSIWYG editor
7
Code quality / cleanliness
9
Admin section
5
Page templates
8
Mobile optimization / responsive design
9
Publishing workflow
8
Form generator
9
Content taxonomy
8
SEO support
8
Availability / breadth of extensions
9
Community / comment management
10
API
9
Role-based user permissions
8

Optimizely Content Management System Support

Their support is fast and efficient. They are always available and ready to provide information when requested.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
I'm not sure about this. I know we have quite good support from them.
We were having performance issues one time, and they spend the time analyzing logs and profiler results several times, until the culprit was found and we were able to develop a fix thanks to their guidance. The issue took several days and they were always fast to respond during this situation.

Comments

  • Emma Davis | TrustRadius Reviewer
    Hi There, Thanks for leaving us a review! We greatly appreciate it. We love to hear that you've been having an overall great experience with Optimizely and our CMS. Please don't hesitate to share your insights into how we could improve directly with your Customer Success Manager, so we can continue to improve user experience. You can also leave us a message at reviews@optimizely.com at any time.

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