COMPARISON
Optimizely delivers faster time to market, better ROI, and a more modern, composable DXP — all at a smarter price.
Discover why leading enterprises choose Optimizely over Adobe Experience Manager.
Don’t get stuck with a costly, complex, Adobe specialist-heavy setup.
Optimizely delivers a future-proof CMS that’s easy to use, fast to implement, and built for today’s (and tomorrow’s) digital teams.
Explore how our enterprise customers benefit and how we compare.
Optimizely customers get a flexible, user-friendly CMS without the need to buy an entire suite. Deploy faster, without those pricey Adobe specialists, and see ROI in months — not years.
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Optimizely |
Adobe Experience Manager |
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Time to market | Optimizely’s CMS offers a modern hybrid-headless setup with a cloud-based SaaS structure and API integration, enabling faster time to market. |
Reliance on proprietary technology requires extensive specialist input and delays time to market for content projects. |
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Flexibility |
Optimizely gives you the flexibility to choose just what you need, without being tied to an all-in-one package.
Unlike Adobe, Optimizely lets you integrate with the tools you choose, offering even more flexibility and freedom of choice. |
With Adobe Experience Manager, you’re forced to buy the entire Adobe suite, even if you only need the CMS. |
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Who it’s for |
Designed for your entire digital team, including content editors, designers and developers. |
AEM is best suited to teams who want to adopt the entire Adobe Experience Cloud DXP suite, as well as those with extensive specialist knowledge in Adobe’s proprietary technology. |
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CMS Type |
Flexibility in terms of SaaS and PaaS, headless or hybrid options for enterprise teams, both UI and API-based. |
Monolithic, traditional. |
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User experience |
Intuitive authoring experience via Visual Builder allows marketing and editorial teams to seamlessly build and publish content. Includes live preview, drag-and-drop content blocks, and rich text editor. |
Steep learning curve. For non-developer users, AEM’s heavy reliance on drag-and-drop features within the page editor is a common source of frustration. |
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Integrations |
Unlike AEM, Optimizely supports different development codebases that aren’t tied to proprietary technology.
Search, personalization and optimization-as-a-service are fully integrated and require little to no additional overhead to implement.
Optimizely seamlessly connects with an extensive range of third-party platforms and tools. | Despite Adobe’s “fully integrated” claim, customers frequently complain of long implementation timelines and complex integrations. |
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Innovation |
Driven by real customer needs and backed by heavy R&D and investments, Optimizely is the industry’s most advanced CMS. New features are regularly released to help customers meet evolving business needs and deliver dynamic, personalized experiences, powered by automation and AI. | While Adobe does innovate in other areas of its product suite, its CMS has remained largely stagnant, focusing only on basic bug fixes and maintenance without significant upgrades or new features. |
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Ease of implementation |
Optimizely’s language-agnostic DXP is intuitive for developers of all backgrounds to set up and implement, ensuring you achieve faster TTM and ROI. | Adobe Experience Manager is acknowledged as the most complex CMS platform on the market. Implementing AEM requires developers with specialist experience in proprietary technology, such as Coral/Granite UI and HTL. |
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Maintenance |
Continuous software maintenance, seamless upgrades, zero downtime deployment, and the fastest performance available on the market. | Resource-intensive. Upgrading to new versions necessitates manual intervention from a dedicated internal dev team or agency. |
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Support |
24/7 support, professional training, friendly experts, and active user community. | Optimizely support a stark contrast to the extensive support delays reported by AEM customers. |
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Cost |
Optimizely’s pricing comes with more features included and less unexpected costs as customers scale up use of the platform. Optimizely’s pricing results in lower total cost of ownership vs. AEM. |
Adobe requires you to purchase the full Experience Cloud suite to access AEM, resulting in higher costs for less features and functionality.
Adobe’s bundled products come at a premium, leading to higher overall total cost of ownership.
To ensure successful implementation, Adobe customers need to invest in hiring or training developers familiar with Adobe’s frameworks, impacting ROI. |
Discover why top companies trust Optimizely over Adobe Experience Manager with their digital experiences.
With Optimizely, marketers and creatives have the freedom to build what they want, the way they want. Quickly and easily create, manage and optimize content, driving engagement and conversions across channels — all with minimal dev resources.
Optimizely’s Visual Builder is designed to empower marketing teams to launch engaging digital experiences at lightning speed, and rapidly accelerates your time-to-market compared to AEM.
Optimizely is easier to set up and implement than AEM — no specialized Adobe developer expertise required — to ensure you achieve ROI as quickly as possible.
No more surprise costs for essential features with Optimizely’s straightforward pricing plans. And unlike AEM, you don’t need headcount for an army of Adobe specialists.
Optimizely has been lauded by top analyst firms, with a total of eleven leadership positions in CMS and DXP.
The Forrester Wave™: Digital Experience Platforms, Q4 2023 | The Forrester Wave™: Content Management Systems, Q3 2023
A leader
But don’t just take our word for it — check out what they’ve got to say.
Tahmina Choudhury
Head of Client Journey Management Technology, Allspring Global Investments
Arjan P.
Optimizely enterprise customer, G2 review
Ritu Madan
Solutions Architect/Developer, Perficient, TrustRadius review
Optimizely consistently outperforms AEM on major review platforms, boasting an 8.7/10 score on Trustradius vs. AEM's 7.9/10.
Ready to experience a modern DXP? Let us show you:
