Adobe Experience Manager vs. WordPress

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Experience Manager
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Adobe Experience Manager is a combined web content management system and digital asset management system. The combined applications of Adobe Experience Manager Sites and Adobe Experience Manager Assets is offered by the vendor as an end-to-end solution for managing and delivering marketing content.N/A
WordPress
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Wordpress is an open-source publishing platform popular with bloggers, and a content management system, known for its simplicity and modifiability. Websites may host their own blogging communities, controlling and moderating content from a single dashboard.
$4
per month 6 GB storage
Pricing
Adobe Experience ManagerWordPress
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Personal
$4
per month 6 GB storage
Premium
$8
per month 13 GB storage
Business
$25
per month 50 GB storage
Commerce
$45
per month 50 GB storage
Enterprise
Contact for pricing
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe Experience ManagerWordPress
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing for Business and Commerce plans vary on number of GB.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe Experience ManagerWordPress
Features
Adobe Experience ManagerWordPress
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
8.4
Ratings
2% above category average
WordPress
8.8
Ratings
9% above category average
Role-based user permissions8.40 Ratings8.80 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
8.0
Ratings
4% below category average
WordPress
8.7
Ratings
14% above category average
API7.80 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language8.10 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
7.5
Ratings
2% below category average
WordPress
8.3
Ratings
7% above category average
WYSIWYG editor7.40 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness6.70 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Admin section7.00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Page templates7.60 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Library of website themes7.30 Ratings6.50 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design7.80 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.10 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Form generator7.60 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
7.3
Ratings
1% above category average
WordPress
8.6
Ratings
16% above category average
Content taxonomy7.70 Ratings8.90 Ratings
SEO support7.10 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Bulk management7.20 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions7.50 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Community / comment management7.10 Ratings9.20 Ratings
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Adobe Experience ManagerWordPress
Small Businesses
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Score 8.6 out of 10
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
Adobe Experience ManagerWordPress
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(0 ratings)
8.4
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.6
(0 ratings)
9.5
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.2
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.7
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe Experience ManagerWordPress
Likelihood to Recommend
I'll answer the second one because I mean, the first one I don't have an issue with. The second scenario is we oftentimes have the need to spin off very small campaign style sites or sites that generate leads but are unbranded and that sort of thing. So that's hard to do in AEM because you have to then create another organization within AEM to do that. And we're talking about sites that are maybe five to 10 pages in size. So we've been investigating Edge, but then that's a different workflow, so we'd have to train people on that. So it would be nice if there was something within the AEM structure that could allow you to do something very similar to Edge, where you make some small micro sites that are not necessarily branded, that you could still host within the platform and not have to retrain everybody on a completely different platform.
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In my opinion, smaller organizations with simpler layouts would be well suited to use WordPress, however, larger organizations with more advanced website feature needs may need another product. We found the website to be great at first, but as we grew, we needed more options that were not fitting for the product we had with WordPress and had to look at alternatives.
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Pros
  • It allows us to scale so that we can make a change on a global footer. And it applies to all of the different property websites. It allows us to set up components and compartmentalize things in a way. The big thing is that it's scalable. And then it also ties into Adobe Analytics and other Adobe products. So we are a complete Adobe shop. Every Adobe product that we can use, we use. I don't think we do it for marketing so much, but for doing target testing and analytics, data scientists are using the same product and so it all speaks.
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  • Easy to use User Interface
  • Coding / Plugin Implementation is awesome
  • There's always a solution available for the platform
  • Security is easy to use and robust
  • Implementation with 3rd party platforms, such as Google's variety of tools
  • Can download and host on your own server or use their hosted servers
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Cons
  • easier way to make universal changes for multiple websites at a time (ie pushing out a new experience fragment to all as opposed to having to individually add to each site)
  • easier way to get site images to look and be sized exactly as I want directly from the site page editor
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  • WordPress breaks often so you need to have someone who understands how to troubleshoot, which can take time and money.
  • Some plugins are easier to customize than others, for example, some don't require any coding knowledge while others do. This can limit your project if you are not a coder.
  • WordPress can be easily hacked, so you also need someone who can ensure your sites are secure.
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Likelihood to Renew
We had and still have a fantastic experience using Adobe CQ. Lots of flexibility, great integration with other Adobe products we already use and a powerful technology make it a great fit for our corporate environment. Also as the community grows, it makes it easier to network with other developers and users to get new ideas on how to continue to get the best out of the software.
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As time goes on, websites will become less focused on paged content and more immersive. At the same time, the need for security will only go up. While WordPress has served the web community well for over 11 years, it's probably time to look for other better platforms.
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Usability
Sure there are a few quirks in the interface, but once you learn them, building and editing pages is fast and efficient. Once you have the content and the planned design decided (how the pages will look and which components you will use), page builds and publishing are quick. I was able to build a 10-page specialized site with cards built using the list component in an afternoon
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WordPress has excellent UX/UI, mainly because it's familiar. The platform is still a bit dated on the back end, but it has improved from the past. I wouldn't give it a 10 in this area because it does require some coding and development knowledge. You can't just jump in and create a website with confidence, like you would with Jimdo, Squarespace or similar tools.
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Reliability and Availability
Being part of Adobe Suite means you are already notified when the tool has any outages. However, I have never faced unplanned outages. Whenever you face any issue with the site, it is clearly stated if there were any planned outages and how quickly you will be back to normal. So, I will say that even the outages are planned and managed in a great way like their other services.
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Anyone can visit WordPress.org and download a fully functional copy of WordPress free of charge. Additionally, WordPress is offered to users as open-source software, which means that anyone can customize the code to create new applications and make these available to other WordPress users.
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Performance
With respect to performance, Adobe experience manager is one of the best in the CMS space. We didn't observe frequent slowness on platform, however the systems which are accessing experience manager should be of good specifications without which slowness would be observed. Adobe experience manager works well in integration with other solutions, unless the destination application is designed to trigger frequent calls to AEM.
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Mostly, any performance issues have to do with using too many plugins and these can sometimes slow down the overall performance of your site. It is very tempting to start adding lots of plugins to your WordPress site, however, as there are thousands of great plugins to choose from and so many of them help you do amazing things on your site. If you begin to notice performance issues with your WordPress site (e.g. pages being slow to load), there are ways to optimize the performance of your site, but this requires learning the process. WordPress users can learn how to optimize their WordPress sites by downloading the WPTrainMe WordPress training plugin (WPTrainMe.com) and going through the detailed step-by-step WordPress optimization tutorials.
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Support Rating
Adobe Experience Manager, in all its capacity, is a great alternative to any other CMS you are using. It helps in rapid development and makes life easier for maintaining the website for multi-language sites. Technical know-how is eliminated at content authoring. Better documentation in terms of live examples with videos would be appreciated.
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WordPress itself only has community service so your experience will depend on where you turn. Online, through forums and community boards, support is rudimentary but effective. You can easily turn to your local community and find exceptional individuals who know and use WordPress regularly for more advanced, inexpensive, support. I'm rating this less than 10 because of the lack of any formal support provided by a company.
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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
Varies by the person providing training. High marks as it's incredibly easy to find experienced individuals in your community to provide training on any aspect of WordPress from content marketing, SEO, plugin development, theme design, etc. Less than 10 though as the training is community based and expectations for a session you find may fall short.
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
It is very easy to find online resources to learn how to do just about anything with WordPress.
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Implementation Rating
Depending on your individual needs, It is really quite simple to create an authoring experience for a website that looks really good. I have been part of many implementations and many teams and have seen many projects that were super successful and others that were not implemented well. AEM has room for a lot of flexibility in the implementation process compared to other CMS like SharePoint
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WordPress is not a great solution if you have: 1) A larger site with performance / availability requirements. 2) Multiple types of content you want to share - each with its own underlying data structure. 3) Multiple sites you need to manage. For very small sites where these needs are not paramount, WordPress is a decent solution
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Alternatives Considered
SSO is one fits all, so we don't have to have a separate SSO for each application of Adobe The integration with Analytics works perfectly and bring directly value really quickly Target remains more complicated to set up, but can also bring a lot of value once integrated with the rest of the Adobe platform The fact that the solution is Cloud services is also a big advantage for maintenance
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There are no other site builders/platforms that stand up to the ease and versatility (heavy custom coding and customizations included) as Wordpress. Drupal is clunky and outdated, as is Joomla, and while Wix or Squarespace may be sufficient for someone with very low web needs, much like Shopify, it's incredibly limiting and either requires hitting it with a hammer and hacking code together to do what you want, or relying on often shoddily-built third party themes and liquid scripts.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
WordPress is completely scalable. You can get started immediately with a very simple "out-of-the box" WordPress installation and then add whatever functionality you need as and when you need it, and continue expanding. Often we will create various WordPress sites on the same domain to handle different aspects of our strategy (e.g. one site for the sales pages, product information and/or a marketing blog, another for delivering products securely through a private membership site, and another for running an affiliate program or other application), and then ties all of these sites together using a common theme and links on each of the site's menus. Additionally, WordPress offers a multisite function that allows organizations and institutions to manage networks of sites managed by separate individual site owners, but centrally administered by the parent organization. You can also expand WordPress into a social networking or community site, forums, etc. The same scalability applies to web design. You can start with a simple design and then scale things up to display sites with amazing visual features, including animations and video effects, sliding images and animated product image galleries, elements that appear and fade from visitor browsers, etc. The scaling possibilities of WordPress are truly endless.
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Return on Investment
  • Makes it easy to reuse components across multiple pages and site, which reduces the overhead needed to create all the individual components.
  • Improves business process agility by allowing users to easily create entirely new pages or content by using existing templates
  • Increases conversion rates across our sites by enabling a more consistent experience for users
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  • Allowed us to being all websites under a single umbrella, saving costs on similar products.
  • It's increased our website turn time and made us faster and more efficient at launching websites.
  • Edits and tweaks happen much faster as we have a customized environment.
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ScreenShots

Adobe Experience Manager Screenshots

Screenshot of AEM Forms - Creates an adaptive formScreenshot of AEM Forms - themes libraryScreenshot of AEM Forms - where to create a templateScreenshot of AEM Forms - the interactive communications editorScreenshot of Adobe Experience Manager Sites - document-based authoring enables marketers to create and publish content with familiar tools.Screenshot of Adobe Experience Manager Sites - Universal Editor, an advanced visual editor, empowers marketers to edit and publish content.