Adobe Experience Manager - Managed Services (FedRAMP)

We are working on digital experience platforms such as Adobe Experience Manager  or Sitefinity . It's for powering their customer-facing website, not the transaction portal, but the brochureware portal. Currently, we have around three customers who are using Adobe Experience Manager .

I am from the IT infrastructure side, not an actual end user or developer. Feature-wise, I believe the dispatcher module is the best aspect of Adobe Experience Manager. It helps to deliver web pages very fast. I have used products from other competitors of Adobe Experience Manager, but I find the dispatcher very good.

The content is created as Adobe Experience Manager has an author, publisher, and dispatcher. However, there is a feature missing where if content is created on the UAT environment and needs to be transferred or synced to the production environment, there is no direct way of doing the sync. Currently, the developer has to create a package and install it on the production environment from UAT to production. There should be a direct sync between the UAT lower environment to the production higher environment.

They should optimize Adobe Experience Manager.

It has been in use for maybe 5 or 6 years.

The initial setup for Adobe Experience Manager had some issues when we did it for the first time. After that, we had our learnings, and there weren't many issues from the IT infrastructure or setup side. Regarding the development side, I cannot comment as I am not from the development team.

Adobe Experience Manager is pretty stable. I would rate it 9 or 10. Since they are enterprise and have significant digital business coming through the digital medium, the stability of the product is very important.

It's scalable but requires license procurement to add more publishers or dispatchers. You cannot simply add more servers without purchasing the license. Additionally, manual configuration is required when adding servers, making it not straightforward. For these reasons, I would rate the scalability at 6 or 7. Ideally, it should be more straightforward.

Support for Adobe Experience Manager is good. I would rate it 8. They are always supportive.

Positive

The initial setup for Adobe Experience Manager takes approximately 3 to 4 days.

We are the integrators.

Adobe Experience Manager is expensive compared to competitors. I would rate the cost at 10.

We are using version 6.5 or higher of Adobe Experience Manager. Overall, I would rate this solution 7 out of 10.

I've worked with all major content management systems. Currently, I work with the leaders such as Adobe Experience Manager , Sitecore, and Acquia.

Working with big companies, I help them either consider setting up a new content management system or address issues they might have with their existing systems. My role involves evaluating the decision for a new CMS and ensuring successful implementation.

The integration of customer behavior and website setup is impressive. It's similar to a heat map used on the fly.

While there are many aspects that could be improved, discussing them would require more time. The licensing model is opaque, and technical support could be improved, especially for smaller companies.

For the last 25 years as Adobe Experience Manager  has evolved through various iterations.

Adobe Experience Manager provides assurance that the system will work within five to ten years, ensuring stability for big companies.

Adobe's technical support is so-so. They are attentive to big companies but tend to be negligent towards mid-sized companies. You rarely have a direct contact with Adobe and often work through suppliers.

Neutral

Setting up Adobe Experience Manager is easy unless you want to customize anything. The setup process can become problematic if you try to change or customize extensively.

The key is the implementation team, which often involves technical suppliers.

The pricing is opaque and not a key factor when considering the dimensions of the solution. For large enterprises, the cost is often comparable with other major CMSs.

ContentSquare , Sitecore, Storyblok , and Typos3 are alternatives that I am aware of.

For any investment, it's important to understand what you want to do and what your targets are. The system should fit into your IT environment and also align with your business strategy. This makes your implementation smoother and more successful.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

I am a full stack developer, focusing more on the front end. I work with frameworks like React and JavaScript. I would like to give a review about Adobe Experience Manager , which I have used for managing content for large-scale applications.

Since using Adobe Experience Manager , we have been able to manage content without dumping everything into the code. It allows business people to modify values directly without waiting for deployment times. Additionally, the use of Adobe Experience Manager has helped manage traffic more efficiently through effective scaling and balancing loads.

The most valuable features of Adobe Experience Manager include its capability to manage content and create reusable fragments. It is user-friendly for business people who may not have extensive technical knowledge. The Asset Manager  is particularly useful as it allows multiple developers to reuse images without bloating local code size.

Adobe Experience Manager could improve by allowing the reuse of components like a progress bar across multiple pages to make the development process more efficient. Currently, changes have to be made on all the pages manually, which is time-consuming.

I have been using Adobe Experience Manager for about one year. Although I am relatively new to it, I find it highly beneficial for content management.

Adobe Experience Manager is fairly stable yet could benefit from enhancements, especially in component reuse.

Adobe Experience Manager is highly scalable but has some difficulties. Despite these, it reduces the number of servers needed by efficiently managing web content.

I have not personally interacted with customer service or raised any tickets. Our Adobe Experience Manager team handles such situations.

Positive

Before using Adobe Experience Manager, I worked with libraries to manage content but did not use another content management system specifically.

Setting up Adobe Experience Manager is complex and requires a good understanding of Java and content management systems. The setup is especially challenging for those unfamiliar with it.

Deployment requires three people: the developer who made the changes, an Adobe Experience Manager assistant, and a business person to monitor the deployment. Maintenance requires at least ten Adobe Experience Manager experts for large applications.

Adobe Experience Manager has provided significant returns on investment, especially in applications with large numbers of users. Its ability to change content without deployments is beneficial.

Adobe Experience Manager is quite expensive and requires careful management of cashing and usage. It is described as high-cost but value-adding.

The platform team chose Adobe Experience Manager due to its trusted reputation and additional advantages over simpler systems like WordPress .

For web applications with frequently changing content where business people need to make modifications without technical knowledge, Adobe Experience Manager offers significant advantages.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We use the solution for e-commerce. For the e-commerce part, we have three types of channels: mobile, web, and tools, both B2B and B2C.

It's a complete package. You don't need to look elsewhere for digital marketing. It has all the necessary features and can integrate with various analytics tools, including Google Analytics. Plus, it's easier to use for designing and related tasks.

They also used personalization. The entire customer journey was designed around it.

The licenses are very expensive. Customers don't want to invest so much.

I have been using Adobe Experience Manager for over ten years.

It is 100% stable.

It is suitable for enterprise-level customers. It provides all sorts of products for design and development activities.

I rate the solution’s scalability a nine out of ten.

I have used Liferay.

Maintenance depends on the volume of the work.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

I have been using it for CDP, real-time data, CJA, and CJAO (Customer Journey Optimization). My current organization is a product-based company. We have multiple products with a wide user base, both B2B and B2C. 

We have to track their data, including digital and offline data. We have sales and marketing teams who use different sources. We need to club the data through our CDP and give it to the marketing team to utilize for marketing efforts. 

We have a separate team that requires cold calling details, small communications, and push notifications. All these things are required for CJA to optimize our campaigns. 

Before, we were using Eloqua, Salesforce, Adobe, AWS, and many other data sources. It was difficult for stakeholders to make decisions because they had to consult multiple dashboards (marketing, campaign, etc.). They had to create slides and then make decisions. 

Now, with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), we have all the data sources in one place and can visualize them together. We can make quick decisions, and we started using this in 2024.

I like the CDP capabilities and the real-time data set. You can combine offline and online data and use it as a centralized data set. 

Secondly, I like the profiling and segmentation. Profiling gives the uniqueness of the profile and identity, and segmentation allows you to group people for targeted campaigns or performance analysis.

In terms of improvement, it's an industry practice for organizations to move towards Adobe Experience Platform (AEP). One of the major benefits is that all marketing efforts for customer engagement, campaigns, etc., are based on server-side implementations. In AEP, we have a very SDK model through server-side implementations.

That would be the normal benefits where, without third-party cookies, we can use first-party cookies for our marketing efforts. So that would be another benefit of AEP.

There is a little room for improvement in the support. 

I have been using it for the last three years. 

It's perfectly fine. It is a stable product.

It's scalable.

I have worked very closely with the Adobe customer teams and their account managers. So, their support performance is very good. They have the capabilities to help, and it depends on your account and the contract. They will help you a lot.

Positive

The initial setup is easy. A little bit of background knowledge of coding and website structure is required.

It is worth the money. Some products are leaders in the market, and Adobe is one of them. They provide leadership in their analytics.

It's really costly. The pricing is based on the number of users. If your users increase, the prices increase.

It's easy to use, but it requires knowledge of data structure, data modeling, and SQL coding. Familiarity with the relationships of the data set is also helpful.

I would recommend using it. If you have an online, offline, and multi-store business, a multi-city level of business, like a global banking business, Adobe is a good platform. You can utilize it, and once you use AEP, it will be helpful. You can centralize the data from batch data and any digital assets as well.

Overall, I would rate it a ten out of ten.