Adobe Experience Manager Reviews

If you want to use content in a mobile application and you want the content in some other application, you can simply expose it from the CMS to different clients or different systems. It's easy. On top of that, the technology underlying AEM is open-source and is very powerful like Apache Sling and JCR.

In comparison to other CMS products, Adobe Experience Manager is missing some capabilities such as proper versioning or a better versioning system and backend connectivity.

If something is deleted in AEM, the user cannot recover it. You have to call technical support, and they will need to recover the whole instance. So, it's really difficult. For example, if you delete a page, you cannot recover it. There should be an option to recover it. In AEM, you have to go to the previous state of the instance itself or the virtual machine, and you have to restore everything, which is not good.

It's also a very heavyweight solution. If you want to use it just for one purpose, such as delivering content to your mobile application or marketing website, it's too heavy.

For assets, there is a lightweight version of Adobe Experience Manager, and I would like to see a lightweight version for sites in the next release. 

I would like it to also be a little bit more cost efficient so that it's more approachable to SMBs as well.

It is a stable solution.

The cloud version is somewhat stable, but not all of the features are supported yet.

The challenging part is moving from on-premises to the cloud; it's not straightforward. People are very afraid to jump from one boat to another, so that is a challenge. Once you move to the cloud, however, there are no challenges. From a scaling perspective, you would be scaling the infrastructure horizontally and not vertically.

With my present client, we have more than 200 people working with AEM.

The license comes with a managed services contract. You have dedicated people from Adobe, and they are always there.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate technical support at nine.

Positive

I used OpenText TeamSite from Interwoven before switching to AEM. It's still in use, but a lot of people are migrating from TeamSite to AEM. It's a dying technology. It is also based on Java, but it is complex and hard to learn.

The initial setup is easy, and I would give it a five out of five rating. It's not very difficult because it's just one system.

Initially, you have to have some knowledge of a few technologies, but it's not very challenging. There are lots of open-source materials available, and there are forums as well. So, it's easy to learn. 

It's a costly solution. I would rate the price at two out of five on a scale from one to five, where one is the most expensive and five is the most competitive.

I enjoy using Adobe Experience Manager and recommend it to large and enterprise level organizations.

Overall, I would rate it at eight out of ten.

We use Adobe Experience Manager primarily for content management.

The main benefit of using Adobe Experience Manager in the company is that it lets you easily manage your websites and content. You can also have a static or dynamic website and get any type of content from anywhere. Adobe Experience Manager is also built on Java, so its security is very high.

I've used several CMS tools, but Adobe Experience Manager is feature-rich, especially for web security and content management. It's more efficient to manage content on Adobe Experience Manager, and you can do a lot with it, such as updating content at any time, and on any platform, even from mobile or tablet. Adobe Experience Manager is still getting updated daily, and it's the best CMS tool in the market for me.

I like that you can manage assets in Adobe Experience Manager. I also like that the solution has an analytics dashboard that shows you where the traffic comes from, how many clicks come from a specific location, the number of clicks and impressions, etc. Adobe Experience Manager can be accessed by other teams, for example, the digital media department of my company, so the solution can be used and updated per each team's requirement.

Adobe Experience Manager is more than just a web developer tool, as it also allows visibility tracking and has other uses.

I also like that the GUI for Adobe Experience Manager is straightforward and catchy. It has separate folders and icons, so using Adobe Experience Manager isn't tough. The solution is straightforward to use and handle.

I haven't seen any areas for improvement in Adobe Experience Manager as it's a full-fledged CMS tool, and Adobe is already working on enhancements for the solution. Adobe is working to make Adobe Experience Manager more valuable and easier to use for any user, even non-technical ones, through multiple components and templates. Day by day, Adobe provides the latest update to Adobe Experience Manager, and if my team needs any particular change, it just needs to be reported to the Adobe team.

As Adobe Experience Manager has a broad scope and a lot of use cases and features, it's a solution that requires some time and effort from you in terms of learning, especially if you're implementing it for different clients, which could be an area for improvement.

I've been using Adobe Experience Manager for more than five years.

Adobe Experience Manager is a stable solution. It's high-performing and it's better than other CMS tools in the market. Adobe Experience Manager has a quick response time, so within seconds, the server is able to respond to the web browser. In terms of security, the solution is also very secure.

Adobe Experience Manager is very scalable, and it's also customizable. You can customize the template or component based on your requirements.

I'm able to resolve issues myself, so I haven't contacted the technical support team for Adobe Experience Manager.

When comparing Tietoevry and Adobe Experience Manager, I'd say that the two solutions are different because, in Tietoevry, the website is only available in English, while Adobe Experience Manager has a multilingual option.

You must create a workspace in Tietoevry before the content gets published automatically.

Adobe Experience Manager is simpler to use, which is why my company prefers using it.

The initial setup for Adobe Experience Manager was straightforward. Not more than four to five people were involved in the deployment of the solution.

How long it takes to deploy Adobe Experience Manager depends on the requirements, but it didn't take much time for my company. You also have the option to schedule the deployment.

We implemented Adobe Experience Manager ourselves, and we didn't need any help because we had keynotes on how to do any test or update any template. We were able to identify what steps to take to deploy the solution. There's also complete documentation on how to do it, and you have the option of getting help. You click, and you'll find relevant Adobe Experience Manager topics, or you can Google or search on YouTube, as content about the solution is available anywhere.

There's a free trial for one month for Adobe Experience Manager, which you can use for learning purposes, then, after the trial period, you'll need to purchase the license. Adobe offers a few plans for Adobe Experience Manager, but I'm unaware of how much my company is paying.

I've evaluated the IBM tool, apart from Adobe Experience Manager, and it's a fine tool, but Adobe Experience Manager has more features.

Adobe Experience Manager requires maintenance, but the client side takes care of it. Even during the deployment, the client joined the call, and any needed improvements will be made from the client side, for example, migrating from one server to another. Hence, the maintenance of Adobe Experience Manager is the client's responsibility.

My company has one project on Adobe Experience Manager, with a team of forty people working on different parts.

My advice to anyone planning to implement Adobe Experience Manager is that it has a broad scope in terms of usage, so I recommend that you learn about the solution before implementing it, especially if you have a lot of clients for it.

My company has a partnership with Adobe.

I'd rate Adobe Experience Manager as ten out of ten.

Adobe Experience Manager is a CMS or content management system. It's primary use for web development involves hosting a website. That is, anything that we develop, such as a new feature, a new website, or upgrades, is hosted in Adobe Experience Manager.

I like the native applications such as Adobe Target, Adobe Analytics, and Adobe Experience Platform. Because of these, it's very easy to connect and obtain reports on how my website is doing, how many have visited it, how frequently, etc.

The multiple publisher concept is one of the best parts of this solution.

The latest trend is to render everything in the client-side framework. For example, SPA or single page application. This is a feature that needs improvement.

The cloud deployment pipeline needs to be improved as well.

I started using this solution in 2013, so I've been working with it for nine years now.

So far, the stability has been good. Since Adobe Experience Manager has the multiple publisher concept, if any one of the servers goes down because of the traffic load, you can easily spin up a new server.

If the solution is deployed in the cloud, it will automatically spin up when needed. If it's not on the cloud, then you can easily spin up a new server as you scale up and the traffic load increases.

We have about 200 people from marketing, target analytics, and web engineering teams who use Adobe Experience Manager.

The move to the cloud has been challenging, and I've had to contact technical support. I would rate them at seven on a scale from one to ten.

Neutral

The initial setup is very straightforward and user-friendly. It takes about 10 to 15 minutes.

Because of the improvement needed with the client-side framework and because page loading takes time, I rate Adobe Experience Manager at seven out of ten.

It is helpful for hybrid applications, generic templates, third-party data synchronization, and user-specific data restriction and analytics.

It helps us with analytics, application design for specific platforms, and enables us to easily create applications for iOS and Android.

Hybrid applications and Cordova support.

With the default template design, it is difficult to manage the different resolutions of images.

One to three years.

In general, we work a lot with software requests by our customers, mainly enterprise companies. Typically, our clients are in supplies and they require a complex web portal. They are demanding in terms of quality and usually prefer to work with Adobe and not with Drupal or other platforms because here in Italy, Adobe has a lot of commercial support. We manage a software factory with over 150 employees. We are customers of Adobe and I'm a chief technology architect. 

I'm quite happy with the platform. It requires particular skills, so it's not so easy to prepare or find resources to specialize in it but with the right resource system and the right competencies, it's easy to work with. 

The programming model could be improved, it's a monolithic solution and that's what we don't like. Some features are badly defined in the solution. It's difficult integrating so we're forced to develop other APIs in order to simplify things. It's a weak feature of the product. 

Adobe usually don't want to speak to the integrators, they want to speak with the client. That's the approach in Italy. I don't know if the commercial strategy is different in other countries, but in Italy we had lots of issues when we tried to talk directly with Adobe. It's not so easy. Typically, any issues are inherent to knowledge about the platform. If the issue is that something is not working as expected, we usually discover the problem is linked to the fact that we don't know the platform well. That's when we ask for support and usually with some configuration, or by using the platform in a different way, we are able to fix or bypass the issue.

The initial setup usually takes somewhere between five and nine months. Typically these portals require a lot of time and in my opinion, implementation depends more on the type of projects, rather than the type of web content management system. We prefer to manage directly on the AWS environment, which our clients typically already have. 

Adobe is a more expensive solution than, say, Liferay. But we don't like the portal approach in Liferay, it's quite old. We've worked on our portal CMS since 2010, so it's been over 10 years. In Liferay, the core is still based on portal frameworks which is a disadvantage because we know that to develop something with that model is quite expensive. In general, our employees are more familiar with Adobe and have more confidence using that solution. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

I think DAM (Digital Asset Management) is most valuable to me.

The data is increasing, and in order to manage millions of assets which a large enterprise has, it provides lots of capabilities (searching, reporting, managing, workflows for automation, etc.).

The other thing, which I liked about the product, is its extension point -- name the solution and it can be integrated.

Some of the prominent ones being Salesforce, translation services, and analytics products. It has OOTB Omniture integration.

We are basically a service provider. It has helped a lot of clients.

The areas where it is helpful were creating and managing multiple sites, and managing assets.

An organization has different divisions, business, etc. and this product helps in managing all those under one roof.

I love DAM, but still think there are improvement areas.

I have been using this product for the past six years.

Yes, we faced issues in one of the projects where we had 50 million users and each user had a lot of personalized pages. (This issue was found when I was working in the CQ Version 5.5, after that, I didn't have any such requirements.)

No.

Adobe provides good support.

If a client faces any issue, through the care account (access once a license is purchased), they can raise the issue and set the priority.

Adobe has dedicated people per client to look into those issues and provides solutions/recommendations.

No.

It is straightforward.

Installation is straightforward, even if somebody is new and he has to create a website -- he is provided with tutorials/sample site, which are great references.

There are different levels of licenses: Evaluate your needs and take the license based on that. In the future, upgrade it per need.

No.

The way it's stored is different from the legacy system, where we used an RDBMS-based solution.

Here, we have a file-based system and all information is saved on nodes. Also, keep in mind David's principle.

1. 3D assets: Repurpose 3D assets to accelerate time to market and save on production costs. Upload, manage, view, and render 3D content created from Creative Cloud or many other popular 3D applications. Easily rotate, zoom, change colors, textures, backgrounds (stages) and lighting on 3D objects to create a new set of images from an infinite number of camera angles to use in digital marketing campaigns.
2. Source user generated content: Livefyre is now fully integrated within Experience Manager, enabling marketers to rapidly discover, filter and manage user-generated content into the central repository of Experience Manager. Unlock the power of user-generated content from social sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and tell your brand’s most authentic and engaging story.
3. Social & UGC: Livefyre is now more fully integrated into AEM Assets. It still requires a Livefyre account though, which means the need for a license. But if you rely on User Generated Content, or want to start using UGC, then this is something to consider. There are some rights management requests to make sure that the content you want to use, is allowed to be used. Once approved by the owner; then it will show up inside your DAM to be used.

With the improvements made in Assets 6.3 for synchronization and accessibility of product data and content records, information can be utilized in a wide range of different channels, including catalogs and other designed documents.

Using this product data, they can be inserted semi-automatically into materials that can be printed, emailed, posted on websites, etc.

• The product is in constant evolution, with several key areas being improved in each iteration.
• The Assets capabilities of AEM 6.3.4 were basic and with troubles to scale, but that has changed significantly in newer versions where the Asset module has received a lot of focus and is currently one of the best solutions for Digital Asset Management out there.
• Adobe’s Cloud Manager can provision default three-tier architecture (Author-> Publish -> Dispatcher), any other complex variation, such as four-tier setup is hard to provision (Author-> Author -> Publish -> Dispatcher)
• Companies with heavy investment in Microsoft technologies and .net infrastructure find Adobe AEM hard to integrate and end-up using Adobe AEM as API backend

• Last but not least, Adobe AEM TCO (total cost of ownership) is very high with return on investment is slow (ROI is not necessarily low), which is why Adobe's focus is mostly large companies with deep pocket

I've used it for the past three years.

We have found occasional issues with stability, but those were in general caused either by custom developed code or issues in the implemented architecture.

When the application is installed in servers without the necessary requirements in terms of hardware specs, users may experience slow page loads and perhaps even systems not responding.

No problems with scalability.

Support from Adobe is good and responds in a timely manner. Their ticketing system works and is useful for getting to the bottom of the problems.

One thing to have in mind is that Adobe provides support only for the base AEM application, and not for custom code development to extend and/or customize its functionalities.

Being in a consultant company solely dedicated to Adobe CQ/AEM, this is not applicable.

Initial setup is very easy and straightforward.

The application comes in the form of a JAR or WAR file for easy deployment with various tools and systems.

Using the JAR, you can have the application up and running in five minutes, just by double-clicking/executing the file (it requires users to have Java installed, but that is a pretty common requirement these days).

Keep solution architecture easy to avoid unnecessary license costs. Start with the basic licenses to solve your immediate needs, and only increase them if the project really requires it.

I have worked with other similar solutions that solve parts of the complete set of solutions AEM provides, but none of them have the ability to handle so many of those areas in an integral way.

For Web Site and Content Management in general, sample tools are Drupal,
Joomla, and Wordpress.

Start small and plan your first set of objectives clearly, leaving all the “nice-to- haves” for a later phase.

Starting this way will help companies get a sample of the benefits, and get familiar with the tool in general.

After the first phase, they may find things that they thought they wanted are not really required or can be achieved in a better, more efficient way in the AEM world.

Another useful piece of advice is to avoid trying to re-create your current solution using AEM, and rather, try to look for new and different ways to achieve the same results that take advantage of AEM’s features.

I believe that the primary feature of the product is the ability and extent to which it allows authors to modify, build and operate their website, page components, etc. that otherwise would require a lot more of developer work.

We provide consultancy services to the clients so that our clients can use the product to improve their organization's operations.

The integration of the product with other Adobe Marketing Cloud products could be improved.

I have used this solution for around four years.

Usually, when integrating with other Adobe Marketing Cloud products, we encountered some stability issues, but those are already being worked upon by Adobe.

We did not experience any scalability issues. There are many options for designing the solution, depending upon the expected load/stress.

The technical support is active in responding but may take a while, depending on the complexity of the issue.

Setup is pretty straightforward and well-documented by Adobe.

The product was originally developed by a company called Day Software that was taken over, and then further developed by Adobe, changing its name from CQ5 to Adobe Experience Manager (AEM). Currently, the latest version is AEM 6.3.

When using other Adobe Marketing Cloud products with AEM, I would advise keeping short-term goals instead of going straight ahead to build something massive/complex. Furthermore, selecting an experienced and competitive consulting partner for the development goes a long way.