Adobe Experience Manager Reviews

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.

Integration is the most valuable feature because it is the main selling point for customers.

It helps standardize the branding of pages across an enterprise by locking down what can be entered into page types.

The idea was to make it easy for the marketing teams, but it requires engineers who are hard to find and expensive to employ.

I have used this solution for three years.

Overall, there were no stability issues; I have found bugs and workarounds, like on any other platform.

There were no scalability issues as such. It is hard to auto scale on AWS because of the customization, but since AEM is an enterprise-level platform, sites can be provisioned for worldwide use.

The technical support for AEM has to be at a very high level to begin with, so, I've worked with some amazing people; Adobe hires some great people. Working with Adobe technical support was great, although it can take time for the back and forth, as they have to understand the details surrounding your issue.

I used to make WordPress sites. AEM is a CMS and so much more, it requires more of my skills. Companies usually switch because they can integrate more marketing tools easily with their website. Many companies have migrated from SharePoint.

The setup was complex due to the learning curve. Integration requires some planning ahead and communication between various IT factions. Often, the digital marketing departments may feel isolated.

First, you're going to spend a lot more than you think.

I never purchased it but yes, it's very expensive, so companies have to think about how to justify the cost and have to look at alternatives.

Have a good relationship with budgeting and your various in-house IT divisions; have them understand the needs of digital marketing.

Experience Management

Digital Content Management

Content Authoring

Multisite Management

Brand management, Digital Transformation of organization and Most dynamic site.

Even more out of box components, UI designs.

7 Years

No

No

No

9 Out of 10

9 out of 10

Sharepoint

Straightforward

In-house team

Microsoft Site core