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Adobe Experience Manager vs Alfresco comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.4
Companies experienced increased ROI using Adobe Experience Manager, noting improved efficiency, security, scalability, and significant automation benefits.
Sentiment score
7.4
Alfresco boosts ROI through efficient document management, reducing costs, enhancing efficiency, and offering customization and robust community support.
I have seen a return on investment through reduction in time to market, automation through AI, and the availability of very scalable solutions.
project manager at FedEx
Security has been very robust and has improved by 70%.
Digital Marketing Manager at Ford Motor Company
Alfresco provides a significant return on investment by efficiently managing documents.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
Adobe Experience Manager provides responsive, knowledgeable support with high ratings, though some report slow responses and communication challenges.
Sentiment score
7.2
Alfresco's vibrant customer service and active community support ensure user satisfaction, though response times vary; ratings are generally positive.
They are attentive to big companies but tend to be negligent towards mid-sized companies.
Managing Partner(Austria) at a integrator with 11-50 employees
There are Adobe engineers, sales representatives, and engineers assigned to Sephora North America.
Digital Asset Specialist at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
For P1 tickets, the resolution time is approximately four hours.
Senior Technical Program Manager /Senior Lead Solution Architech- Product Technology & Gen AI at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
I would prefer a direct relationship with them, focusing on updating their products more like in an agile practice
Head Of Information Technology at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Alfresco's technical support is very fast and professional.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
Customer support is good because they are responsive.
Technical Project Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.4
Adobe Experience Manager efficiently scales for large organizations, enhancing security and efficiency but challenges may occur during cloud migration.
Sentiment score
7.8
Alfresco efficiently scales across multiple layers, supporting growth with robust clustering and handling large content volumes effectively.
You cannot simply add more servers without purchasing the license.
Infra At Idealake IT Pvt Ltd Head at Idealake Information Technology Pvt. Ltd.
Adobe Experience Manager's scalability is excellent, as it reduces infrastructure and maintenance costs.
project manager at FedEx
Adobe Experience Manager can handle numerous projects because more projects can be developed, enhanced, and numerous components can be reused in many projects and published.
Senior Project Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Implementations needing to handle millions of documents may involve complex cluster setups requiring expert assistance.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Adobe Experience Manager is praised for stability, performance, and scalability, despite occasional issues with custom code or server resources.
Sentiment score
8.2
Alfresco is stable but requires expertise for setup and scalability, with occasional issues under high loads mitigated by JVM tuning.
Adobe Experience Manager is a stable tool.
Senior Project Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Adobe Experience Manager delivers very high performance, is reliable, and operates fast.
Digital Marketing Manager at Ford Motor Company
Since they are enterprise and have significant digital business coming through the digital medium, the stability of the product is very important.
Infra At Idealake IT Pvt Ltd Head at Idealake Information Technology Pvt. Ltd.
The stability of Alfresco is rated highly as it hardly goes down.
Head Of Information Technology at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Alfresco is generally a very stable and high-performance platform.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
Those issues have now been corrected.
Technical Project Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Adobe Experience Manager needs easier setup, improved usability, better documentation, and more resources for user efficiency and integration.
Alfresco needs UI enhancements, better integrations, improved security, and more accessible customization, reporting, and advanced document capture features.
I believe the user interface should be more user-friendly and intuitive for all levels, allowing beginners to use this tool easily.
Digital Marketing Manager at Ford Motor Company
The feature I really appreciate is how reusable components save time across pages.
Frontend Developer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Technical support could be improved, especially for smaller companies.
Managing Partner(Austria) at a integrator with 11-50 employees
It would be beneficial if Alfresco offers different options for document storage, such as databases or cloud solutions.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
Governance of this system is required. If you don't have proper governance, things can go wrong.
Technical Project Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Adobe Experience Manager is expensive and complex, best for large enterprises with careful evaluation of licensing and scalability.
Alfresco's Enterprise edition is costlier with added expenses, while the Community edition is free for budget-conscious projects.
For large enterprises, the cost is often comparable with other major CMSs.
Managing Partner(Austria) at a integrator with 11-50 employees
Adobe Experience Manager is expensive compared to competitors.
Infra At Idealake IT Pvt Ltd Head at Idealake Information Technology Pvt. Ltd.
The price is significantly high.
Senior Technical Program Manager /Senior Lead Solution Architech- Product Technology & Gen AI at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
The pricing of Alfresco starts at $100,000, which can be expensive for small projects.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
Pricing is considered mid-range.
Head Of Information Technology at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
 

Valuable Features

Adobe Experience Manager enhances efficiency with content management, personalization, multi-site support, and seamless integration for data-driven strategies.
Alfresco provides adaptable, affordable document management with seamless integration, boosting efficiency and collaboration with advanced automation and indexing.
Feature-wise, I believe the dispatcher module is the best aspect of Adobe Experience Manager.
Infra At Idealake IT Pvt Ltd Head at Idealake Information Technology Pvt. Ltd.
Adobe Experience Manager has made document management smoother because many people use Adobe, making it simpler for me to modify and resend PDF documents.
Founder . Interior Architect & Interior Designer at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees
Adobe Experience Manager increases operational efficiency through centralized assets and reduces time spent searching, editing, and managing files.
project manager at FedEx
This makes the record independent of the document, which is beneficial as documents often change, and it helps avoid continual updates to the registry.
Country Head Spain at Apiux
The most valuable features of Alfresco include its integration with the scanning solution, the ability to search, and the capability to store and index to capture metadata.
Head Of Information Technology at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
It is highly extensible, meaning you can do whatever you want.
Technical Project Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Adobe Experience Manager
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Web Content Management (1st), Enterprise Social Software (4th), Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) (1st)
Alfresco
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Document Management Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Enterprise Content Management category, the mindshare of Adobe Experience Manager is 4.0%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Alfresco is 7.1%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Content Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Adobe Experience Manager4.0%
Alfresco7.1%
Other88.9%
Enterprise Content Management
 

Featured Reviews

Hilax Chamberlain - PeerSpot reviewer
Digital Marketing Manager at Ford Motor Company
Centralized content management has unified our digital channels and delivers consistent experiences
Adobe Experience Manager offers enterprise-level digital assets management and very robust customization, brand value consistency, and omnichannel delivery. It saves development and maintenance time. The digital asset management and omnichannel delivery features have benefited my team by managing our digital assets, ensuring brand consistency, and enabling us to deliver customized content easily to our clients. Organizing and obtaining information from results is beneficial. Strengthening our online experience as a brand is valuable. Easy integration with other Adobe services improves productivity and provides a smooth experience. Adobe Experience Manager has positively impacted my organization by enabling component and page reuse, which reduces application size. It saves manual effort for maintaining all applications, improves traffic, and ensures consistency across all our applications. It provides better security, scalability, and makes our applications more robust.
UC
Technical Project Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Extensive customization and governance enhance document management experience
Currently, the challenge is the general availability to users. Initially, they had poor documentation, but over the years, their documentation has highly improved. Initially, we had challenges finding the extension points and understanding how to extend the system. The workflow was one of the hurdles we had. At that time, it was not that beautiful or feature-rich. Even today, workflow consists of basic workflows. If you want to extend, you have to implement your own customizations. They are using it extensively with features such as records management, CMIS, Share UI, and Web Scripts. All these features are being used extensively. Governance of this system is required. If you don't have proper governance, things can go wrong. If you don't have a proper policy of how documents should be maintained, issues can arise. You have to make rules, such as one folder should not have more than 5,000 subfolders or children. This was advised by Alfresco, but we did not have that advice, so we had challenges when everything was dumped into single folders. It slows down the systems and sometimes becomes unusable. Whoever is going to use it should have that governance system in place.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Enterprise Content Management solutions are best for your needs.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise23
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Adobe Experience Manager?
I find the drag-and-drop form builder in Adobe Experience Manager to be mostly intuitive, especially for basic forms, but it has some quirks when things get complex. You can drag fields, text, drop...
What is your primary use case for Adobe Experience Manager?
I have been using Adobe Experience Manager for over three years, focusing on building scalable content solutions, managing workflow, and implementing AEM Forms for enterprise use cases. My main use...
What advice do you have for others considering Adobe Experience Manager?
In our setup, Adobe Experience Manager integrates with tools such as Adobe Analytics for tracking user behavior, Adobe Target for personalization, and backend APIs for CRM systems for handling form...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alfresco?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing is that Alfresco is very cheap and cost-effective.
What needs improvement with Alfresco?
One area where Alfresco can be improved is the ability to scan directly using Alfresco. Additionally, I would appreciate improvements especially when it comes to the ability to integrate with socia...
What is your primary use case for Alfresco?
My main use case for Alfresco is that I implemented Alfresco Content Services to solve complex enterprise problems for content service, record management, and process management. Using this tool, I...
 

Also Known As

Adobe Day CQ5, Ektron Social Marketing, Episerver Content Cloud, Adobe CQ5
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Metra
Over 1,300 companies from 180 different countries. Including EuroStar, Saks Fifth Avenue, NASA Langley Research Center, and KLM.
Find out what your peers are saying about Adobe Experience Manager vs. Alfresco and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.