Adobe Experience Manager vs Contentful comparison

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Adobe Experience Manager

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Adobe Experience Manager and Contentful based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Web Content Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Adobe Experience Manager vs. Contentful Report (Updated: April 2026).

Adobe Experience Manager vs. Contentful

April 2026

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Helped 893,221 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Adobe Experience Manager

Ranking in Web Content Management

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Content Management (3rd), Enterprise Social Software (4th), Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) (1st)

Contentful

Ranking in Web Content Management

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Web Content Management category, the mindshare of Adobe Experience Manager is 8.9%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Contentful is 1.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Content Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Adobe Experience Manager	8.9%
Contentful	1.3%
Other	89.8%

Web Content Management

Featured Reviews

Hilax Chamberlain

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.

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Margaret Thatcher

Production Manager at Unilever

Content workflows have become faster and empower non-technical teams to update pages independently

Contentful makes it easier for non-technical teams to update content by providing organized, flexible data models with support for a variety of data types and content editors such as WYSIWYG form fields and raw text areas. It has great built-in versioning features with history and draft states, so it is easy to make updates and revert when needed. Some of the best features that Contentful offers include organized, flexible data models with support for a variety of data types and content editors such as WYSIWYG form fields and raw text. Contentful has great built-in versioning features with history and draft states, making it easy to make updates and revert when needed. Additionally, it has a very intuitive user interface and good support for multiple spaces, which can be helpful for companies that need separate projects for development, staging, and production. It is also very cost-effective and powerful, and it keeps a history of changes made to the content easily. The versioning and multiple spaces features of Contentful have helped my team manage content effectively, as we leverage Contentful's headless CMS capabilities to easily build a static website using modern technology such as GatsbyJS and ReactJS, making it an ideal solution for small businesses and startups seeking a low-maintenance approach. It is a very scalable tool. Contentful has positively impacted my organization as it is very scalable, can be used by any size of organization, and is a very cost-effective tool. It helps us save cost, especially when dealing with a lot of content compared to other alternatives. Its intuitive design facilitates seamless updates of photos and written content while providing the ability to revert changes when necessary. It has been a very good tool because I am able to spend less time maintaining websites, and my clients spend less time worrying about their site crashing or being hacked. This tool has allowed me to be much more flexible with the types of front-end technology I can use. Since it is very easy to use for all types of technical users, there is no time wasted. It enabled rapid project delivery and low-cost projects for my organization. Since adopting Contentful, we have seen an increase in sales and marketing from 45% to 65%. More work is delivered due to reusability and other features within a shorter time and with less manual effort.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the profiling and segmentation."

"Ease of use for content authors and tight integration with Adobe Marketing Cloud Products like Target, Analytics, Campaign; a complete solution for organizational digital marketing needs."

"Adobe Experience Manager is one of the best enterprise-level content management and digital experience platforms available."

"The most valuable features of Adobe Experience Manager include its capability to manage content and create reusable fragments."

"Easy to work with the solution."

"I've used several CMS tools, but Adobe Experience Manager is feature-rich, especially for web security and content management."

"Adobe Experience Manager offers several best features, including user-friendliness and a more secure platform than any other content management systems I have worked with."

"The integration of customer behavior and website setup is impressive."

More Adobe Experience Manager pros

"Contentful has impacted my organization positively because it has been a game changer since we started using this tool."

"Contentful has positively impacted my organization by facilitating faster campaigns for marketing content, reducing the dev workload, and shortening the time to market, with no hard-coding of content, a clean API-based architecture, and reusable components."

"Contentful has impacted my organization positively as I spend less time maintaining our website, the developer spends less time maintaining our website, and our clients spend less time worrying about their site being hacked or crashing."

"Contentful is stable."

"Contentful has positively impacted my organization by allowing me to both develop and release content really quickly and be responsive to market changes and other factors."

"Since adopting Contentful, we have seen an increase in sales and marketing from 45% to 65%."

"Contentful is a great tool and a powerful solution to support multiple platforms."

"Contentful has helped serve clients better by allowing campaigns to be launched quickly and pages to be developed rapidly, enabling focus on the structure of the page while putting the content on Contentful, which reduces the time to make the page live."

Cons

"The tech support from Adobe is slow to respond and takes a lot of time to fix product related bugs."

"Adobe Experience Manager is not so simple to use, so others should have some experience with similar programs."

"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."

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

"The pricing and setup cost for Adobe Experience Manager is a bit higher compared to different content management tools."

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

"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."

"Adobe Experience Manager needs more optimization. The frequency of components where we have vitals of a page or an app needs to be optimized because these are heavy Java codes along with some AEM developments."

More Adobe Experience Manager cons

"Contentful could be improved in the following ways. It would be much easier if I could move data from one environment to another without any CLI tools."

"One area where I believe Contentful can be improved is better handling of complex content relationships, as when content is deeply nested with references inside references, the queries can get messy and hard to manage on the front end."

"However, I find that the licensing can be frustrating, especially for smaller organizations."

"There was no return on investment. It was very expensive to implement all the needed specialties a company needs for its public publish strategy, to publish the content in different countries, different markets, and different languages."

"Contentful needs to be improved for migration, not only for migration, but from lower to higher environments as well, as the schema diffs and everything are not working as expected."

"I think the free tier has always been very generous, but the 25 content model types have at times been limiting, and I have had to find innovative ways to work around it because we are a community radio station that runs on donations and grants."

"I wish Contentful would provide a better feature for publishing all content entries at once."

"Sometimes the linking is challenging. If you are using too many links, then it is actually making the application deployment time longer, so Contentful needs to figure out a way to solve that problem."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Users have to pay a yearly licensing fee to use the solution, which is highly-priced."

"It's really costly."

"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."

"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."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

22%

Construction Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Media Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	23

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	16

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 Contentful?

I am not the right person to answer this question as we have our separate team who finalizes it. There is a finance team who takes all the decisions regarding costing and everything. I am on the te...

What needs improvement with Contentful?

As far as I use Contentful, it is totally fine. There is no improvement for now. As I am using it for only six to eight months, I am not the correct person to judge or prejudge Contentful. I want t...

What is your primary use case for Contentful?

My main use case for Contentful in that recent project is image content management, including image content and descriptions that we are not getting from our server. Examples include launch screens...

SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management vs Adobe Experience Manager

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More Adobe Experience Manager Competitors

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Compared 25% of the time

FirstSpirit Enterprise CMS vs Contentful

Compared 21% of the time

Contentstack vs Contentful

Compared 11% of the time

Product Reports

Download Adobe Experience Manager product report

Adobe Experience Manager

May 2026

Download Contentful product report

May 2026

Also Known As

Adobe Day CQ5, Ektron Social Marketing, Episerver Content Cloud, Adobe CQ5

No data available

Overview

Adobe Experience Manager offers powerful content and digital asset management capabilities, allowing users to streamline content replication and integrate with tools like Adobe Target and Analytics.

Adobe Experience Manager is a comprehensive platform used for content management, website development, and digital asset management. It allows marketers to efficiently manage and publish content without needing extensive coding knowledge, enhancing operational efficiency through integration with Adobe Target and Analytics. The platform supports omnichannel distribution and multi-site management, leveraging experience fragments to replicate content seamlessly across platforms. Users appreciate the platform for its scalability and robust personalization features, improving collaboration and reducing overall costs.

What are Adobe Experience Manager's Key Features?

Content Management: Offers intuitive tools for creating, managing, and publishing content across digital channels.
Digital Asset Management: Centralizes asset management to streamline content reuse and improve consistency.
Experience Fragments: Enables content replication across multiple channels for seamless user experiences.
Integration: Enhances efficiency by integrating with marketing tools like Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target.
Omnichannel Support: Provides consistent messaging and branding across different platforms and devices.

Which Benefits and ROI Should Users Consider?

Improved Collaboration: Facilitates teamwork through component reuse and workflow automation.
Cost Reduction: Reduces expenses through efficient multi-site management and content repurposing.
Scalability: Supports growing business needs with scalable content solutions.
Personalization: Delivers personalized user experiences enhancing customer engagement.
Analytics Integration: Offers valuable insights into customer interactions, improving strategic decisions.

Organizations within industries like retail, healthcare, and finance utilize Adobe Experience Manager to develop tailored digital experiences, efficiently managing websites and assets for better customer engagement. Retailers use it to deliver personalized promotions, while healthcare providers enhance patient information access. In finance, it ensures compliance and manages customer communications effectively.

Adobe

Contentful is a modern content management platform known for its reusable components, easy integration, and flexible content modeling. It enables content management across multiple platforms quickly and efficiently.

Contentful’s API-first architecture and Rich Text editor offer seamless content management for different platforms, enhancing productivity by minimizing coding efforts and allowing non-technical individuals to update content effortlessly. It supports diverse needs like content preview, localization, and scalability, which accelerates deployment and reduces costs. The intuitive interface facilitates rapid project delivery with minimal overhead.

What are Contentful's most important features?

Reusable Components: Facilitate consistency and efficiency in content creation.
API-First Architecture: Allows seamless integration across platforms.
Rich Text Editor: Simplifies content management with advanced editing capabilities.
Content Preview: Enhances content accuracy and workflow efficiency.
Localization Support: Facilitates content localization across regions.
Scalable Architecture: Supports growing business needs and rapid deployment.

What benefits and ROI can users expect from Contentful?

Improved Workflow: Streamlines operations, saving time and reducing bottlenecks.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces development expenses with faster deployment.
Enhanced Flexibility: Allows adaptable content types for dynamic content creation.
Ease of Use: Non-technical teams can manage content with minimal learning curve.
Rapid Project Delivery: Supports agile methodologies, minimizing project timelines.

Contentful is extensively used for storing, managing, and retrieving content for web and mobile applications. Businesses utilize APIs and GraphQL to decouple content from presentation layers, driving dynamic websites and applications. It integrates effortlessly with other platforms, offering seamless access to non-technical teams, and supports diverse applications like documentation, marketing, and internal data management. Contentful’s adaptability with content types allows quick page creation and content updates across different projects and clients.

Sample Customers

Metra

Information Not Available