To help you determine what will best meet your needs, we’ll take a closer look at the advantages and disadvantages of Adobe Experience Manager (AEM). That way, you can meaningfully compare the AEM features to those currently available in content management systems and website builders.
Table of Contents
- Alternatives to Adobe Experience Manager
- Adobe Experience Manager Alternatives Summary
- What is Adobe Experience Manager?
- Open-Source vs. Proprietary CMS: Understanding Your Options
- Adobe Experience Manager Alternatives
- Adobe Experience Manager Alternatives: FAQs
Adobe Experience Manager Alternatives Summary
Adobe Experience Manager offers the ultimate advanced CMS and DAM features for global enterprises with complex, multichannel digital offerings. But for smaller organizations, Adobe Experience Manager alternatives like Content Hub, Shopify Plus, Brandfolder, or Bynder (or a mix of tools) can reduce complexity, improve efficiency, and save money. Content Hub is an all-in-one CMS, website builder, and host that offers transparent pricing, AI-powered tools, and a CRM. Try Content Hub for free.
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What is Adobe Experience Manager?
Adobe Experience Manager is an enterprise-level software suite known mainly for its content management system (Experience Manager Sites) and its digital asset management system (Experience Manager Assets). While it is offered both as a cloud service and on-premise software, Adobe’s preference is for customers to use the cloud service for the best experience, so the cloud-based AEM is what we’ll be covering in this article.
AEM also has other add-ons, including Forms and Guides. With a site builder, automation, AI tools, electronic forms, developer tools, and cloud hosting, AEM is ideal for enterprise companies that deliver content across multiple digital channels. However, it has some pros and cons to be aware of.
Benefits of Adobe Experience Manager
Easily reuse content across multiple channels.
With AEM, you can create and reuse digital assets (called “Experience Fragments”) across various channels and devices, helping your teams streamline content creation.
Organize assets more efficiently.
You can also automate tagging and workflows to boost collaboration and productivity across the enterprise. AEM allows you to assign roles, tasks, and deadlines. It can also add keywords, tags, and metadata to every asset so they’re easy to find through search.
Enjoy vendor-managed architecture and updates.
Finally, since the cloud-based version of AEM can auto-scale, you can focus on content creation instead of planning for product updates or worrying about downtime.
Deliver more personalized content.
AEM has an AI and machine learning platform (Adobe Sensei) that enables you to deep-dive into your customers' preferences adjust your content according to different audiences.
Disadvantages of Adobe Experience Manager
High Costs and Low Price Transparency
As with all platforms and tools, AEM also has its drawbacks. The greatest one is its pricing. You’ll eventually need to reach out to Adobe for a custom quote because it changes based on the number of people using it and any additional features you need that are not automatically included.
We couldn’t locate public pricing information because Adobe runs a tight ship, but according to Adobe AEM consultancy 6D Global, annual costs were found to be in the area of $250,000 to $1,000,000+ in an article exploring the costs of AEM versus open-source alternatives such as Drupal.
Steep Learning Curve
AEM also has well-known user experience problems. It is highly complex, so the learning curve can be steep for non-technical users.
High Implementation Complexity
Many G2 user reviews mention that AEM setup and implementation require technical support from developers, which can also be expensive.
Open-Source vs. Proprietary CMS: Understanding Your Options
An open-source CMS is typically free and allows anyone to view, edit, and duplicate its codebase. Examples include WordPress, Strapi, and Drupal. Because of this, open-source CMSs are highly favored for their flexibility — you have full control over the code and can typically more easily move to different platforms.
A proprietary CMS (or “closed system”) is owned by the vendor, which charges a fee for you to use or license it. You cannot view, edit, or duplicate its entire codebase. You can, however, add onto it by building on top of it with custom code. Because of this, a proprietary CMS is usually seen as less flexible. This is more of an issue for developers and businesses building complex websites. It’s far less of an issue for non-technical teams. A major advantage of a proprietary CMS is that it has a dedicated, paid team that maintains the software and updates it, helping it to be more secure. A major downside is that you could wind up “locked in” to one vendor, making it difficult to switch platforms.
Adobe Experience Manager is a proprietary CMS, which means you must pay fees to use it, but Adobe maintains it and provides customer support.
Adobe Experience Manager Alternatives
How to Evaluate AEM Alternatives
- Decide if you need a CMS, a DAM, or both. Adobe Experience Manager has both a CMS and a DAM on one platform, which makes it convenient for marketing and content teams with lots of different assets to upload, organize, and store those assets and then add them to blog posts and web pages, all from one dashboard.
But not everyone needs that. For example, you could use a separate DAM like Brandfolder and then use the HubSpot integration to connect it to the Content Hub CMS. Alternatively, you could use a simpler solution, such as Google Drive, to upload and organize your assets, and then download specific ones as needed to add them to your CMS. - Determine your budget. Adobe Experience Manager is notoriously pricey, so if you’re not equipped to pay an annual six-figure bill for software, consider AEM alternatives. For example, Content Hub starts at $9/mo billed annually. Its Enterprise plan is $1,500/mo for five Core Seats.
- Assess your team’s technical skills. Because AEM is such a powerful platform built to handle the most complex enterprise sites, it requires a high level of technical expertise to implement and customize. If your team isn’t prepared for that, consider an AEM alternative that’s more marketer-friendly.
- Demo or trial the AEM alternatives. At the end of the day, the best way to know if a CMS or DAM meets your needs is to actually try it out. Choose any of the AEM alternatives in the list below and either sign up for a trial or contact the vendor to set up a demo.
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Headless vs. Traditional CMS Architecture
To explain the difference between a headless CMS and a traditional CMS, first, we must understand that a CMS has two parts: the “head” (the frontend that the user sees, typically a website) and the “body” (the backend where your team uploads, stores, and modifies content).
Therefore, a “headless” CMS is a CMS that has a body (the back end) but not a head (the front end), while a traditional CMS comes with both, and they are connected.
So, why would an enterprise choose a headless CMS? Because the CMS doesn’t come with a connected front end, the enterprise is free to display the back-end content on multiple channels in various ways by using an API. This is the ultimate in flexibility.
Bottom line: If you display your content on several channels (e.g., a website, a mobile app, and a smartwatch), a headless CMS might be a better choice than a traditional one.
In case you didn’t know, AEM is a hybrid CMS: It can be used in a headless fashion or as a traditional CMS.
Below, we’ll explore five Adobe Experience Manager Alternatives — some are hybrid CMSs, while others are DAM-centric.
Alternatives to Adobe Experience Manager
- Content Hub
- Liferay DXP
- Brandfolder
- Shopify Plus
- Bynder
1. Content Hub
Best for: Marketing teams looking to connect content to ROI
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Content Hub is one of the best Adobe Experience Manager Alternatives for businesses seeking the flexibility of a hybrid CMS with the built-in growth tools of a built-in CRM, marketing, and sales software. Plus, HubSpot’s Breeze suite of AI tools empowers you to create better content, extract insights, and boost productivity.
Like AEM, Content Hub is:
- Capable of being used headlessly. Though Content Hub isn’t headless-first, it does offer APIs if you want to use it in a headless fashion.
- Flexible and enables users to develop custom components and templates, create personalized content in multiple languages, and preview content before publishing
- Enterprise-level when you purchase the Enterprise plan, granting you access to serverless functions, Sensitive Data functionality, activity logging, and content approvals
- Cloud-based so you enjoy the convenience of zero installation and fully managed infrastructure and security
What sets Content Hub apart from AEM is
- Its ease of use, built around the concept of being “crafted, not cobbled.” HubSpot CMS tools are designed from the start to be fully integrated — each new tool playing nicely and naturally with the larger organism.
- Native integrations with a CRM, plus sales, marketing, and service tools. Content Hub is built on the strong shoulders of a customer relationship management system (CRM), a global content delivery network (CDN), and a web application firewall (WAF), providing the infrastructure you need to create customer experiences that are safe, quick, and highly functional.
Content Hub also fully integrates with HubSpot’s marketing, sales, and service tools. This makes contact management, website updates, and hosting easy, so you and your team can focus on the customer experience. - It’s beloved by technical and non-technical teams alike. Marketers can easily create, update, personalize, and optimize web pages on their own using the drag-and-drop editor, built-in SEO recommendations, smart rules, list segmentation, and other out-of-the-box features.
Developers can create custom pages, styles, serverless functions, activity logs, and other sophisticated solutions using their App Marketplace. - It’s available for free, with premium plans available for more advanced features. HubSpot offers a free Content Hub plan. If you need more functionality beyond the free version, we offer various product bundles that reduce the overall price for an affordable solution to fit the needs of your business, even as it grows and changes.
Pricing:
With HubSpot, you’ll enjoy transparent pricing. Here are the Content Hub plans based on annual billing:
- Free plan. $0/mo for up to two users
- Starter: $9/mo/seat
- Professional: $450/mo, which includes three Core Seats
- Enterprise: $1,500/mo, which includes five Core Seats
2. Liferay DXP
Best for: Enterprises wanting to streamline their tech stack into a single online portal
Liferay DXP — short for Liferay Digital Experience Platform — is an ideal alternative to AEM for enterprises wanting to create a single online portal connecting all of its tech stack. It’s got a CMS, DAM, commerce, and personalization.
Liferay DXP has automatic versioning, staging features, blogging tools, and a drag-and-drop editor for building forms and workflows. These content management features can help streamline content creation across an enterprise.
Liferay DXP excels at integrating web applications. Say you have a web platform, a mobile app development platform, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, a customer database, and marketing technologies that you want to integrate together on one platform.
You can do so using Liferay DXP. Ultimately, this can help improve your business processes, efficiency, and visitor experience.
Pricing: Liferay offers a 7-day Prebuilt Trial or a 30-day Sandbox Trial. For pricing, request a quote from Liferay.
3. Brandfolder
Brandfolder can be a stand-alone alternative to AEM for enterprises seeking a DAM tool for their complex document management needs.
Pro tip: Brandfolder integrates with Content Hub, making the perfect pair for enterprises needing both a digital asset management and content management system.
Brandfolder simplifies the process of uploading, importing, and saving your content to make it easy to organize, store, and distribute brand assets securely. You can use auto-tagging, smart rules, bulk tagging, and other advanced filtering options.
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With Brandfolder’s privacy controls and user-level permissions, you can share a single asset, a collection of assets, or your entire Brandfolder with internal or external stakeholders.
You can also monitor your content with Brand Intelligence, AI-powered features that analyze and tag your assets for you, suggest descriptions, and let you know which assets are most used.
Pricing: You will need to reach out to Brandfolder for quotes on its paid plans.
4. Shopify Plus
Best for: Ecommerce businesses looking for an enterprise-level hosted CMS that’s easy to use
Another alternative to AEM, Shopify Plus is ideal for enterprise-level ecommerce businesses seeking a CMS built specifically for online stores.
It’s important to note that you can integrate AEM and Adobe Commerce to add ecommerce components, like a shopping cart, checkout, and recently viewed products, to web pages. However, Adobe Commerce truly shines with complex B2B ecommerce functionalities, while Shopify Plus offers more ease of use (with slightly less customization flexibility). So it depends on what you’re looking for.
You can also add augmented reality and 3D models on product pages to recreate in-person retail experiences. To be fair, you can do this with Adobe Commerce, too, but Shopify AR is built in, whereas Adobe’s is an extension you’d need to install and configure.
If you’re looking for more functionality on Shopify Plus, you can install apps like Launchpad and Shopify Flow or set up third-party integrations. For example, you can plug in a CMS, CRM, ERP, and other business tools and systems to the Shopify Plus platform so you have all the tools you need in one place.
Pro tip: If you use Shopify Plus as your ecommerce platform but find its CMS features lacking, consider hosting your marketing site on HubSpot’s CMS (Content Hub). For example, Elbeco’s marketing site was built on HubSpot’s CMS and is fully integrated with Shopify, thanks to some custom development help.
Pricing: Plans start at $2,300/month on a three-year term.
5. Bynder
Bynder is a great alternative to AEM for small, medium, or enterprise companies that already have a CMS but still need a DAM for organizing large amounts of digital assets. Bynder offers integrations for some of the major CMS platforms, including WordPress and Drupal, so you can easily connect your CMS and DAM system.
Pro tip: If you use Content Hub as your CMS, you can synchronize your Bynder files via this Bynder integration.
Using this cloud-based system, you can consolidate your assets, organize them in an easily searchable way (search using words or images), and give access to those assets to employees across the globe.
You can also assign archive dates and track who is using which assets and how they're being used in your Bynder database. This makes it easier and more secure to share digital content with internal and external stakeholders.
Pricing: For pricing, you must contact Bynder.
Adobe Experience Manager Alternatives: FAQs
What is Adobe Experience Manager similar to?
Adobe Experience Manager is often compared to two other CMSs, Drupal and Magnolia. Here’s how they stack up:
- AEM vs. Magnolia
- Both are enterprise-grade, Java-based CMSs that support headless functionality.
- But Magnolia offers a free, open-source Community Edition, while Adobe Experience Manager is fully proprietary.
- AEM vs. Drupal
- Both are hybrid, enterprise-grade, developer-centric CMSs.
- But Drupal is open source, while AEM is proprietary.
Is AEM outdated?
To be clear, Adobe maintains and regularly updates Experience Manager software. In my research, the criticism of AEM being “outdated” stems from the fact that it’s a monolithic hybrid CMS that can be used in a headless fashion, whereas there are now more “modern” headless-first CMSs like Strapi and Sanity that have a different architecture that some developers prefer.
Having said that, AEM’s usage has grown overall in the past decade. Contrast that with Drupal (another developer-centric, enterprise CMS that AEM is often compared to), which has declined in usage over the past seven years.
Is AEM the best CMS?
That highly depends on the context and your individual needs. Adobe Experience Manager is an extremely powerful and expensive enterprise-grade software best suited for businesses that need a combined CMS/DAM and have a high budget and lots of developer resources. If that’s not you, then you might struggle to implement AEM and get the most out of it. AEM is best for complex, enterprise websites and multiple digital channels.
What is the difference between Adobe Experience Manager and WordPress?
While Adobe Experience Manager and WordPress are both content management systems (CMSs), they have a lot of differences.
|
Adobe Experience Manager |
WordPress |
|
Proprietary |
Open Source |
|
Paid |
Free (if self-hosted) |
|
High complexity |
More beginner-friendly |
|
Requires developers for setup and customization |
Non-developers can set up and do basic customization (advanced customization still requires developers) |
Which Adobe Experience Manager alternative will you choose?
Using any of the platforms above, you’ll be able to manage all of your content and digital assets. Selecting the right one for your business will depend on whether you need a combined CMS/DAM, the platform’s full range of capabilities, and how the software aligns with your needs and goals.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
HubSpot's Free Website Builder
Create and customize your own business website with an easy drag-and-drop website builder.
- Build a website without any coding skills.
- Pre-built themes and templates.
- Built-in marketing tools and features.
- And more!
Content Management System
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