Adobe Experience Manager vs Box comparison

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Adobe Experience Manager

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Box and Adobe Experience Manager compete in the digital content management and collaboration sector. Box holds an edge in file sharing and usability, while Adobe Experience Manager excels in complex content management and digital marketing solutions.

Features: Box offers seamless file sharing, real-time editing, mobile accessibility, and robust security which are crucial for effective collaboration. Adobe Experience Manager focuses on digital asset management, user-generated content management, and integration with other Adobe products to deliver comprehensive digital marketing capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Box can improve its search functionality, integration with third-party software like Office 365, and refine user roles. Adobe Experience Manager needs better integration with non-Adobe services, a more developer-friendly environment, and improvements in user management and pricing.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Box provides flexible deployment on public and private clouds and is praised for its responsive customer service, though some users report support delays. Adobe Experience Manager supports private cloud and on-premises deployment, offering comprehensive customer service, but may lag in technical support for non-core clients.

Pricing and ROI: Box is competitively priced, especially for higher education clients, offering good value and accessibility, though with potential API call costs. Adobe Experience Manager, while more expensive, provides efficiency for large-scale digital projects. Both deliver a positive ROI, with Box more affordable for smaller organizations and Adobe Experience Manager suited for large enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed Adobe Experience Manager vs. Box Report (Updated: December 2024).

Adobe Experience Manager vs. Box

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Helped 824,067 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

Adobe Experience Manager

Ranking in Enterprise Content Management

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Web Content Management (3rd), Enterprise Social Software (6th), Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) (1st)

Box

Ranking in Enterprise Content Management

6th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Storage (12th), Digital Asset Management (3rd), Document Management Software (2nd), Content Collaboration Platforms (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Enterprise Content Management category, the mindshare of Adobe Experience Manager is 2.8%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Box is 3.9%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Content Management

Featured Reviews

Prince Shivhare

Architect at Endeavour Group

Managing content is very user-friendly, AEM makes maintenance simple and auto-scalable

Area of improvement for Cloud Service: For the last four years, I've been working on AEM as a Cloud Service. I feel the tool has all the features needed for production, but the problem is with skills. Depending on the skill level of the developers building the components within Adobe Experience Manager, you can have a very streamlined implementation or a very difficult one. Tool-wise, the Adobe Experience Manager support team is not very responsive when the user faces issues in AEM as a Cloud Service. If I reach out to Adobe for something, they create a ticket, and then I might wait three to four days for a response. When I have issues, I want an immediate response. On AEM as a Cloud Service, this is the one thing I think Adobe needs to improve. They should resolve issues within a day so everything runs smoothly for the user. Area of improvement for on-premises: For on-premises AEM, everything is managed by us, but since Adobe Experience Manager was not a very big market earlier (though it's growing now), there are limited clients. The cost of the tool is high, and maintenance is heavy – it's very costly. So, the developers working in AEM development might not always have the proper skills to develop the components. For example, in a normal website, we often see carousels which represent your website in a very dynamic way. Now, suppose you have two carousels on the page – one at the top and the next at the bottom. They have different purposes. If I'm a skilled developer, I'll create one component and serve both banners with the same component – a single, dynamic component. This makes it easy for content editors in the production environment to drag, drop, and change the content. But, if I'm not an experienced developer or I don't have knowledge of AEM, I might create two components – one for the top and one for the bottom. Maintenance becomes heavy, and it's harder for the content team to understand which component to use. A less experienced developer might create multiple components for the same function, increasing complexity and challenges. Over the last three to four years, this lack of resources and skilled AM developers has created these kinds of issues.

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Parthasarathy Chellapillai

Program Administrator at Flextronics

Used for data storage and data collaboration, but its data security could be improved

If I have restricted access within an organization by keeping the data in Box, there are other applications through which I can barge into the data. If anyone wants to keep a file restricted to four people, I can access it because it's available in the cloud. I can directly access the file and pull in the data by entering the file's name. Someone from outside the organization can't access it. However, someone from within the organization who is not supposed to access the data can access it, provided it is in Box. Box is almost like a folder structure outside your system. The solution uses the cloud, and you don't need any separate storage in your system. Even if your system crashes down, the data will be saved. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

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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

"It's a complete package. You don't need to look elsewhere for digital marketing."

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

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

"Adobe Experience Manager is a content management system, and we use it to create and manage a website."

"It is easy to learn. You don't need to be an advanced Java developer."

"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 like the profiling and segmentation."

"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."

More Adobe Experience Manager pros

"It is really easy to load files to and from this solution."

"The application is very light in terms of uploading and downloading files."

"Box is very user-friendly; more so than SharePoint."

"File sharing, authorization on the back, its ease of use and reliable uptime performance are valuable features of this solution."

"Office Integration. The full integration into the Microsoft Office products is just perfect."

"The collaboration of the solution is good."

"The system's performance is impressive, and file sharing is notably straightforward."

"Using Box for cloud storage allows us to focus on the service and maintaining infrastructure."

More Box pros

Cons

"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."

"A little bit of background knowledge of coding and website structure is required."

"Adobe's technical support is so-so."

"Adobe Experience Manager's pricing could be improved."

"The solution's pricing and stability could be improved."

"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."

"Tool-wise, the Adobe Experience Manager support team is not very responsive when the user face issues in AEM as a Cloud Service."

"Programming model could be improved, it's a monolithic solution."

More Adobe Experience Manager cons

"If there was a plugin that added some sort of toolbar in Office, that would be great."

"One thing that Box would benefit from is a records management component."

"If you want to delete something in Box, you have to do it manually, one by one. That was my recent experience. They might have a bulk delete, but I could not find that option. If you want to delete something, you have to go to each and every file and delete it."

"Better integration with other solutions is needed."

"I don't like the low level of role-based security it provides – it's very cumbersome, and the support is ordinary at times."

"Tasks and comments could be easier to see, report, search, and manage."

"The room for improvement is in the area of integrations. They need to establish more integrations, especially with Office 365 and Outlook."

"Like all cloud platforms, there are always areas of improvement around sync to local devices."

More Box cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's really costly."

"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."

"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."

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

"The more you dig, the deeper the level of tools, and the more expensive it becomes."

"We are using the free version of the solution. There is a free version and monthly and yearly subscriptions available."

"They are very price competitive when pushed. Initially, they come out with a standard list price, but they are willing to be very competitive. The Box price was pretty much equal to or lower than the Citrix price, and Box has more features."

"I believe Box is cheaper than SharePoint."

"A business account has a minimum of three users. If you are more than three people in-house, go for the Enterprise version. All the external users are free of charge."

"Box needs to improve with their pricing in terms of licensing costs."

"Better sign a full year's contract to get a discount."

"It is expensive per head, as you need the enterprise license to get full security and tools. So negotiate a discount!"

More Box pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

47%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

59%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Adobe Experience Manager?

It is easy to learn. You don't need to be an advanced Java developer.

What needs improvement with Adobe Experience Manager?

While there are many aspects that could be improved, discussing them would require more time. The licensing model is opaque, and technical support could be improved, especially for smaller companies.

What is your primary use case for Adobe Experience Manager?

I've worked with all major content management systems. Currently, I work with the leaders such as Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore, and Acquia.

What do you like most about Box?

The solution is used for data storage and any kind of visualization.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Box?

The solution is expensive when it comes to API calls.

What needs improvement with Box?

The price must be lowered.

Adobe CQ5 vs Adobe Experience Manager

Comparisons

Compared 12% of the time

Liferay Digital Experience Platform vs Adobe Experience Manager

Compared 10% of the time

SDL Tridion DX vs Adobe Experience Manager

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle Content Management vs Adobe Experience Manager

Compared 7% of the time

SharePoint vs Adobe Experience Manager

Compared 6% of the time

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SharePoint vs Box

Compared 18% of the time

Microsoft OneDrive vs Box

Compared 13% of the time

ShareFile vs Box

Compared 11% of the time

Egnyte vs Box

Compared 9% of the time

Nasuni vs Box

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Adobe Experience Manager

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Download Box product report

Also Known As

Adobe Day CQ5, Ektron Social Marketing, Episerver Content Cloud

No data available

Learn More

Adobe

Overview

Adobe Communique 5 (Adobe CQ5), currently manifested as Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), is a web-based content management system which is developed to help businesses in offering high-end digital experience to their customers.

Box is a Modern Content Management Platform for companies of all sizes and industries. The difference that Box brings is that it offers the security and controls admins need with the sharing and collaboration capabilities end users want. Box has made it easier for people to securely share ideas, collaborate and get work done faster. Today, more than 62,000 businesses, including 59% of the Fortune 500, trust Box to manage content in the cloud.

The Box platform provides HIPAA, FINRA, FedRAMP, and many other compliances to go with granular access permissions and advanced security capabilities.

By using Box you can sync, share, and collaborate on all types of files, anywhere, on any device - but that's just the beginning. You can choose where to store your data, to manage your own encryption keys, and set workflows to automate content-based processes. You can also assign custom metadata tags to content, watermark sensitive content, and set file retention or legal hold policies.

Box has deep, native integrations with Microsoft Office and Outlook, Google Apps for Work, Salesforce, Netsuite, Docusign, Adobe, and many other best-of-breed solutions you may already be using.

Sample Customers

Metra

GE, Toyota, P&G, Caterpillar, Flex, Schneider Electric, Sally Beauty, Eurostar, AstraZeneca, AirBnB, Whirlpool, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Nationwide, Aeropostale etc

Adobe Experience Manager vs. Box