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Adobe Experience Manager vs IBM FileNet comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Adobe Experience Manager
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Web Content Management (3rd), Enterprise Social Software (6th), Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) (1st)
IBM FileNet
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 IBM FileNet is 10.1%, up from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Content Management
 

Featured Reviews

Prince Shivhare - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
WolfgangPichler - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides a compact solution for midsized companies
IBM does not do very good marketing for FileNet. Initially, after IBM acquired the product, there was good marketing support, but this has dwindled as IBM has lost personnel. More could be done to highlight the benefits to customers. Additionally, there are no visually appealing interfaces or apps for the product, which can influence customer buying decisions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Adobe Experience Manager is a content management system, and we use it to create and manage a website."
"The most valuable features of Adobe Experience Manager include its capability to manage content and create reusable fragments."
"Easy to work with the solution."
"It's a complete package. You don't need to look elsewhere for digital marketing."
"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."
"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 integration of customer behavior and website setup is impressive."
"Adobe Experience Manager is quite a powerful product that you can use to design files and export them."
"The product is very stable."
"The most valuable feature for me is the possibility to share and to collaborate, the possibility to connect FileNet with many other IBM products as well. It helps avoid the possibility of creating "island applications." We have an ecosystem where everything can be interconnected."
"It allows for multiple people to access content simultaneously."
"For a large company, for the robustness, stability, performance, and the growth — that you can grow it within seconds — I would advise using FileNet, without any doubt."
"It is really usable. There is a lot of support for it. You have the online components to trawl through the storage. I have a lot of fun with it."
"IBM FileNet was more scalable."
"We shred all our paper and no longer need the cabinet space. We used to have about six to 12 inches of cabinet space per customer, which is now gone."
"The usability is very good. We like the Content Navigator. It's very easy to use the search and retrieve for documents and has a lot of options for the user to download documents or send an email."
 

Cons

"The licensing model is opaque, and technical support could be improved, especially for smaller companies."
"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."
"Adobe Experience Manager's pricing could be improved."
"Adobe's technical support is so-so."
"The solution's pricing and stability could be improved."
"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."
"For end-users there is a lack of administrative features. The interface of basic FileNet is not very good."
"One of the things I know is a bit of a challenge for them - because I know that it lives on top of FileNet, so it's not necessarily living on top of a relational database, per se - is that we also are using it as our system of record for our language management and our language definitions. I know that that was a little bit of a challenge, just because of the underlying architecture."
"We know that they're looking at documents, but we don't know what documents they're actually going and finding the most, or where the bottlenecks might be. It would be nice if there was some interconnectivity back into Bluemix to say, "Ok, you've got a workflow problem here." That would be a neat feature moving forward because we've got a lot of users that would just say, "The system is not working." We had a few threads would get hung up because they were just constantly banging on these few documents. If that were the case, if we knew that ahead of time, then we could fix that, change the search sequences to make it more efficient. But we were blind to that until the users said it's not working."
"Simplifying both training and maintenance would be an improvement."
"The usability is fair. It could be a bit better. It could be better designed. They could put more effort into the user experience and do a better job of integrating other components, like Datacap, to be a bit more seamless."
"I think the support could be better, and it could improve."
"Needs a better administration tool."
"In terms of functionality, what customers might be looking for is a little more in terms of native-records retention. Records Management is an add-on product. If there were just a little more of that built into the core functionality, that would be helpful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."
"Users have to pay a yearly licensing fee to use the solution, which is highly-priced."
"Licensing costs depend on the size of the storage."
"The tool is expensive, and I rate its pricing a ten out of ten."
"The cost is about $40,000, plus yearly maintenance."
"The licensing cost of FileNet is comparable."
"It has reduced operating costs by reducing the amount of manual work needed."
"1. It will be more expensive than estimated to setup. 2. You will need to double the staff while you are running the old system and installing the new system. 3. Depending on the number of documents to be migrated, make sure you understand the potentially massive amount of time and effort required to migrate the existing content to the new platform."
"The physical space that we have gained back pays for the service. Therefore, it has reduced our operating costs overall. We have definitely seen ROI. I would estimate $30,000 a year."
"The biggest issue is the cost of the FileNet, because the license cost is very high. If a customer doesn't have good technical guides that are aware of the license calculation, they will pay too much. FileNet's license calculation depends on the processor and number of users. So my advice to a new customer is to be very careful with your calculations before purchasing FileNet."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
47%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Insurance Company
9%
 

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 IBM FileNet?
The product is robust and can process a lot of documents for enterprise content management.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM FileNet?
It depends on the business partner providing the solution to the customer. We have an ESA contract with IBM which allows us to offer the solution at a competitive price, providing added value when ...
What needs improvement with IBM FileNet?
The setup process is very complex, and I would prefer if it were easier. A modern interface would also be an enhancement.
 

Also Known As

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

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Metra
Suncorp Group Limited, St. Vincent Health, Citigroup, SRCSD, and UK Dept for Work and Pensions.
Find out what your peers are saying about Adobe Experience Manager vs. IBM FileNet and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.