Adobe Experience Manager vs Symphony comparison

Adobe and Symphony are both solutions in the Enterprise Social Software category. Adobe is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.6, while Symphony is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.0. Adobe holds a 3.1% mindshare in ESS, compared to Symphony’s 7.8% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Adobe users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 83% of Symphony users who would recommend it.

Adobe Experience Manager

Read 20 Adobe Experience Manager reviews

214 Views
148 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Symphony

Read 5 Symphony reviews

550 Views
399 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Adobe Experience Manager

Symphony

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

Adobe Experience Manager and Symphony are competitors in the content management space. Adobe Experience Manager seems to have the upper hand due to its flexibility and customization options.

Features: Adobe Experience Manager offers extensive integration capabilities, robust asset management tools, and comprehensive solutions suitable for large enterprises. Symphony's streamlined design, intuitive navigation, and efficient content management make it a strong choice for smaller teams.

Room for Improvement: Adobe Experience Manager could improve by simplifying deployment processes, enhancing user-friendliness, and reducing complexity for smaller businesses. Symphony can enhance by expanding integration capabilities, offering more robust asset management tools, and improving scalability to cater to larger enterprises.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Adobe Experience Manager requires complex deployment, appealing to organizations with dedicated IT resources, and provides a range of support options. Symphony boasts a straightforward deployment process and is characterized by responsive and proactive customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Adobe Experience Manager involves a higher setup cost but provides substantial ROI for large enterprises needing advanced features. Symphony offers a competitive pricing model with lower initial costs aimed at organizations seeking cost-effective solutions with satisfactory ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Adobe Experience Manager vs. Symphony Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Adobe Experience Manager vs. Symphony

March 2025

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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 Enterprise Social Software

6th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Content Management (8th), Web Content Management (3rd), Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) (1st)

Symphony

Ranking in Enterprise Social Software

7th

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Enterprise Social Software category, the mindshare of Adobe Experience Manager is 3.1%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symphony is 7.8%, up from 5.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Social Software

Featured Reviews

Thomas Becker

Managing Partner(Austria) at a integrator with 11-50 employees

Impressive integration of customer behavior with an easy setup and okay support

I've worked with all major content management systems. Currently, I work with the leaders such as Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore, and Acquia Working with big companies, I help them either consider setting up a new content management system or address issues they might have with their existing…

Read full review

Nenad Pejcic

Senior Professional Services Engineer at Aspire Technology

Makes tasks like network planning and performance monitoring much easier

I have experience with solutions from other vendors like Nokia, Huawei, and Tyson. The main pros of Symphony, in comparison, are the modules that provide a comprehensive overview and the automation features for planning data. These aspects are notably beneficial and stand out. On the downside, the major cons revolve around user customization. Unlike other vendors where you can create your reports and customize navigation, Symphony's user optimization in the SCAP module is limited. This lack of flexibility is a significant drawback, especially when compared to other solutions. Overall, while certain modules like those related to SolarWinds are straightforward and comparable, Symphony falls short in terms of user customization.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Easy to work with the solution."

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

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

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

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

"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."

More Adobe Experience Manager pros

"The solution is user-friendly, and it is very good security-wise."

"Symphony and Laravel are the most comfortable frameworks for any developer. It is also lightweight."

"The entire product is good."

"The overall functions are good."

"I found the RAM Commander module in Symphony to be the most valuable."

Cons

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

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

"The licensing model is opaque, and technical support could be improved, especially for smaller companies."

"Adobe Experience Manager could improve by allowing the reuse of components like a progress bar across multiple pages to make the development process more efficient."

"Adobe Experience Manager's pricing 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."

"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."

More Adobe Experience Manager cons

"The solution needs to improve CI."

"The solution is very expensive, and its pricing could be improved."

"To improve the situation, enhancing the functionality for integrating with other applications and addressing ticketing issues is crucial."

"Compared to established vendors, it lacks user flexibility and customization, especially in the PM module."

"The area that needs to be improved is modular asset management. When we are uploading the assets in bulk, it is not aligned."

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."

"It is fairly an expensive product, but works for us."

"It's a costly product, but the number of available features justifies it."

"Symphony is expensive."

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846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

44%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

64%

Computer Software Company

University

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What do you like most about Symphony?

Symphony and Laravel are the most comfortable frameworks for any developer. It is also lightweight.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symphony?

Symphony is expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Symphony?

The solution needs to improve CI.

See all answers

Comparisons

Adobe CQ5 vs Adobe Experience Manager

Compared 16% of the time

OpenText TeamSite vs Adobe Experience Manager

Compared 9% of the time

OpenText Extended ECM vs Adobe Experience Manager

Compared 8% of the time

Liferay Digital Experience Platform vs Adobe Experience Manager

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle Content Management vs Adobe Experience Manager

Compared 8% of the time

More Adobe Experience Manager Competitors

Microsoft Teams vs Symphony

Compared 50% of the time

Slack vs Symphony

Compared 30% of the time

Mattermost vs Symphony

Compared 20% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Adobe Experience Manager

April 2025

Download Adobe Experience Manager product report

Buyer's Guide

Enterprise Social Software

April 2025

Download Symphony product report

Also Known As

Adobe Day CQ5, Ektron Social Marketing, Episerver Content Cloud

No data available

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.

Adobe

Symphony’s secure, cloud-based communications service delivers the next wave in organizational productivity where markets and individuals come together to create vibrant communities in which to share content, insights and opinions without compromising on organizational compliance.

Symphony

Sample Customers

Metra

BNP Paribas, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Citi, Credit Suisse, JP Morgan Chase

Buyer's Guide

Adobe Experience Manager vs. Symphony

March 2025

Free Report: Adobe Experience Manager vs. Symphony

Find out what your peers are saying about Adobe Experience Manager vs. Symphony and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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