Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Adobe Experience Manager vs WordPress comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Adobe Experience Manager
Ranking in Web Content Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Content Management (8th), Enterprise Social Software (6th), Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) (1st)
WordPress
Ranking in Web Content Management
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Web Content Management category, the mindshare of Adobe Experience Manager is 12.1%, down from 15.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WordPress is 15.3%, up from 14.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web 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.
RICARDO FILIPO - PeerSpot reviewer
Very customizable, and forms the base for most websites on the Internet
I work in the community, and I'm part of a team making the core of WordPress. We are responsible for creating how WordPress will change in the next version. The main point is concurrency. For example, we have Squarespace, Wix, and a lot of other frameworks with the same features and functionalities. All those frameworks are going to a completely no-code experience. Anyone can then have a website. You're just dragging, dropping, and writing texts very easily. It's like using Facebook. WordPress comes from a node way. There was a time when the webmaster needed to code in HTML, PHP, or some language to have a website. It has changed over time, but we still have some old things inside the backend of WordPress. We are currently removing all those old things. Day by day, WordPress will be easier to use and more user-friendly. WordPress needs to improve its usability. That way, it will be easier to create websites, e-commerce, CRM, platforms for education, or anything else. It would be good if WordPress improved its AI. For example, if you have a blog, the blog will be auto-writing. I'm working on this, and we have some solutions. Another feature should be the identification of users. It's related to AI. For example, if you go to a website like Facebook or another social network, it's possible to learn everything about you if you go to that place. WordPress has something like that, but it's not so deep. I am personally working on that feature. Anyone coming to a WordPress website will be identified. It's tricky because we have a kind of privacy to follow, so we need to balance both things.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"I like the profiling and segmentation."
"Easy to work with the solution."
"The integration of customer behavior and website setup is impressive."
"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."
"It is easy to learn. You don't need to be an advanced Java developer."
"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."
"It has a vast array of themes which could be applied to make the website visually look more appealing to the target market."
"The best feature of WordPress is its user-friendliness and its strong SEO capabilities."
"WordPress offers great flexibility."
"The product provides capabilities to build modern websites and can be used for various aspects of services."
"The standout feature is its high degree of customization. Creating user-friendly, easily maintainable websites is a breeze, especially with the convenient admin access."
"As WordPress is such a popular product, there are many designers and developers available to work on projects."
"It is a stable system which offers a wide variety of themes and templates."
"Good for rapidly turning around all the elements required for online sales funnels."
 

Cons

"The licenses are very expensive."
"The solution's pricing and stability could be improved."
"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."
"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."
"The licensing model is opaque, and technical support could be improved, especially for smaller companies."
"A little bit of background knowledge of coding and website structure is required."
"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's technical support is so-so."
"A user may feel intimidated the first time he or she sees it."
"The system should be more informative."
"I would recommend dumping the Gutenberg interface, as that is horrible."
"I would like to have the ability to customize the whole WordPress installation. WordPress comes with a number of core features. I would love to be able to remove those I'm not using at the moment."
"I would like to see the addition of social media integration features in WordPress."
"WordPress needs to adapt to new technologies. It also needs to improve scalability. We don't have optimized content and plugins in the tech stack."
"One area of improvement is hosting. It should have its file manager regardless of where you host your website."
"The basic product is becoming less usable by end users for site maintenance post delivery."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Users have to pay a yearly licensing fee to use the solution, which is highly-priced."
"It provides a high ROI."
"WordPress is a free solution."
"Regarding pricing, we have the flexibility to utilize certain themes and plugins across multiple websites for a single one-time cost. However, there are instances where themes come with only one activation key, limiting their use to a single website. Certain plugins and themes come with a significant cost, with the least expensive theme priced at around $120. Additionally, plugins typically range from $80 to $90 per year for a subscription. Consequently, it can be considered somewhat costly in this regard. Conversely, when it comes to WordPress, there is no expenditure involved."
"WordPress can be pricey, ranging from $0 to thousands per month."
"Set up cost is nothing. Pricing is free. You need to pay a cost only for the domains, hosting, and to buy themes."
"WordPress is an open-source product, meaning it is available for free."
"The pricing is very reasonable because WordPress is an open-source platform."
"As per my understanding, WordPress is an open-source product, owing to which there are no requirements to make any payments towards its licensing costs."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Content Management solutions are best for your needs.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
47%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
11%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
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 WordPress?
The best feature of WordPress is its flexibility.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WordPress?
The cost of a project using WordPress varies widely and depends on the specific requirements. It can range from as low as $500 to as high as $3,000 or more, depending on the complexity and scope of...
What needs improvement with WordPress?
WordPress could use improvement in terms of optimization, especially for large websites with extensive databases and many images. When clients want to build projects like Amazon on WordPress, it te...
 

Also Known As

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

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Metra
TIBCO Software, Code for America, Crosswise, Essio Shower, AdLemons, Applied Geographics
Find out what your peers are saying about Adobe Experience Manager vs. WordPress and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.