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it_user535350 - PeerSpot reviewer
LifeRay Functional Lead at a wellness & fitness company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
You can create your own secure service bus for information. We always have issues with Social Office.

What is most valuable?

The features I find valuable are its integration points with other systems and scalability. This is important because the portal (Liferay) is an addition to the current J2EE Framework. That being said, it lends itself to roll all processing (Spring batch) into the Liferay Tomcat bundle. This process can be done in reverse order to ensure performance.

For integration points using simple plugins with SAP, you can create your own secure service bus for information. If you would like to convert your Liferay platform to a presentation layer for CRM, you can leverage Dynamic MS CRM or SugarCRM with ease using plugins or a Java framework.

How has it helped my organization?

Our organization benefited by the automated client setup and an easy CMS setup.

What needs improvement?

Major upgrades switch the Liferay framework core structure dramatically in EVERY occasion. However, there were only subtle changes from the last minor upgrade to the major upgrade.

For how long have I used the solution?

I used this product for two years where I currently work. In my former job, I used it for six years.

Buyer's Guide
Liferay Digital Experience Platform
February 2025
Learn what your peers think about Liferay Digital Experience Platform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have encountered stability issues during the upgrade process from 5.2 EE to 6.1.XX EE. There are always issues with Social Office.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We had no scalability issues.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support need was moderate as the tool lends itself to be customized away from the (out-of-the box) OOB portal product. Liferay does not always support these custom components.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used ColdFusion for a previous project for a CMS portal.

How was the initial setup?

The installation was simple on a Linux-based operating system. It was complex with Windows Servers, but we still managed.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We recommend never leveraging static components when developing licensing requirements because the operating system layer and its environment will always change to fit support costs.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not evaluate alternative solutions.

What other advice do I have?

Make sure you understand what you want the product to do. If your company has an overall future for growth, then Liferay is a good choice as it is an enterprise solution.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Lead Software Professional at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Administration functions are available from the control panel.

What is most valuable?

  • Support OSGi Framework
  • Excellent Content management system
  • Administrative functions through the control panel
  • Elastic search

These features are valuable because they all are basic requirements for all portals and have been achieved easily with the Liferay DXP portal.

You

How has it helped my organization?

Very important changes are OSGi modularization for existing portlets and new modules. It change the way of development and make life easy for developers

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been playing liferay from last 9 years and palyed almost all the version and have seen many pros and cons across versions.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Yes we faced many issues during production deployment and specially performance tuning and best suppoprt architecture.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Yes as this is open source so don't see its big hurdle here.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

10/10

Technical Support:

Technical support is very nice for the EE customers.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I did not previously use a different solution.

How was the initial setup?

If its first time then you will definatly struggle but later on it would be very easy if you understand the structure.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It should maintain a competitive price in the open source market.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

What other advice do I have?

It is just awesome; you should experience DXP. I am blogging many useful solution on www.liferaysolution.com

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: My company is a Liferay platinum partner.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Liferay Digital Experience Platform
February 2025
Learn what your peers think about Liferay Digital Experience Platform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user538218 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Liferay Portal/Web Developer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
With the roles and permissions management, developers have the ability to build persona- and preference-based functionality​.

What is most valuable?

  • CMS lets business users to create and manage web content by business users, while maintaining revisions. Liferay enables users to be independent of developers and to be able to manage content within the portal.
  • Roles and permissions management gives developers the ability to build persona- and preference-based functionality within the portal.
  • Document library
  • Plugins, workflows and rules provide flexibility to customize the portal.

How has it helped my organization?

  • A self-service portal for customers
  • An online community to share and get knowledge
  • A portal for distributing manuals.

What needs improvement?

  • Ability to create content
  • A cloud offering

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Liferay for approximately five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Liferay is a very stable product (except for version 7, as it is relatively new).

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have no issues with scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is very good.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We started using Liferay directly. There was no previous solution.

How was the initial setup?

Setup was straightforward.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is very affordable and licensing is similar to Red Hat Linux, where we pay only for the support.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Adobe Experience Manager and WebSphere Portal v6.

What other advice do I have?

Have a complete understanding of out-of-the-box features as Liferay makes most of the functionality required available without any customization.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user536244 - PeerSpot reviewer
Liferay Solution Engineer at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
Provides content aggregation and personalization. Only the simple, straightforward cases are documented.

What is most valuable?

Aggregation and personalization (think dashboards) are the really unique selling points of a portal. If you don't need those, you don't need a portal and there will be other libraries or frameworks that are better suited to solve your problem.

How has it helped my organization?

We are not really using it ourselves.

What needs improvement?

The easy, straightforward cases are usually the only ones that are documented. Once you need to do something a little more advanced, you usually won't find any examples and will have to resort to looking through the code to find a place where they do something similar and figure out how it works by stepping through that in a debugger.

They also really like to create new libraries to do stuff (AlloyUI, Metal.js, Senna.js, etc.) instead of seeing what is already available and trying to adapt that for portal use (and possibly committing that back). And lastly, we've run in to a lot of bugs that tend to come back in every version. Things get fixed in one version and after upgrading you run into the same bug again.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have about 8 years of experience with the product. I've worked with late 5.x versions up until the 7/DXP version now. I'm also a Liferay Highlighted blogger (https://web.liferay.com/web/fimez/blog) and I presented at Liferay Devcon last year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We didn't encounter any real stability issues, only regressions and bugs.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We didn't encounter any real scalability issues, only regressions and bugs.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is better than most.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used Sun Java System Portal Server. We switched because Sun Portal just plain sucked.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup is as easy as downloading, unpacking and starting. No hassle.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Always use the Enterprise Edition, as it isn't worth your own time to try and hunt down bugs in the Community Edition, and there are lots of bugs/regressions.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at JBoss Portal and Pluto.

What other advice do I have?

Only use it when you really need a portal and don't use it as an application framework. In that case, it only complicates your development and performance needlessly.

We tried the 'eat your own dog food' approach and used Liferay for our company's website, but Liferay just isn't meant to build websites. It wasn't easy/simple enough for normal web content editors to add or change content. It is also hard for our designers to create cutting edge designs that can be easily integrated into Liferay as a theme.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Official partner
PeerSpot user
it_user535347 - PeerSpot reviewer
Java EE Developer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Management and permissions according to user, role, and group. The core code base needs refactoring.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is management and permissions according to user, role, and group.

What needs improvement?

There are several areas that need improvement:

  • The core code base needs refactoring. It’s very hard to understand it when trying to do customizations.
  • They could remove the business logic from the UI (JSPs) and stop using scriptlets in JSPs.
  • Data integrity should be at the database level (normalization/foreign keys) and not at the application level.
  • Also, they need to upgrade third party libraries (e.g., Spring) to the newest versions. Liferay is stuck on Spring 3.2, while Spring 4.3.x is the last version and they are working on a 5.0 framework.
  • Use Java Config instead of XML config.
  • Add support for JBoss EAP domain mode
  • Source code sharing in SVN/git still needs to be revisited

For how long have I used the solution?

I’ve used Liferay for more than 1 year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Yes, we did have issues with stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Yes, we encountered scalability issues.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup was complex compared to IBM WebSphere.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I recommend going with the CE version.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated IBM WebSphere portal, but found WebSphere to be overkill for our project.

What other advice do I have?

I would emphasize using Liferay’s OOTB features so you don’t build something that already exists.

Also, make sure you actually need the features it provides.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user641757 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user641757Head Developer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User

About the room for improvements, I guess everyone hates the lack of foreign keys although they present a weak technical argument (support for several databases, this kind of forces you to implement lots of extra code and understand their service builder).
JSP are definitely ugly, I would not be religions about this but we have found issues related to this topic, as some are really badly modularized and applying customization proves to be a challenge, like changing functions in fragments that are together in a massive JSP.
About the third party libs, OMG, they definitely should do something about this. The whole set is awful and dependency management is nonexistent, from Gradle files badly described to stone age lib embedded in components, even with the lib being globally available. 7.0 was the perfect opportunity to fix this...well maybe some day.
Anyway, one of the best platforms around, and I bet others have similar issues, at least with liferay we can see inside.

reviewer1391445 - PeerSpot reviewer
Communications head at a university with 51-200 employees
Real User
An open-source enterprise portal that's easy-to-use
Pros and Cons
  • "The look and feel and the user interface are great."
  • "The plugins should be more affordable."

What is most valuable?

We like Likeray because it's a secure platform.

The look and feel and the user interface are great.

What needs improvement?

PHP offers more plugins than Liferay. The plugins should be more affordable.

Liferay needs to offer more in terms of updates and development. WordPress is constantly offering new updates and new features; I hardly see that with Liferay — although, it could be because we don't have an enterprise license.

Also, an e-commerce plugin tool would be a nice feature. 

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Liferay for at least three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Compared to WordPress, I hardly experience any issues or bugs.

How was the initial setup?

For us, the initial setup was very complex — It's in Java. In Malaysia, there are not a lot of Java writers or developers.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Licensing costs can be very expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend Liferay to another company, but the price cannot be overlooked. Maintaining a license can be a hefty investment.

Due to the licensing and plugin costs, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior Technology Specialist at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Real User
The document library, built-in Kaleo Workflow engine, and CMS are very useful features. It could have better stability and performance tuning.

What is most valuable?

The very first and important feature of Liferay is that it is open-source and can be extended as per the requirements.

I would like to mention about the Hooks/Ext plugins that I have extensively used to adapt Liferay as the solution, in order to reach the business requirements.

The document library, built-in Kaleo Workflow engine, and CMS (Content Management System) are very useful features.

They can be modified/extended at any level.

Overall, it provides easy scalability and integration with the third-party system/APIs like OAuth, social media, and Salesforce. In turn, it provides a great benefit by reducing development time and effort.

How has it helped my organization?

As mentioned above, we have done social media integration for SSO (LinkedIn, Facebook) easily. We have integrated with Salesforce CRM and we used the Liferay CMS feature for authoring and publishing content in a flawless way.

The Liferay document library provided a smooth way to manage assets and documents, even for large volumes.

What needs improvement?

It could have better stability and performance tuning.

Support provided for the Enterprise Edition is really poor. The support is poor because of the delayed response and less-technology support provided.

Sometimes, the customer needs more troubleshooting from the vendor, especially in the initial period, i.e., while setting up the development platform or deployment environment.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have not only used this solution, but I have also done development with Liferay for around three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We did encounter stability issues. The initial version of 6.2 had stability issues. Later, with the advance builds, it became better.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

There were no scalability issues.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is really poor. But we did not face many issues, as it is an open-source product.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Initially, we were using the IBM WebSphere Portal. However, we switched over to Liferay because of its lower licensing costs, obviously.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. The setup process is well documented in the official site. But the development curve is steeper and the documentation could be better.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Liferay has both the Community and Enterprise Editions. The Community Edition is free and we have used it too. The Enterprise Edition comes with a few extra features. This should be actually driven by the requirements.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Alfresco (open source software) and Adobe Experience Manager, as alternatives. However, we have used the latter as well, for some other project.

What other advice do I have?

It is a wonderful open-source product that has many out-of-the-box features. However, the initial learning is important and the curve is steeper.

Someone has to learn about the Liferay Portlets, Ext, Hooks, Themes, Layout, and make use of the knowledge properly for actual implementation.

It has great support for the different Java frameworks such as the Spring Web MVC framework, Java collections framework (JCF), and the front-end frameworks, namely Angular. Make your choice as you wish.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user544041 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Technology Architect / Senior Mgr at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Provides OOTB support for SPA. It still has a long way to cover in terms of campaign management, audience targeting, DAM, etc.

What is most valuable?

  • Overall modularity in architecture
  • OOTB support for SPA
  • Enhancements in marketing experience: user segmentation, targeting, analytics, single customer view, enhanced UI, and content management capabilities

How has it helped my organization?

Considering the overall drive towards providing a digital experience to clients, to provide a connected experience, federated touchpoints, dynamic personalization, customer context and interactions, the product has evolved very strongly from just being a horizontal portal system into a digital experience platform. Newer modular architecture and in-built SPA experience is rightly following the current trends in the market.

What needs improvement?

Aspects of Campaign management and audience targeting is fast maturing, where the experience tracked in online channels are feeding into the offline journeys and influencing the content promoted from that channel and vice versa the learnings from offline channels like (email) through composite campaign tracking and optimizations cycles gives newer areas of segmentation which can be fed back to online channels for a omni-potent personalization and content targeting approach.

Other competitor product lines are absorbing the complete cycle of this fast changing dynamic offering management coaxed with 360 view of customer to fuel in some of the immersive experience offering, this is a space where Liferay DXP still need to venture and explore the scenarios on how the current great abilities of campaign and audience management can be tied back to such situations and provide a complete online-offline personalization experience which is consistent, trackable and ever evolving with customer view feedback to strike that right winning content user is looking to convert.

On further note to explain DAM and the abilities on the same, it’s again a space which has several flavours of existence. DAM within a Portal or CMS system is just good for the marketers who want to have an integrated platform to manage medium volumes of simplistic assets for web journey authoring, but as we unfold this obvious world of things, there is an abyss of requirements features which can be offered to become an Enterprise DAM offering, to name few will be ability to transform assets (especially media assets) based on bandwidth, renditions, panoramic view generations, mixed media assets, video trackings and recommendations, asset monetization along with further maturing into copyright management spiralling into Information rights management within these systems. (this is just one quick example to pick within the Enterprise DAM abilities)

Other competitors in this space has started to carve out variations of DAM for small to large scale enterprise implementations and have started to offer their product lines as distinctive offerings , small to mid scale DAM (implicit within the portals, CMS platform), large scale standalone variation of the offering as standalone enterprise DAM, Renditions and Transformation Management Advance Media Management Systems and Cloud DAM offering best of breed solutions between features of a DAM and a MAM (Media Asset Management) solutions. These variations helps customer make the right choice from the offerings available and strike the right balancing cord to decide what will be the best fit in their ecosystem. DAM offering from Liferay is still an experience which falls into the first variation of offering (small to mid-scale DAM offering) from within platform which need to scale into larger aspects of Enterprise DAM so as to be competing strongly with similar offerings in market by other niche DAM as well as Enterprise Experience players.


For how long have I used the solution?

I have used the product for 10 months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This one is a major release from the previous one with lots of changes at the API level and at the environment level, so a certain level of issues with stability are observed with existing plugins, some APIs, hooks and audience targeting.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We haven’t yet encountered any scalability issues.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is 3.5 out of 5.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We switched because of the cost, flexibility with Liferay, and ease of use.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup was very easy. You just unzip the package and you are set to go.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Licensing follows the dual licensing model and the Community edition is completely open source (with LGPL). The Enterprise edition follows EULA licensing. Please read carefully to understand the intellectual property-specific constraints.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Before choosing, we also evaluated Drupal (open source) and Adobe AEM (proprietary).

What other advice do I have?

This is a great product for small- and mid-scale implementations and for the enterprises who are starting on their digital journey. It has a great story to tell right from being horizontal portal development platform to a digital experience platform. However, it is not very strong yet to be used for completely marketing-oriented implementations. It is okay to use for a pre-customer journey and presents a very strong case for a post-customer journey.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Alliance partnership with this vendor
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Liferay Digital Experience Platform Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: February 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Liferay Digital Experience Platform Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.