Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued) vs. ManageWP

The service provision is good the accounts customer service is poor so I would struggle to give BC a better than average review, if only they could offer customers a better accounts service then the value would be much higher.

It is well suited to anyone that has a Wordpress website, whether it be an individual or a company managing multiple clients sites, its an easy way to manage, maintain and keep your website running smoothly and secure.

Incentivized

• The Web Apps element of Business Catalyst is unique among hosted CMS systems. It helps us solve unique challenges without involving heavy-duty programmers.
• As a Hosted CMS, it has a lot of great features without a ton of cost or liability being taken on which is important to us.
• BC has a growing developer community and has made significant upgrades over the past few years, which don't end up costing us more, and would be very expensive or time consuming in a traditional CMS
• Our client's like that it is from "Adobe" and that it has Dreamweaver integration. This provides them with a level of comfort that helps us sell the project.

Incentivized

• ManageWP consolidates important WordPress site management services into on dashboard.
• ManageWP makes backing up, cloning, and restoring websites so easy.
• ManageWP provides a simple, easy to use interface.

Incentivized

• I love web apps but it can be time consuming to get the bulk import file just right the first time
• Support is good, but the effort to research can be massive for unusual issues
• Metadata on blog posts and pages can require lots of content editing at a slow pace

Incentivized

• The reports could be prettier, more templates in order to avoid having to customize for each client so heavily.
• It would be nice to see if recommended plugin updates are actually production and not beta versions.

Incentivized

Actually with Business Catalyst there is no renewal; once you are a partner, you are a partner for as long as you like. It is an investment in your business not simply a product you purchase...and as an investment in partnership with Adobe, both are committed to each other's success.

Overall it is a "plug and play" interface. The majority of the work is done in other software interfaces. Managing billing, user roles and custom reports are all that you need to manage in the actual BC user interface. For my business this is an incredible benefit as I have to leave my preferred software less.

Incentivized

It's very straightforward for basic use, but less you dig in more for advanced use. Seems like it would be approachable to the average person.

Incentivized

very few issues with availability

Incentivized

Very few issues

Incentivized

The support provided by Adobe is excellent. Though the knowledge base, forums, blogs and online chat questions most all answers can be found. In the event that you are unable to find an answer or you have a unique situation simply post a question to the forums. These forums are regularly monitored by Adobe and its users.

bcgurus.com kiyuco

Incentivized

Pretty easy to do

Incentivized

I would say that all things considered Adobe Business Catalyst is an excellent product. It does have some short-comings, but it is fantastic all around. It has a nice way of tying everything in your digital presence together nicely. If you do not have a ton of money to spend on a company website, and want things like e-mail marketing, analytics, a reliable web-site, then this is probably a very real option that should be considered. If you want a website that can grow with your company, this is also a great possibility. For smaller companies with less technical resources, I don't know if you could ask for a much better all in one solution. If you want something that can be completely customized, then there are better options out there, but they will be more expensive and require more technical knowledge to use well.

Incentivized

ManageWP is definitely the best in class product for WordPress website management. There are other tools such as InfiniteWP that do similar things, but don't have as complete an offering. Other options like WPEngine are also for hosting and we are not interested in that element. I think that ManageWP is the best tool out there for what it does.

Incentivized

It's easy to build small sites or large sites and there is lots of templating.

Incentivized

• Surprisingly enough and despite having a second, less expensive hosting solution, a majority of our clients prefer to use the Adobe Business Catalyst solution. We are then able to enjoy the commissions that are returned as we sign up new customers for annual contracts.
• Being able to store and utilize data that comes from web form submissions has been very helpful in customer retention since we became a partner in 2011. Since that time, we have only lost two clients. That's 3 times better than our other hosting solution.
• Our largest negative impact has come from having only one choice in SSLs. For example, we had a great client in a local and growing bank. We spent 2 months getting the web site built to their specifications and we were very clear on the SSL situation. However, once the site went live, problems arose. In the past they had submitted their site to search engines with their secure URL and that was all that was indexed. Then when their customers searched for their site and clicked on the secure URL, it either showed that the site could not be found OR it said that they were entering to a site with an unverified SSL. People would then call the bank and complain. We then had to quickly move their site to another solution costing us days of re-development time and resources.

Incentivized

• Reduced update times - allows me to check for updates on all our sites once a week without spending countless time logging in and updating each one manually.
• Free backups - allows me to have redundant backups just in case other systems fail, without any effort.
• Free platform - many of the provided features are free, making it very useful for companies who want to keep costs low.

Incentivized