Elementor vs. Optimizely Content Management System

I would recommend this for the ease of use and price. It is a good value for any website developer or designer to be able to create multiple websites a year with super simple coding. If you've got a way to speed up your website without using WP Rocket, then it's even better! I think this software is specifically made for someone with a coding background and would recommend that you have a background with Wordpress to make using this software even easier

Incentivized

Very much if a business is doing a rebrand, for example, or a digital transformation, the DXP product is super competitive. The managed services that provided around the infrastructure and all of the moving parts really, really works well. It just makes life as a developer very easy when ultimately you just have to do the code and deploy it out and don't worry about the environment infrastructure. I think it's really, really well and fits in really well with that. Areas where it's not so great in my experience, I would say, well, I've already mentioned kind of the CMS to SaaS product, but also just in general it feels like we're going through a bit of a transition period with the documentation at the moment. So when new features are rolled out or the product catalog expands, the documentation isn't always the best or streamlined. That can make life as a developer a little bit work at the times.

Incentivized

• Theme builder (header, footer, site parts)
• Forms, with options for what to do with form submissions after they've been submitted (email, collect , push to EMS)
• Easy to use widgets for things that would otherwise need coding manually (sliders, carousels, flip boxes etc.)
• Pre-built templates
• Dynamic conditions for content display

Incentivized

• Folder structure - I was on Magento 1.x & 2.x for 10 years, which had no folder structure for blocks or images - it was very difficult to find things. We couldn't keep anything straight without it.
• The fact that it knows what block or image is being used and links to where it's being used is pure gold. It prevents deletion of needed elements.
• I like that I can drag a block or image somewhere new and it doesn't break anything.
• Our search of blocks and images is now working, that's very helpful.

Incentivized

• Could definitely use an AI bot for ad-hoc customer queries
• Very limited Wdgets available in free version - If you have complex pages, go pro
• Ensure robust internet speed (50 MBPS bare minimum) to be able to operate it. Below 8 GB RAM is not advised

Incentivized

• promo types, several have been released that do not work as they are advertised/labeled which has caused us to make custom promos for just about all of them where we've actually fixed the functionality. The OOB types are completely unreliable
• promo exclusions/sorting -- this is very buggy, and some of this would normally be "out of the box" like no two order discounts should ever be able to stack. This gets incredibly difficult to manage when you have 75 active promos at a time.
• asset management - replacement files with same name aren't recognized even when the first version is deleted, this creates a mess in asset folders - nothing can be successfully deleted from epi asset library
• html automatic edits -- issues when typing in either content page links or asset links, epi always adds random characters to the end (?"Epieditmode=false,6789" for example, which doesn't break content, but does make it more difficult for the team to use non-epi html tools to build or edit
• auto dimensions on images -- when adding an image in the html, you have the address exactly, but any other way causes the editor to put width and height dims on the code, making the image warp in mobile, this is adding steps to undo the automatic edits, they are completely unhelpful
• blogs - we are running a blog in Opti that is compeltely manual, every "related article" and every "articles about x topic" block is hard coded, there is nothing dynamic in the content library which is frustrating, and creates a huge time suck for articles across the site, every time there is a new one, that's 10+ manual page updates

Incentivized

Elementor is critical to our ongoing success and providing our clients with world-class websites

Incentivized

Since I work on the implementation side of things, and do not directly own licensing for Ektron CMS, I have to base this rating off of how I think it will be received or presented to customers looking to start a new site deployment. I try to remain CMS agnostic, though my specialty is with the .NET and Microsoft stack. Because of the experience I have working with Ektron, I tend to be more forgiving with the shortcomings as I am familiar with how to work around them or past them from experience. Being familiar with the community available also helps, as you become familiar with the best approaches to find solutions to your issues. Each product has it's ups and downs and all of them are only going to be as good as the company or development team implementing them can make them. This is EXTREMELY important to remember when choosing a CMS, as it can make or break your expensive investment.

Elementor is one of those website builders that is really easy to get started with. The drag and drop features make it easy to create attractive and creative webpages for even the non-website designer. Some of the features available are not easy to find or easy to discover when you first start using Elementor. Practice makes perfect.

Incentivized

From our editors perspective they find the CMS system easy and to clear to use. Our developers find it very easy to design on and appreciate the level of service support available. It's also always evolving and getting better every year. We find this investment reassuring and encourages us to try keep pace and see how we can continue to push the envelope and continue to improve all aspect of our websites and online touch points.

Incentivized

Unplanned outages or errors are fairly rare in our instance. And when there are issues, they're usually fixed fairly quickly

There support is slow and at times can be frustrating and this is why many prefer to air out their frustrations within the Facebook group community. I tend to give up as when I'm working on something and something goes wrong I need the help straight away. I do not have the patience to wait anymore.

Incentivized

I attended multiple trainings/tutorials early in the process. The vendor-supplied content about Optimizely was engaging for users/attendees (I often analyze training content, compliance programs, governance plans), which helps our OCM people by having good "word of mouth" about the product long before a rollout ever happens. I actually when the user-focused portion of the Optimizely Academy twice in 2022 to ensure I had a grasp on operability and to be able to support the training and OCM efforts

Incentivized

Ektron is one of the best solution for .Net platform. Over the years have improved the performance issues that the previous versions had. My only complain is right now you can't do Page builder pages if you choose to have a MVC architecture

The business team has to stick to its core competencies - Our key turning point occured when we delegated webpage design challenges to a tech. firm with specific mandates (including a certain degree of internal control). Once the initial go-live was completed, the agency trained us on internalizing ad-hoc and tactical change work

Incentivized

I was not fully involved.

Incentivized

Compared to other providers, Elementor can be easy to use and learn, allowing you to build professional websites in a fraction of the time it takes to build websites with other sites. The AI feature can help non-tech people to easily understand and build a website that is SEO and Google search compliant.

Incentivized

Optimizely Content Management System takes the best bit of previous platforms and simplifies them without removing the more advanced features but not making the necessary to get things going. allowing for any user to jump in and start working is a massive help but empowering power users to take advantage of all its features.

Incentivized

• Our sales have really grown over the past five years of using Elementor. We went from fulfilling less than five orders a month to now 10-15 per months. And we are a small bulk food store with a small audience.
• We have been able to add plug ins along with Elementor to customize our products, store, and pages.
• We haven't done as much with SEO and Elementor. I feel like this is one area that we could probably do better.

Incentivized

• Flexibility with design that allows us to work towards our mission of 'Tennis Opened Up'
• Speed of deploying content, meaning users can really on us for the most up-to-date content on tennis in Britain
• Ability to have different logged-in areas for different user groups, allowing us to create more bespoke and personalised experiences

Incentivized