HCL Digital Experience vs. Optimizely Content Management System

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
HCL Digital Experience
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
HCL Digital Experience is based on the former IBM Web Content Manager and IBM WebSphere Portal products, acquired by HCL Technologies from IBM in late 2018. The product allows the user to create, manage and deliver engaging omnichannel digital experiences to audiences with responsive content, targeted offers, seamlessly integrated applications and consistent branding across channels (web, mobile, and hybrid mobile/web applications and more).N/A
Optimizely Content Management System
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) is purpose-built for marketers, and fully composable for developers. The CMS supports the end-to-end content lifecycle, helping users to deliver on-brand, high-impact digital experiences that 'wow' audiences.N/A
Pricing
HCL Digital ExperienceOptimizely Content Management System
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
HCL Digital ExperienceOptimizely Content Management System
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeRequired
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
HCL Digital ExperienceOptimizely Content Management System
Considered Both Products
HCL Digital Experience
Chose HCL Digital Experience
Each of the options had good points and bad points. Building a site with tight integration to HCL Commerce and SAP backend systems was just easier with HCL DX. Security is also a concern and HCL DX provided better fine-grained security across the board. HCL DX also allowed us …
Chose HCL Digital Experience
When compared with CMS products like Adobe Day CQ, Fatwire, Interwoven:
        • IBM Web Content manager is reliable and scalable
        • Better customer service and IBM is keen on helping customers fix any issues with quick turnaround
Chose HCL Digital Experience
IBM Web Content Manager comes with IBM WebSphere Portal. Both [have been] leaders in the portals and content management space for a long time with proven capabilities. Our clients also have other products from the IBM stack and they fit along nicely.
Chose HCL Digital Experience
I used Liferay WCM; the open source system is too customizable such that what you get out of the box is not adequate. However, the portal pages in Liferay blend better with WCM than IBM: This is not always an advantage if you want to build a WCM site separated from portal …
Chose HCL Digital Experience
Adobe Experience Manager,Liferay Portal,Magnolia (V5 and later versions),Adobe CQ
Chose HCL Digital Experience
Magento and Prestashop are E-commerce CMS platforms.
They are used in a different scale of application than WCM.
Optimizely Content Management System
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Optimizely Content Management System is much more functional and robust out of the box
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Optimizely Content Management System is much more feature rich, and less complex that the other CMS platforms we have used. Optimizely Content Management System is more intuitive in how the content is structured and how easy it is to pull blocks of content to create the layout …
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
It does feel a bit more legacy, but sometimes legacy can be good for companies. For both the companies we mapped against, it was clear the idea of server maintenance was out of question for us and we wanted a service that would provide uptime and us just doing the work of …
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
None quite like this, but I have had experience with HTML sites and CSS and WordPress and Wix, but nothing quite on the level of what Optimizely produces.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
I think Optimizely does well connecting tools and processes into one ecosystem.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
The best compared to Sitecore.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
We chose Optimizely (at the time Episerver) after rigorous evaluation and due to overall impression that it was the right long term fit.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Optimizely stacks up by offering a more well-rounded and user-friendly experience. Especially with it's integration into the rest of Optimizely's offerings, this CMS opens the door to letting marketers manage their entire marketing experience on one platform where its …
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
We love that non technical people on our marketing team, can easily use and update pages and promote content.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
I truly headless system and the ability to edit this platform over others gave Optimizely Content Management System this edge when it comes to creating a future-proof e-commerce solution. There are lots of other systems out there, but there has been great success with utilizing …
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Being able to keep one catalog source that can spread to our multiple business units and being able to have our development team create custom widgets for new functionality.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
I didn't see Konakart in the dropdown options, so I want to make sure we compare against this platform as well. With other platforms, the features are either so basic that you can't get very advanced in your site UX, or the interface is so unfriendly to it's users that it's …
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Optimizely Content Management System fits our needs best being fully customisable and modular.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
We’ve not evaluated other solutions following the launch.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Much better
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
We feel that Optimizly is a better solution, however, we like that contentful offers a lower price plan for testing our mobile app.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
We as a business wanted to have ecomm built into the CMS website and we have looked into the options of WordPress and SiteCore and decided to go to Optimizely Content Management System the way it brings ease and also with out comprising on the security
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
I think is the features that Optimizely Content Management System provided that it fit what we are looking
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Optimizely Content Management System is a much better system that allowed the customization that Adobe Connect did not offer.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Optimizely Content Management has more content marketing features
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
We selected Optimizely Content Management system for their ease of use and their other offerings like content marketing platform which helps us to keep everything under one roof.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
We found we have more freedom with creating content and updating content was easier as we were able to build blocks and pages much quicker and easier than we were previously able to.
Features
HCL Digital ExperienceOptimizely Content Management System
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
HCL Digital Experience
5.0
Ratings
49% below category average
Optimizely Content Management System
8.5
Ratings
5% above category average
Role-based user permissions5.00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
HCL Digital Experience
4.1
Ratings
68% below category average
Optimizely Content Management System
8.0
Ratings
5% above category average
API4.10 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language4.10 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
HCL Digital Experience
2.9
Ratings
90% below category average
Optimizely Content Management System
7.9
Ratings
2% above category average
WYSIWYG editor7.00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness3.10 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Admin section3.10 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Page templates1.10 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Library of website themes1.10 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design4.00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Publishing workflow1.10 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Form generator3.00 Ratings6.90 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
HCL Digital Experience
1.9
Ratings
117% below category average
Optimizely Content Management System
7.6
Ratings
3% above category average
Content taxonomy1.10 Ratings8.20 Ratings
SEO support2.10 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Bulk management2.10 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions2.10 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Community / comment management2.10 Ratings8.00 Ratings
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HCL Digital ExperienceOptimizely Content Management System
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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Enterprises
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User Ratings
HCL Digital ExperienceOptimizely Content Management System
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
5.7
(0 ratings)
9.6
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.2
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.0
(0 ratings)
6.4
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
HCL Digital ExperienceOptimizely Content Management System
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Web Content Manager is well suited for intranet employee portals, websites which drive extensive marketing content, and e-commerce sites to provide product images and details. It cannot be used a document management system to store large volumes of data as it's purely a web content management system.
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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.
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Pros
  • Well designed web content management system with clearly defined relationships between the various web content objects such as sites, site areas, authoring templates, presentation templates, library resources, components, web content objects, etc.
  • Can create robust content creation and publishing workflows with workflow stages and workflow actions
  • Web Content can be rendered on multiple devices and browsers in a responsive and adaptive manner.
Read full review
  • 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.
Read full review
Cons
  • Search is not working well. We could not get it work even we worked it with IBM support.
  • Java Applet in Ephox editor is pain. You have to watch that you update your Java version correctly or You cannot edit anything. This might work somehow on enterprise environment with tight workstation configuration. I think that Java Applet editor is the worst part of IBM WCM
  • IBM WCM needs lot of capacity on database and appserver.
Read full review
  • 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
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Likelihood to Renew
IBM products always moves forward to adapt to new requirements and technologies. I have used versions 6, 6.1, 7 and 8 of IBM WCM, and I know IBM is ready to revamp the tool based on emerging needs, and still provide the capabilities to migrate your old system to the newer versions.
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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.
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Usability
New versions has increased user experience facilitating usability.
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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.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
Unplanned outages or errors are fairly rare in our instance. And when there are issues, they're usually fixed fairly quickly
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Support Rating
We had some issues related with performing and the support was suitable and sucessful.
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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
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
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
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Implementation Rating
Implementation was successful due to Websphere application server used.
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I was not fully involved.
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Alternatives Considered
Each of the options had good points and bad points. Building a site with tight integration to HCL Commerce and SAP backend systems was just easier with HCL DX. Security is also a concern and HCL DX provided better fine-grained security across the board. HCL DX also allowed us to use multiple technologies and maintain a cohesive feel across everything.
Read full review
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.
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Return on Investment
  • Unique, easy and user friendly solution that has increased business benefits such as a single repository for all company's products. It provides a better customer service.
  • A huge network of offices managed centrally increasing SEO, marketing, business and clients.
  • Employee efficiency reducing time through a single automated solution.
  • Internal communication within the company has been helped by Web Content Manager as a way of transparency, shared repository and networking with the goal of bringing teams and colleagues together.
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  • 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
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ScreenShots

Optimizely Content Management System Screenshots

Screenshot of Content delivery: Developers can use modern GraphQL and REST APIs to query content from any source and send it to any channel or device.Screenshot of User roles and permissionsScreenshot of (SaaS CMS): Visual Builder: Add an image: Optimizely Visual Builder offers a range of editing features designed to make content creation and layout building intuitive and accessible to both technical and non-technical users. A drag-and-drop system is used to add, move, and rearrange elements within the layout, for quick and flexible content organization.Screenshot of (SaaS CMS): Visual Builder: Create an experience: Create an Experience functionality in Optimizely Visual Builder offers a code-free way to build and manage captivating digital experiences. It offers pre-built content blocks or elements (like text, images, buttons, forms, etc.) that can be positioned on the page layout as desired. Visual Builder offers extensive options to customize the appearance and behavior of these elements. Users can modify colors, fonts, sizes, animations, and even add interactive features providing flexibility in arranging content, accommodating various design needs and responsiveness across different screen sizes.Screenshot of (SaaS CMS): Visual Builder: Publish: The Visual Builder displays changes in real-time as they are made. This includes side-by-side previews for different devices like desktops, tablets, and mobiles. Before publishing, the Interactive Preview mode can be used to test elements like forms, buttons, and other interactive components to ensure they work as expected on the live site. Changes can then be published directly from the Visual Builder interface, making them instantly available to site visitors.Screenshot of the central location to manage assets, editing and publishing content.