Plone vs. Squiz Digital Experience Platform

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Plone
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Plone is a free and open source content management system built on top of the Zope application server. Plone can be used for any kind of website, including blogs, internet sites, webshops, and internal websites.N/A
Squiz Digital Experience Platform
Score 5.2 out of 10
N/A
Squiz DXP is a platform for creating websites, personalized journeys, and optimized experiences. It includes tools marketers can use – from content management, AI search, and conversational AI to personalization, forms, and integrations – to build and optimize intelligent sites.N/A
Pricing
PloneSquiz Digital Experience Platform
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
PloneSquiz Digital Experience Platform
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
PloneSquiz Digital Experience Platform
Features
PloneSquiz Digital Experience Platform
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Plone
8.0
Ratings
1% below category average
Squiz Digital Experience Platform
-
Ratings
Role-based user permissions8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Plone
8.5
Ratings
11% above category average
Squiz Digital Experience Platform
-
Ratings
API9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Plone
8.0
Ratings
4% above category average
Squiz Digital Experience Platform
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG editor8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Admin section7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Page templates10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Library of website themes8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Form generator8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Plone
7.8
Ratings
6% above category average
Squiz Digital Experience Platform
-
Ratings
Content taxonomy7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
SEO support10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Bulk management5.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Community / comment management9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
User Ratings
PloneSquiz Digital Experience Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.3
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
PloneSquiz Digital Experience Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
The larger your organization, the more appropriate Plone will be. This is not to say that Plone is a worse choice for small websites, only that the minimum investment for a Plone site is certainly higher than for other platforms. If you already use Plone for your site and are looking for a redesign or an overhaul, I would only advise switching to a different platform such as WordPress or Drupal if your organization is downsizing. For any other situation, Plone is the natural choice for your growth.
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Working with a large amount of web content where there is a need to focus on related content.
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Pros
  • Rock-solid technology stack. The python/Zope/Plone stack is as solid as anything else out there.
  • Highly customizable TTW, if needed, via the Zope Management Interface, or Diazo XSL-transform theme design.
  • Good support from core developers, lots of solid add-ons which address just about any needs.
  • Amazingly customizable workflow, permissions and security management.
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  • Speed and efficiency
  • Roles and content control
  • Related content
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Cons
  • Bullets and formatting sometimes make it difficult to add text to an existing paragraph. The 'code' button is useful in those cases, but only to those who know html.
  • Sometimes the pages don't save correctly and you use information.
  • Uploading and displaying images is a bit too much work.
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  • User Interface was good but heavy, with Java powering the backbone I recall finding this somewhat troublesome at the time.
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Likelihood to Renew
Plone has been used for more than ten years and it already has an interesting roadmap for its future. I do not know any other open source CMS with the same story of continuous evolution and security track. Interesting new features are added at each release and new modules are created continuously
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I don't work with Squiz any more so it's difficult to say, that said, the site is still running on the same CMS so obviously it's still considered a great platform
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Usability
Compared to the amount of Plone sites, users and customizations we have in our organization, the amount of support requests and training needed is really small.
The new user interface in Plone 6 is even better, it is super fast, has lots of different blocks for enhancing the page, has flexible layout system and is easy to extend with more features.
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No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
Our Plone sites are very robust. We have critical systems on Plone and we have been running sites on Plone for over 20 years with very little unexpected downtime.
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No answers on this topic
Performance
Plone is very intensive in its operations, and if not configured well it can be slow. However it is designed and built with speed in mind and with proper use of coding, templates and caching can perform extremely well under high loads. It is capable of scaling to very high load availability environments with no specific coding requirements.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
There are not too many Plone companies in the world. But the ones who are, are high level professionals
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No answers on this topic
In-Person Training
I have been participating Plone training and the trainers have always been professional. Materials were good and the instructions clear
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No answers on this topic
Online Training
Well organized, professional training with good materials and instructions
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Plone is much harder to learn then Wordpress. Development in Wordpress is learnt in day's, where development in Plone really takes years to get to the full depth. That said, once you're able to develop in Plone, is it a rock solid system, with readable code. In my experience Wordpress websites need to be updated so often, and the code feels bad organised. I have been building Wordpress websites, choosing Wordpress only when the client has almost no money. But I can never deliver the quality I want to deliver when using Wordpress. Plone does offer the possibility to deliver professional websites. As for Joomla, in the past I have done some Joomla development, but the whole CMS-paradigm could not settle in my brain. Being a web developer for over 15 years now, Joomla always felt contra-intuitive. Let alone the task of teaching this to my clients. Plone is now my only choice. It gives me a fast development-cycle, a user-friendly CMS and a rock stable and very secure system.
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Easier to work with
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Scalability
Plone has no limits. We have massive sites and can run them just fine
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • We thought that tapping into the user/content management tooling of Plone would be a good and useful thing, however it turned out to be a major pain to tie into those parts of Plone.
  • I wish we would have built the extra functionality completely outside Plone and found a way to integrate it. It would have been much easier.
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  • Having a single powerful CMS platform that would integrate a number of organisations that had recently merged - Squiz was a big part of bringing our web architecture together gracefully.
  • Increased employee efficiency
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ScreenShots

Squiz Digital Experience Platform Screenshots

Screenshot of Squiz’s visual page builder. Non-technical users can use pre-built components to spin up a page in minutes. Edit visually on the page and generate variants for A/B testing.Screenshot of the Personalization capability in Squiz’s visual page builder. Maximize user engagement by delivering tailored content to different segments of your audience.Screenshot of a library of pre-built components to implement design systems and reuse content across sites.Screenshot of Squiz’s content auditing tools that help you assess and prepare your content for AI-readiness.Screenshot of an example of a conversational search experience powered by Squiz Funnelback Search.Screenshot of Squiz’s drag-and-drop form builder.