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Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)

Score8.9 out of 10

64 Reviews and Ratings

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What is Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)?

Adobe Business Catalyst was a cloud-hosted system for building and managing web content and online stores with a built-in CRM framework in addition to sales, service, and marketing features including eCommerce and Email Marketing tools. It has been end of life (EOL) since 2020.

Categories & Use Cases

Key Features

Learn about the best (and worst!) features Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued) has to offer, as determined by TrustRadius' reviewers.
Based on 64 ratings of Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)'s features
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Top Performing Features

  • API

    An API (application programming interface) provides a standard programming interface for connecting third-party systems to the software for data creation, access, updating and/or deletion.

    Category average: 8

Areas for Improvement

Reviews

What users are saying about Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued).
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If only Adobe BC accounts could stop charging for unwanted services - Be careful No BC Refund Policy Exisits !

Richard TaylorView profile
Managing Director in Corporate at Automatrics Limited (1-10 employees employees)

Pros

  • Server Uptime is good
  • Online Chat is good
  • Security is good
  • Technical Service is good

Cons

  • If a customer has a query they don't listen to the customer they just look at ways to hide behind BC company policy. In the UK if a customer changes a subscription plan by law they have a 14 day cooling off period. BC doesn't allow a plan to be changed once it’s been upgraded even if this is within a 24 hour period. I understand that BC having to comply with international law is not going to happen and that's not what a customer would expect. But what I do expect is for their accounts department to actually consider and review a customer’s requests or simple error's made without just quoting company policy.
  • In my case, I noticed our website was being tagged as NOT SECURE in Google Chrome Browser. I knew BC didn't offer SSL when I tried it a few years back but that I would check to see if they added that service. Sure enough, they added SSL certificates last summer, that’s was great news. So I read that SSL only came with the Platinum Service Plan and upgraded at a cost of $264.13 . Then a few minutes later I noticed that actually, I could have purchased the SSL on my current Web commerce plan (Gold Plan) for just $80. Within 24 hours I requested the upgrade be canceled and to just add SSL to my current plan. After all, we didn’t need a Platinum plan for our needs we only needed the SSL certification. The accounting department said this was not allowed or possible due to their cancellation policy of NO REFUNDS. They even suggested I could change back to GOLD service in the summer and then pay another $80 to add the SSL that would be lost. This is not the service I would expect. In strict comparison and contrast to our domain is hosted with GoDaddy and they will allow customers to change service policy at any time and they always Pro Rata any billing need meaning the customer is never charged for a service they don't want at that time.
  • When a customer upgrades a service it should be upgraded for 12 months from the upgrade date. The old service remaining credit should be deducted from the new service subscription and BC should clearly display the upgrade price for the next 12 months. The customer should be given the opportunity to review the service cancellation policy before checking a check-box and then processing the order.
  • BC fail to communicate important service upgrades such as SSL certification added last year. Someone could have called me on that emails get lost these days so what’s wrong with a plan good old fashioned phone call
  • BC has changed their service plan names, that's not a problem in itself providing its communicated to the customer and that it is 100% adopted across all media platforms, user portal and billing etc. The WebCommerce Plan is also the Gold Plan and I was not aware of that so found it very confusing.
  • When upgrading a service plan BC should provide pop up windows to highlight the company cancellation policy which is good standard practice

Return on Investment

  • We do'nt have to worry about the website uptime and maintainence which means 100% avalibility to our customer to improvove our ROI
  • We only want to pay for services that we use and the problem with bundled package services is that you can end up paying for more servicves than you need or use. whats wrong with given customers a service tick box and then providing them a price for what they are going to use rather than lots of unused services that reduce ROI
  • We could have improved our ROI 7 months ago had we know about BC SSL certification upgrade, which improves SEO to improve our internet search results

Other Software Used

Adobe Illustrator CC, Adobe Photoshop, Google Analytics

Adobe Business Catalyst, A Solid Mid-Level hosted CMS

Incentivized
John ReitzView profile
Creative Director in Marketing at Links Technology Solutions (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

  • 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.

Cons

  • There is a lot of documentation out there, but much of it is out of date or lacking in detail or specificity.
  • The biggest weakness of BC is its support. While the chat feature is good, it has long hold times and staff that is not knowledgeable about the product. I doubt anyone in support has ever even built a site with Business Catalyst before. They need US support centers with actual designers or developers who would be able actually help. It seems like 50% of our support questions should be easy but end up being escalated as a "not for the development team" or never answered.
  • The Admin UI could be more intuitive and the In-Content Editing is very difficult to actually use in practice with a novice client.

Return on Investment

  • As someone who uses it on behalf of other clients, our ROI with BC is definitely positive. We needed a mid-range CMS without huge licensing costs to satisfy mid-range clients who have some dynamic needs but doesn't need the expense or liability of enterprise level products. Without it we would have lost possible customers or taken bigger hits on projects because of the costs involved with satisfying their mid-level needs
  • Our clients are all usually very positive about the BC platform and are able to use it themselves which lessens our Support time/cost.
  • To use the Web App element,. which we do on almost every site, you need to pay for the highest plan. This brings along with it many features most of our clients would never use. A more basic plan with that Web App capability would be a big improvement on our costs.

Alternatives Considered

LightCMS, Evoq Content, WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Drupal and DNN Platform

Other Software Used

LightCMS, Evoq Content, Trello, Freshdesk

Adobe Business Catalyst and why it is the solution for most small businesses

Incentivized
Jonathan HodakView profile
Senior javascript developer in Corporate at Target (10,001+ employees employees)

Pros

  • Probably one of the easiest e-commerce platforms to work in, it does take setup, but compared to a lot of other e-commerce solutions, this is probably the best one that I have seen that can be designed and implemented custom.
  • Their template system works very well and allows you to create and re-use templates across Adobe Business Catalyst.
  • Their pre-built modules are great, giving people a great way to use common web elements without having to use a plug-in or find some solution, it is simply built in and generally works exactly as you would expect.
  • Adobe Business Catalyst is more of an all-around solution, providing elements that most smaller companies would have a hard time figuring out, since it includes the ability to build websites, send and track e-mails, analytics. It really is a powerful tool that would typically require a fair amount of coding knowledge and expertise but with the system already built, it can be easily modified and edited by those with limited or no coding knowledge at all.

Cons

  • They do not have the ability to create and build custom plug-ins for use on websites.
  • They do not support every payment gateway, they support the major ones, and most others, but if you have some very unusual payment gateway, it might not be supported.
  • The custom web apps were absolutely one of my favorite parts of this system, and it is really a shame that they do not allow them to be used on all tiers of the website, you have to get the web commerce tier to edit and use them.

Return on Investment

  • Adobe Business Catalyst really allowed the marketing company that I worked for to help manage a fair number of websites for different clients easily. The platform took some time to get up and running and get used to, but after that it was very nice to manage everything in one place, so it definitely increased efficiency and speed of website building.
  • Adobe Business Catalyst also has good support as well as having a lot of white-label training videos to help train non-technical users how to access their website and get data such as analytics and even edit parts of their website without needing to constantly ask someone else to do it for them.
  • Adobe Business Catalyst is a little less popular than other options like Drupal, Wordpress and Joomla, therefore getting into it and getting started can be a bit of a learning curve.
  • Adobe Business Catalyst allows you to charge your clients for their websites from inside the managing tools, and allows you to set your own prices and white label everything which is extremely nice!

Other Software Used

WordPress, ion interactive, Pardot, Optimizely, Visual Website Optimizer

Business Catalyst: The Chemistry Between Designer and Client

Incentivized
Dan ButlerView profile
Graphic Designer / Web Designer at Tek Systems (1-10 employees employees)

Pros

  • Analytics: I am able to see on multiple levels traffic, clicks, and most importantly search terms for improving SEO. The reports are easy to generate as well as read, especially for small inexperienced business owners.
  • Marketing: When using the BC platform businesses are able to link up easily with Adobe Marketing to automatically send out emails and newsletters. Its a very smooth and painless process.
  • Online Editing: This is probably the best part of BC. Once a design is approved and launched on the platform, my clients do not have to contact me for small content updates. This frees me up as a small business owner to concentrate on design, new clients, and larger projects for existing clients.

Cons

  • Multi Client Management: The dashboard for managing multiple clients as a reseller is a little difficult to get to. There is also no very easy way for me to manage multiple clients at once. I have to log into and out of individual client accounts to do billing or management.
  • Lack of Server support: There are certain server protocols and languages that are not supported using BC. For example I cannot build a custom php database and upload to BC. I am required to use their tools.

Return on Investment

  • The biggest returns I have seen come from using BC as an individual product in my offerings. I see that it is also growing as a product and Adobe is growing it as a lead generation platform.
  • The second biggest positive impact to my business comes from the time saved in development. My target demographic is small to medium sized businesses and BC is perfect for marketing to this demographic.
  • My biggest complaint is that there is a lack of server side customization. When clients ask me if a certain type of website or application can be done I automatically know that I cannot put that site on the BC platform.

Other Software Used

Adobe Photoshop

Usability