Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)

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

January 26, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have one website www.trackersecurity.co.uk created in-house using Adobe Muse hosted on BC, we do use and integrate some of the BC modules. We don't use the Newsletter or email services.

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

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Richard Taylor

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

Adobe Business Catalyst, A Solid Mid-Level hosted CMS

Rating: 7 out of 10

Creative Director in Marketing at Links Technology Solutions (51-200 employees)

February 16, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We implement BC sites for our web design clients on a regular basis. It is used by the Web Design and Development division of our company as one of several go-to options for CMS. We also use it as the platform for our corporate website. We use or have used almost every feature in Business Catalyst in the time we have used it across 30+ client sites.

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Adobe Business Catalyst is perfect when you need to create a data driven element for a site. The Web Apps element is great and not something other hosted CMS systems have. It is also a good product when someone wants to make use of multiple modules in one place such as having your website, CRM, online store and email marketing in one place. BC is fine for small sites, but is a bit over complicated and over-priced for a basic brochure-ware type site without any dynamic features. It also does not allow enough customization for a large enterprise level site with a demanding client. As a hosted solution, it has no ability for server-side development or other customization that might be needed on a very complex custom site.

John Reitz

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

Business Catalyst Review: small to medium e-commerce businesses best option

Rating: 10 out of 10

Internet Strategist in Marketing at Thrively Digital (1-10 employees)

May 31, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

My experience with Business Catalyst includes my current role with Thrively Digital and my previous work at Alaska Railroad, though the survey structure did not allow me to indicate this. With Thrively, BC is used across the organization as a custom solution for many clients. With ARRC, I initially planned to use BC as the platform to replace an existing website.

Pros

BC has excellent integration of features that allow for end to end reporting
BC is flexible and adaptable through web apps and integrated modules
BC offers multi-level customization that can be done efficiently in several ways

Cons

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

Likelihood to Recommend

Adobe Business Catalyst (BC) is a terrific solution for small to medium businesses that are able to leverage e-commerce and seek to have an all-in-one solution. It's less of a fit for larger businesses that will soon scale or enterprise-level websites that have internal and external focus web needs greater than e-commerce.

Kristi Millsap, MBA

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

Business Catalyst in limited use scenarios

Rating: 3 out of 10

Owner in Information Technology at Intergen (1-10 employees)

May 4, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

When I first began freelancing web services I discovered Business Catalyst as a superior way to deliver a commercial web page for small businesses on a limited budget. As a web developer I know that a premium enterprise level web site is too expensive for most small companies. This includes the ongoing updates required by their developer. Business Catalyst allows template driven sites that the business owner can edit without hiring costly professionals.

Pros

The new templates have social connectivity built in which is very nice.
The Sites do a good job on newsletter templates and data tracking.
The in browser editing is a plus.
The initial cost is usually spent on a designer or content developer so the client can focus on a set up fee and then just the on going hosting. No long term fees for developers to come in and make edits.

Cons

It is SaaS, so the initial savings can seem costly if the site owner wants to redesign. It is still less costly than having a professional enterprise site built for you, but you will be limited by your budget.
It has been a while since I used it, but custom pages for businesses on Facebook was something that needed to be built by a developer and implemented.

Likelihood to Recommend

My colleagues are all web developers, so unless they knew of someone who wanted a small scale site without investing in a modern web app I would not be likely to talk about Adobe Business Catalyst with them.

Andrew Conniff

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Building Business with Business Catalyst

Rating: 10 out of 10

President in Professional Services at Oasis Grafx (1-10 employees)

May 3, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are a digital marketing/web design agency that uses Business Catalyst hosting for our web sites and sites we design for our customers. We prefer Business Catalyst over WordPress because it is more secure. B.C. web hosting plans include integrated marketing tools which can result in a savings for our customers (e.g. email campaigns ... no third party app). Adobe's technical support is excellent and the B.C. community is filled with helpful and skilled designers/developers.

Pros

Continues to upgrade/improve the platform. Moved hosting to Amazon cloud, a more secure environment. Added B.C. widgets factory to greatly enhance modules used.
BC apps are being developed by a third party (bcappstore.com). BC Gurus is a great platform for getting tutorials on how design, coding, and more. And they provide client tutorials.
Recent addition of Liquid logic on the server is the closest thing to server side programming on BC.
Great tech support.

Cons

I wish tech support would address issues with scripts, style sheets.
It would be very helpful if B.C. partners were notified about improvements, maintenance schedule, etc. instead of spending time researching.

Likelihood to Recommend

As a partner, you have the option to use B.C templates or buy B.C. templates from third parties. If you choose to custom design a site, you can use B.C. content holders and modules in the build. Quite frankly, I like to encourage potential clients to move to B.C. instead of relying on WordPress because of security and I believe B.C. sites are easier to maintain.

Nancy Sheridan

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

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

Rating: 8 out of 10

Senior javascript developer in Corporate at Target (10,001+ employees)

April 22, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I worked for a marketing company where we built websites for small to medium sized businesses. We built these websites which were generally fairly small in size but often for companies who had very few people with much in-depth computer or IT knowledge. So Adobe Business Catalyst was a great tool to rapidly create websites for these companies that fit their needs and were easy to edit while being a bit more user-friendly than some other platforms like Wordpress can be.

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Adobe Business Catalyst is an absolute rock-star for companies that want an all in one solution, who have limited budgets and/or little technical expertise. It will scale well and can grow with your company. It is more complex and more flexible than something like Wix, where your options are heavily limited, but less open than wordpress where you can use plug-ins and custom code to rebuild how anything works. So it is a nice area in the middle.

Adobe Business Catalyst would probably not be a great solution for companies who want absolute control over their website and everything in it and have highly experienced technical resources to build out whatever they need since not every area of the website or server can be modified.

Jonathan Hodak

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Business Catalyst: The Chemistry Between Designer and Client

Rating: 9 out of 10

Graphic Designer / Web Designer at Tek Systems (1-10 employees)

February 25, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I currently use Adobe Business Catalyst in my personal business in multiple roles. As I develop web sites for clients I will upload test designs to BC for their test and approval. This workflow allows me to keep control of the design until it's finally approved. After it is approved I use BC as a resellable product to offer clients. Their analytic platform as well as their online editing capabilities make a great experience for my clients.

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

I feel that Adobe Business Catalyst (BC) is best suited to small businesses and free lance designers reselling to small businesses. The whole interface is very personal and easy to use from an inexperienced perspective. This makes it a perfect platform for small business websites or even portfolio websites. Its lack of different server side protocols and languages makes it perfect for the small scale web implementation.

Dan Butler

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Adobe Business Catalyst Review From a Frequent User of Adobe BC

Rating: 10 out of 10

Web Developer in Information Technology at Web Made Easy (1-10 employees)

August 26, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We using Adobe Business Catalyst to create websites for our clients. It helps to create dynamic websites.

Pros

Webapps is superb
Liquid Code Access is great
Documentation can be found easily

Cons

Phone Support Not Available
Can't add your own SSL Certificate
Blog System is not so good.

Likelihood to Recommend

Lalit Kumar

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

From Business Catalyst to our own branded ZebraCatalyst

Rating: 9 out of 10

Web Director at ZebraGraphics (11-50 employees)

July 17, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Business Catalyst for our own company's web site and we also develop the majority of our web sites on the Business Catalyst platform. We are a small firm so we use it extensively for automating site editing, development and implementation of our client's sites. Dreamweaver templates were always cumbersome but with the Business Catalyst solution we no longer have to re-upload all affected pages. This also lets us style our navigation either within the administration or with or own CSS built for the site. The Content Holder module is probably our most used because it can hold any piece of information. We then insert the module tag where we know it is prone to being edited often. It is also very simple to teach clients how to edit parts of the site with this method. Those are only a few of the ways Business Catalyst helps us streamline our development process.

Pros

As mentioned previously, we use the Content Holder module quite often because of the ability to place any html content that is prone to being frequently edited. It simplifies the process and allows us to simplify our templates.
We also like the ease of the Photo Gallery and how simple it is to either add or remove photos from the gallery once it has been placed.
Media Downloads seems to be a very helpful resource. With its ability to be categorized both by file type and customized categories within the web site and then placed by category also helps us streamline document placement especially when there are large number of those resources to organize.
News is obviously a much needed resource and it is simple to add news items, classify them and place them on template pages where they are fed. It is one of the easiest items to teach new clients how to manage.
Web Apps is our most prized module because of the ease of creating a database, then being able to style the output in any shape form or fashion.

Cons

The Web Forms is very helpful and easy to create. Placing the forms is simple especially when inserting as a module. The problem comes after placement. It is time consuming if there are any edits that need to be made to the form. For example, if you are in the U.S., you typically do not want other countries to show up on a dropdown menu. It would be great if BC would allow you to check the countries (or states) that you want to be active. Also, often times within a web form you may want to include to separate address fields. That is not allowed unless you go back and do custom editing for the forms. "Workarounds" are typically possible but for the designer, anything that adds time to the process also cuts down on profitability.
Where we enjoy the ease of creating Photo Galleries, we also don't like the fact that you can style the output like you can within other module templates. For example, many clients would like to offer better descriptions and even style the descriptions. If displaying a photo from a art museum, you may want to give the proper title and that would include italicizing the name of the artwork.
One of our biggest pet peeves is the fact that BC only offers the European date style when displaying that dates in the modules. You should be able to check a box on which date style should be shown.
On Web Apps, almost everything is fantastic EXCEPT for the ability to sort web app items by date. If I wanted to create a calendar of events based on a web app I want to create, I would want to be able to display those items in chronological order.
The Event Module is great except the way it uses a quirky form to process payments and reserve events. It should behave more like an ecommerce solution where the form is easier to fill out, customize, submit and process.

Likelihood to Recommend

The key question to a client would be to ask if they want to be able to do their own web site site maintenance without the need of software. The added benefit of the CMS is that it also comes with the CRM, e-Mail campaign capabilities, reporting and much more.

Jeff French

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

I love Adobe Business Catalyst

Rating: 10 out of 10

Owner in Marketing at Design By Friday (1-10 employees)

July 8, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Adobe Business Catalyst to provide our clients with an all-in-one website Customer Management Solution. We have found that our clients love that they can easily edit their website, and that they can send emails through the backend. It is our highest recommended website platform to use for businesses that are looking to grow.

Pros

Web apps are a great way to create custom functionality for our client's websites that they can easily update at a later time.
The ability to duplicate websites saves a lot of productivity time.
Email Marketing through the backend and branded auto responders allow for a heightened customer experience. On top of that, these things are easy to set up.

Cons

The blog module could be improved so there is more functionality and more freedom for easy customization.
Multiple files upload into the Media Downloads module would be a great feature to have.

Likelihood to Recommend

Adobe Business Catalyst is a great platform. However, we tend to not recommend it for large blog based websites or large E-Commerce websites.

Debra Scarpa

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

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From Business Catalyst to our own branded ZebraCatalyst

Rating: 9 out of 10

Web Director at ZebraGraphics (11-50 employees)

July 17, 2015

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

As mentioned previously, we use the Content Holder module quite often because of the ability to place any html content that is prone to being frequently edited. It simplifies the process and allows us to simplify our templates.
We also like the ease of the Photo Gallery and how simple it is to either add or remove photos from the gallery once it has been placed.
Media Downloads seems to be a very helpful resource. With its ability to be categorized both by file type and customized categories within the web site and then placed by category also helps us streamline document placement especially when there are large number of those resources to organize.
News is obviously a much needed resource and it is simple to add news items, classify them and place them on template pages where they are fed. It is one of the easiest items to teach new clients how to manage.
Web Apps is our most prized module because of the ease of creating a database, then being able to style the output in any shape form or fashion.

Cons

The Web Forms is very helpful and easy to create. Placing the forms is simple especially when inserting as a module. The problem comes after placement. It is time consuming if there are any edits that need to be made to the form. For example, if you are in the U.S., you typically do not want other countries to show up on a dropdown menu. It would be great if BC would allow you to check the countries (or states) that you want to be active. Also, often times within a web form you may want to include to separate address fields. That is not allowed unless you go back and do custom editing for the forms. "Workarounds" are typically possible but for the designer, anything that adds time to the process also cuts down on profitability.
Where we enjoy the ease of creating Photo Galleries, we also don't like the fact that you can style the output like you can within other module templates. For example, many clients would like to offer better descriptions and even style the descriptions. If displaying a photo from a art museum, you may want to give the proper title and that would include italicizing the name of the artwork.
One of our biggest pet peeves is the fact that BC only offers the European date style when displaying that dates in the modules. You should be able to check a box on which date style should be shown.
On Web Apps, almost everything is fantastic EXCEPT for the ability to sort web app items by date. If I wanted to create a calendar of events based on a web app I want to create, I would want to be able to display those items in chronological order.
The Event Module is great except the way it uses a quirky form to process payments and reserve events. It should behave more like an ecommerce solution where the form is easier to fill out, customize, submit and process.

Likelihood to Recommend

Jeff French

Vetted Review