dotCMS is one of the best open-source alternatives for companies considering Adobe AEM. Due to its hybrid architecture and extensive APIs, dotCMS gives both marketers and developers the flexibility to build amazing user experience at scale.
Adobe’s AEM product is a robust tool that helps manage digital experiences. However, its monolithic nature makes it expensive and unwieldy. It offers smart automation tools, solid development tools, and cloud hosting to deliver content across multiple digital channels but includes them all in one platform.
As such, AEM is often described as an all-in-one solution suite CMS. It comes ready to cater to you and help you work on multiple areas of your digital presence using the same software. While this sounds appealing, AEM has a few problems highlighting a major issue with the software suite: a lack of flexibility.
Meanwhile, dotCMS has been touted as an easy-to-use hybrid CMS that caters to content editors and developers equally with frequent releases that make maintenance a non-issue.
If there is something users dislike about Adobe AEM, it can be too much to handle for novice or non-technical users. On the other hand, due to its hybrid nature, LowCode and NoCode tooling features, dotCMS is ideal for dynamic startups, mid-sized businesses, and large organizations across different industries. dotCMS empowers non-technical users and content editors to build digital experiences for employees and customers alike without the help of IT teams.
According to reviewers from G2 and Capterra, once you grasp Adobe AEM — which is difficult in itself, customizing it to fit your particular workflow can prove a task on its own. dotCMS allows for thorough customization and enables technical and non-technical users to build features and extend its functionalities.
Adobe is a leader in the digital publishing space and prices its AEM product accordingly. As a massive suite of tools, starting costs are high and can quickly escalate into seven figures. With AEM you not only pay more for the product (including features you may not need), you pay more to deploy and maintain it. dotCMS offers one of the most cost-effective hybrid CMS options on the market, including a totally free open-source Community Edition.
Side-by-side comparison of dotCMS vs. Adobe AEM based on preference data from user reviews.
dotCMS (62 Reviews) | Adobe AEM (135 Reviews) | |
---|---|---|
Meets Requirements |
8.2
Responses: 50
|
7.9
Responses: 112
|
Ease of Use |
7.8
Responses: 50
|
7.1
Responses: 113
|
Ease of Setup |
6.8
Responses: 35
|
6.4
Responses: 33
|
Ease of Admin |
7.9
Responses: 35
|
6.4
Responses: 35
|
Quality of Support |
8.4
Responses: 49
|
7.0
Responses: 96
|
Ease of Doing Business With |
8.7
Responses: 35
|
7.1
Responses: 32
|
Product Direction |
7.9
Responses: 45
|
6.3
Responses: 108
|
Enterprise Scalability |
8.6
Responses: 35
|
8.1
Responses: 65
|
TELUS, the Canadian telecommunications giant, chose dotCMS to host its intranet and employee portal. Their previous intranet, a legacy system, couldn’t keep up with the ever-growing needs of TELUS and its subsidiaries, which called for a new intranet solution that could support a growing enterprise.
Thanks to dotCMS, TELUS strengthened its business's employee experience and gave employees of different stores and subsidiaries across Canada quick access to customer data, marketing and training materials in multiple formats and languages.