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Adobe Experience Manager vs Alfresco comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Adobe Experience Manager
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Web Content Management (2nd), Enterprise Social Software (5th), Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) (1st)
Alfresco
Ranking in Enterprise Content Management
9th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Document Management Software (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Enterprise Content Management category, the mindshare of Adobe Experience Manager is 3.0%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Alfresco is 7.7%, down from 7.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Content Management
 

Featured Reviews

Thomas Becker - PeerSpot reviewer
Impressive integration of customer behavior with an easy setup and okay support
I've worked with all major content management systems. Currently, I work with the leaders such as Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore, and Acquia Working with big companies, I help them either consider setting up a new content management system or address issues they might have with their existing…
Karthi Keyan - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlining document management with enhanced digitalization features needed
We used Alfresco as a document management system for automating and digitizing manual forms. Those were the main use cases The digitalization of workflow, forms, operations, and business processes has improved our organization. The most valuable features of Alfresco include its integration with…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The integration of customer behavior and website setup is impressive."
"Adobe Experience Manager is a content management system, and we use it to create and manage a website."
"Adobe Experience Manager is quite a powerful product that you can use to design files and export them."
"I like the profiling and segmentation."
"I've used several CMS tools, but Adobe Experience Manager is feature-rich, especially for web security and content management. It's more efficient to manage content on Adobe Experience Manager, and you can do a lot with it, such as updating content at any time, and on any platform, even from mobile or tablet. Adobe Experience Manager is still getting updated daily, and it's the best CMS tool in the market for me. I like that you can manage assets in Adobe Experience Manager. I also like that the solution has an analytics dashboard that shows you where the traffic comes from, how many clicks come from a specific location, the number of clicks and impressions, etc. Adobe Experience Manager can be accessed by other teams, for example, the digital media department of my company, so the solution can be used and updated per each team's requirement. Adobe Experience Manager is more than just a web developer tool, as it also allows visibility tracking and has other uses. I also like that the GUI for Adobe Experience Manager is straightforward and catchy. It has separate folders and icons, so using Adobe Experience Manager isn't tough. The solution is straightforward to use and handle."
"The most valuable features of Adobe Experience Manager include its capability to manage content and create reusable fragments."
"The integration of customer behavior and website setup is impressive."
"Easy to work with the solution."
"Document repository."
"I like the ease of use, sections, and calendar."
"The most valuable feature is the flexibility of the searching elements of the metadata."
"The product allows engineering teams and developers to introduce new things in a seamless and easy way."
"The digitalization of workflow, forms, operations, and business processes is also significant."
"You can meet your users' expected features without having Alfresco's involvement."
"The most valuable features of Alfresco include its integration with the scanning solution, the ability to search, and the capability to store and index to capture metadata."
"Alfresco allows broad searches with many index fields that you can search on, although the created fields and their values may not be intuitive."
 

Cons

"A little bit of background knowledge of coding and website structure is required."
"Adobe Experience Manager's pricing could be improved."
"The solution's pricing and stability could be improved."
"Tool-wise, the Adobe Experience Manager support team is not very responsive when the user face issues in AEM as a Cloud Service."
"The licenses are very expensive."
"Programming model could be improved, it's a monolithic solution."
"Adobe Experience Manager could improve by allowing the reuse of components like a progress bar across multiple pages to make the development process more efficient."
"The latest trend is to render everything in the client-side framework. For example, SPA or single page application. This is a feature that needs improvement. The cloud deployment pipeline needs to be improved as well."
"If you don't have proper governance, things can go wrong. You have to make rules, such as one folder should not have more than 5,000 subfolders or children."
"Currently, documents in Alfresco are stored on a file server, which, while good for performance, is a security risk."
"Metadata, auto class, disposition log, and legal hold."
"Alfresco could improve workflow digitalization and enhance artificial intelligence capabilities."
"I would like them to consider document capture functionality."
"Alfresco has a very steep learning curve, and unfortunately, during the learning process, it's very easy to make errors, which often are unforgiving."
"The setup process for Alfresco was complex."
"I think the presentation layer could be improved - currently, it's too complex, and there are too many features cluttered all over the screen."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's really costly."
"There's a free trial for one month for Adobe Experience Manager, which you can use for learning purposes, then, after the trial period, you'll need to purchase the license. Adobe offers a few plans for Adobe Experience Manager, but I'm unaware of how much my company is paying."
"It's a costly solution. I would rate the price at two out of five on a scale from one to five, where one is the most expensive and five is the most competitive."
"Users have to pay a yearly licensing fee to use the solution, which is highly-priced."
"There are costs for any upgrade or additional functions."
"The license for Alfresco is expensive - not the maximum, but close. There are also extra costs once you start building integrations, as implementation seems to be very costly."
"It is cheaper compared to head-to-head competitors."
"If you buy Alfresco through a partner, there is usually a OEM licensing option."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
19%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Adobe Experience Manager?
It is easy to learn. You don't need to be an advanced Java developer.
What needs improvement with Adobe Experience Manager?
The content is created as Adobe Experience Manager has an author, publisher, and dispatcher. However, there is a feature missing where if content is created on the UAT environment and needs to be t...
What is your primary use case for Adobe Experience Manager?
We are working on digital experience platforms such as Adobe Experience Manager or Sitefinity. It's for powering their customer-facing website, not the transaction portal, but the brochureware port...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alfresco?
The pricing of Alfresco starts at $100,000, which can be expensive for small projects. There is often a transition from the community version to the licensed version, which incurs migration costs. ...
What needs improvement with Alfresco?
Currently, documents in Alfresco are stored on a file server, which, while good for performance, is a security risk. Clients, especially large enterprises such as banks, are concerned about documen...
What is your primary use case for Alfresco?
Mostly, the primary use case is to store documents related to transactions in our company. These documents could be signed documents, invoices, purchase orders, etc. While transaction records are s...
 

Also Known As

Adobe Day CQ5, Ektron Social Marketing, Episerver Content Cloud
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Metra
Over 1,300 companies from 180 different countries. Including EuroStar, Saks Fifth Avenue, NASA Langley Research Center, and KLM.
Find out what your peers are saying about Adobe Experience Manager vs. Alfresco and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.