Adobe Experience Manager vs Contentful comparison

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Adobe Experience Manager

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Adobe Experience Manager and Contentful based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Web Content Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Adobe Experience Manager vs. Contentful Report (Updated: June 2026).

Adobe Experience Manager vs. Contentful

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Helped 900,644 peers since 2012

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 Web Content Management

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Enterprise Content Management (3rd), Enterprise Social Software (4th), Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) (1st)

Contentful

Ranking in Web Content Management

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Web Content Management category, the mindshare of Adobe Experience Manager is 8.6%, down from 11.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Contentful is 1.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Content Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Adobe Experience Manager	8.6%
Contentful	1.3%
Other	90.1%

Web Content Management

Featured Reviews

Hilax Chamberlain

Digital Marketing Manager at Ford Motor Company

Centralized content management has unified our digital channels and delivers consistent experiences

Adobe Experience Manager offers enterprise-level digital assets management and very robust customization, brand value consistency, and omnichannel delivery. It saves development and maintenance time. The digital asset management and omnichannel delivery features have benefited my team by managing our digital assets, ensuring brand consistency, and enabling us to deliver customized content easily to our clients. Organizing and obtaining information from results is beneficial. Strengthening our online experience as a brand is valuable. Easy integration with other Adobe services improves productivity and provides a smooth experience. Adobe Experience Manager has positively impacted my organization by enabling component and page reuse, which reduces application size. It saves manual effort for maintaining all applications, improves traffic, and ensures consistency across all our applications. It provides better security, scalability, and makes our applications more robust.

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Margaret Thatcher

Production Manager at Unilever

Content workflows have become faster and empower non-technical teams to update pages independently

Contentful makes it easier for non-technical teams to update content by providing organized, flexible data models with support for a variety of data types and content editors such as WYSIWYG form fields and raw text areas. It has great built-in versioning features with history and draft states, so it is easy to make updates and revert when needed. Some of the best features that Contentful offers include organized, flexible data models with support for a variety of data types and content editors such as WYSIWYG form fields and raw text. Contentful has great built-in versioning features with history and draft states, making it easy to make updates and revert when needed. Additionally, it has a very intuitive user interface and good support for multiple spaces, which can be helpful for companies that need separate projects for development, staging, and production. It is also very cost-effective and powerful, and it keeps a history of changes made to the content easily. The versioning and multiple spaces features of Contentful have helped my team manage content effectively, as we leverage Contentful's headless CMS capabilities to easily build a static website using modern technology such as GatsbyJS and ReactJS, making it an ideal solution for small businesses and startups seeking a low-maintenance approach. It is a very scalable tool. Contentful has positively impacted my organization as it is very scalable, can be used by any size of organization, and is a very cost-effective tool. It helps us save cost, especially when dealing with a lot of content compared to other alternatives. Its intuitive design facilitates seamless updates of photos and written content while providing the ability to revert changes when necessary. It has been a very good tool because I am able to spend less time maintaining websites, and my clients spend less time worrying about their site crashing or being hacked. This tool has allowed me to be much more flexible with the types of front-end technology I can use. Since it is very easy to use for all types of technical users, there is no time wasted. It enabled rapid project delivery and low-cost projects for my organization. Since adopting Contentful, we have seen an increase in sales and marketing from 45% to 65%. More work is delivered due to reusability and other features within a shorter time and with less manual effort.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"If you want to use content in a mobile application and you want the content in some other application, you can simply expose it from the CMS to different clients or different systems. It's easy. On top of that, the technology underlying AEM is open-source and is very powerful like Apache Sling and JCR."

"I think DAM (Digital Asset Management) is most valuable to me; the data is increasing, and in order to manage millions of assets which a large enterprise has, it provides lots of capabilities (searching, reporting, managing, workflows for automation, etc.)."

"The integration of customer behavior and website setup is impressive."

"Adobe Experience Manager is one of the best enterprise-level content management and digital experience platforms available."

"It is easy to learn. You don't need to be an advanced Java developer."

"I believe that the primary feature of the product is the ability and extent to which it allows authors to modify, build and operate their website, page components, etc. that otherwise would require a lot more of developer work."

"Over the past two to three years, the organization has grown rapidly with Adobe Experience Manager as a best and supportive tool."

More Adobe Experience Manager pros

"Contentful has impacted my organization positively as I spend less time maintaining our website, the developer spends less time maintaining our website, and our clients spend less time worrying about their site being hacked or crashing."

"I have definitely seen a positive return on investment with Contentful, due to time-saving and efficiency gains, team collaborations, and resource optimizations, which have also positively impacted the revenue."

"Contentful has positively impacted my organization by facilitating faster campaigns for marketing content, reducing the dev workload, and shortening the time to market, with no hard-coding of content, a clean API-based architecture, and reusable components."

"Contentful has positively impacted my organization as it has been a major breakthrough."

"I advise using Contentful as the first option because it is scalable and stable with all features included."

"Contentful has helped serve clients better by allowing campaigns to be launched quickly and pages to be developed rapidly, enabling focus on the structure of the page while putting the content on Contentful, which reduces the time to make the page live."

"Contentful has impacted my organization positively because it is the best headless CMS, and it is very useful for my organization."

"Since adopting Contentful, we have seen an increase in sales and marketing from 45% to 65%."

Cons

"Because of the improvement needed with the client-side framework and because page loading takes time, I rate Adobe Experience Manager at seven out of ten."

"The licensing model is opaque, and technical support could be improved, especially for smaller companies."

"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 licensing plus implementation and maintenance cost is very expensive, making it not suitable for small organizations, and the setup is very complex."

"The UI for handling complex logic, especially in forms, could be more intuitive, and debugging issues is not always straightforward and could be simplified."

"The solution's pricing and stability could be improved."

"Bug troubleshooting is challenging and requires developer expertise."

"Very very poor."

More Adobe Experience Manager cons

"Contentful needs to be improved for migration, not only for migration, but from lower to higher environments as well, as the schema diffs and everything are not working as expected."

"However, I find that the licensing can be frustrating, especially for smaller organizations."

"There was no return on investment. It was very expensive to implement all the needed specialties a company needs for its public publish strategy, to publish the content in different countries, different markets, and different languages."

"One area where I believe Contentful can be improved is better handling of complex content relationships, as when content is deeply nested with references inside references, the queries can get messy and hard to manage on the front end."

"Contentful has not helped my organization or our customers achieve any measurable benefits, such as saving time or improving workflows, as we have not measured that."

"I have seen a return on investment with fewer employees needed and time saved, but the money costs are quite high."

"There were challenges because when I was creating a solution, I didn't know Contentful very well. I found a lot of problems with types and matching in TypeScript types with the fields I was using and with the API and the full module."

"Contentful could be improved in the following ways. It would be much easier if I could move data from one environment to another without any CLI tools."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Users have to pay a yearly licensing fee to use the solution, which is highly-priced."

"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."

"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."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Construction Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

Media Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	24

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	17

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Adobe Experience Manager?

One common challenge that I have heard of is that Adobe Experience Manager can feel complex and resource-intensive during implementation, especially for organizations without strong technical or Ad...

What is your primary use case for Adobe Experience Manager?

I personally have not used Adobe Experience Manager, but I have observed a retail client that uses Adobe Experience Manager to manage their personalized website content, and while they use MoEngage...

What advice do you have for others considering Adobe Experience Manager?

Adobe Experience Manager should be evaluated as a long-term digital experience platform rather than just a CMS. It delivers the most value for organizations that need personalization, multi-channel...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Contentful?

Setup cost and pricing are handled by our organization's admin team. Currently, I do not have much information on this.

What needs improvement with Contentful?

I wish Contentful would provide a better feature for publishing all content entries at once. Additionally, if any validation errors occur, handling them in a better way would be beneficial. Changin...

What is your primary use case for Contentful?

I am Niketan Naidu, working at LTIM, and I am using Contentful for our content management system and website. I have been using Contentful for three years, and it has been excellent work. We use Co...

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Product Reports

Adobe Experience Manager

Download Adobe Experience Manager product report

Download Contentful product report

Also Known As

Adobe Day CQ5, Ektron Social Marketing, Episerver Content Cloud, Adobe CQ5

No data available

Overview

Adobe Experience Manager offers powerful content and digital asset management capabilities, allowing users to streamline content replication and integrate with tools like Adobe Target and Analytics.

Adobe Experience Manager is a comprehensive platform used for content management, website development, and digital asset management. It allows marketers to efficiently manage and publish content without needing extensive coding knowledge, enhancing operational efficiency through integration with Adobe Target and Analytics. The platform supports omnichannel distribution and multi-site management, leveraging experience fragments to replicate content seamlessly across platforms. Users appreciate the platform for its scalability and robust personalization features, improving collaboration and reducing overall costs.

What are Adobe Experience Manager's Key Features?

Content Management: Offers intuitive tools for creating, managing, and publishing content across digital channels.
Digital Asset Management: Centralizes asset management to streamline content reuse and improve consistency.
Experience Fragments: Enables content replication across multiple channels for seamless user experiences.
Integration: Enhances efficiency by integrating with marketing tools like Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target.
Omnichannel Support: Provides consistent messaging and branding across different platforms and devices.

Which Benefits and ROI Should Users Consider?

Improved Collaboration: Facilitates teamwork through component reuse and workflow automation.
Cost Reduction: Reduces expenses through efficient multi-site management and content repurposing.
Scalability: Supports growing business needs with scalable content solutions.
Personalization: Delivers personalized user experiences enhancing customer engagement.
Analytics Integration: Offers valuable insights into customer interactions, improving strategic decisions.

Organizations within industries like retail, healthcare, and finance utilize Adobe Experience Manager to develop tailored digital experiences, efficiently managing websites and assets for better customer engagement. Retailers use it to deliver personalized promotions, while healthcare providers enhance patient information access. In finance, it ensures compliance and manages customer communications effectively.

Adobe

Contentful is a modern content management platform known for its reusable components, easy integration, and flexible content modeling. It enables content management across multiple platforms quickly and efficiently.

Contentful’s API-first architecture and Rich Text editor offer seamless content management for different platforms, enhancing productivity by minimizing coding efforts and allowing non-technical individuals to update content effortlessly. It supports diverse needs like content preview, localization, and scalability, which accelerates deployment and reduces costs. The intuitive interface facilitates rapid project delivery with minimal overhead.

What are Contentful's most important features?

Reusable Components: Facilitate consistency and efficiency in content creation.
API-First Architecture: Allows seamless integration across platforms.
Rich Text Editor: Simplifies content management with advanced editing capabilities.
Content Preview: Enhances content accuracy and workflow efficiency.
Localization Support: Facilitates content localization across regions.
Scalable Architecture: Supports growing business needs and rapid deployment.

What benefits and ROI can users expect from Contentful?

Improved Workflow: Streamlines operations, saving time and reducing bottlenecks.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces development expenses with faster deployment.
Enhanced Flexibility: Allows adaptable content types for dynamic content creation.
Ease of Use: Non-technical teams can manage content with minimal learning curve.
Rapid Project Delivery: Supports agile methodologies, minimizing project timelines.

Contentful is extensively used for storing, managing, and retrieving content for web and mobile applications. Businesses utilize APIs and GraphQL to decouple content from presentation layers, driving dynamic websites and applications. It integrates effortlessly with other platforms, offering seamless access to non-technical teams, and supports diverse applications like documentation, marketing, and internal data management. Contentful’s adaptability with content types allows quick page creation and content updates across different projects and clients.

Sample Customers

Metra

Information Not Available

Adobe Experience Manager vs. Contentful