Adobe Experience Manager vs Drupal vs Liferay Digital Experience Platform comparison

Liferay Digital Experience ...

Read 37 Drupal reviews

925 Views
440 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Read 44 Liferay Digital Experience Platform reviews

1,159 Views
505 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Adobe Experience Manager

Liferay Digital Experience ...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Adobe Experience Manager, Drupal, and Liferay Digital Experience Platform based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Adobe, Wordpress and others in Web Content Management.

To learn more, read our detailed Web Content Management Report (Updated: June 2025).

Web Content Management

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Helped 857,162 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:

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Web Content Management category, the mindshare of Adobe Experience Manager is 12.9%, down from 13.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Drupal is 6.6%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Liferay Digital Experience Platform is 8.7%, up from 8.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Content Management

Featured Reviews

Thomas Becker

Managing Partner(Austria) at a integrator with 11-50 employees

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…

A good product that helps me to manage complex digital solutions

it_user982032

Owner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

My advice to others would be that Drupal is not only a CMS, you need to learn the Drupal fundamentals before to start the project. Drupal is a handy tool whenever you work on a digital infrastructure broad project and not only a simple website. So if you have a big project, you can use Drupal. But if you have a small website, like a blog or simple website, my advice would be not to use Drupal, because Drupal is too complex and the cost to maintain the platform can be too high, related to the value of your website, for example. If you have a website with a big product catalog, for example, in many languages and in many countries in the world, then Drupal is good. But if you have a simple website, like a portfolio or five page-website, you can use many other technologies that'd be simple to maintain and implement. On a scale from one to 10, I will rate Drupal an eight. In the next release, I would like to see basic page buttons and better integration with the analytics platform. A drag and drop function to create simple pages will also be handy. For example, if a customer wants to create a landing page, it should be easy for him or her to do so. I would also like to see better translation management.

Offers integration capabilities that are very easy to use

Bhavin Panchani

Chief Executive Officer at IGNEK

My company has 20 people who work on the product. I know that my company has around seven customers who use the tool. I recommend the product depending on the use cases of the person who wants to buy it. If your use case is to develop a public site, customer portal, self-service, or intranet, I would say that you should go for the Liferay Digital Experience Platform. If your use cases are related to e-commerce, you need to evaluate your use cases against Liferay Digital Experience Platform, and you can use it if you find it to be a good fit. Otherwise, you should search for other platforms.

More Adobe Experience Manager pros

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."

"Easy to work with the solution."

"It's a complete package. You don't need to look elsewhere for digital marketing."

"I like the native applications such as Adobe Target, Adobe Analytics, and Adobe Experience Platform. Because of these, it's very easy to connect and obtain reports on how my website is doing, how many have visited it, how frequently, etc. The multiple publisher concept is one of the best parts of this solution."

"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."

"Adobe Experience Manager is a content management system, and we use it to create and manage a website."

"I like the profiling and segmentation."

"The most valuable features of Adobe Experience Manager include its capability to manage content and create reusable fragments."

"We use a part of the solution called Acquia. The personalization portion of this is the most valuable aspect fo the solution."

"The feature I find most valuable is that Drupal is a framework and not only a CMS."

"You can build websites on it very quickly."

"It is good for big projects."

"It allows us to arrange and develop new ideas, then incorporate them into the portal. We can create a one stop information center, so people can access the information from one window."

"The solution is easy to install."

"We chose Liferay because it is open-source and that we can make any number of users apply, register into the system and use the system, as opposed to other solutions where the cost is based on user licenses. This is one of the most attractive features."

"The web/mobile/portal integration was one of the features that we found most valuable, primarily because it reduced our development time."

"The look and feel and the user interface are great."

"I think that it could be interesting to expand the eCommerce capabilities to the B2C sector."

"Manageability is very good and probably the most valuable part of a tool of this type. There is a little more of a learning curve than you have with a simple tool, but a business user can learn to manage the system as an administrator very easily."

"The integration capabilities of the product are super easy to use."

Cons

"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."

"I haven't seen any areas for improvement in Adobe Experience Manager as it's a full-fledged CMS tool, and Adobe is already working on enhancements for the solution. Adobe is working to make Adobe Experience Manager more valuable and easier to use for any user, even non-technical ones, through multiple components and templates. Day by day, Adobe provides the latest update to Adobe Experience Manager, and if my team needs any particular change, it just needs to be reported to the Adobe team. As Adobe Experience Manager has a broad scope and a lot of use cases and features, it's a solution that requires some time and effort from you in terms of learning, especially if you're implementing it for different clients, which could be an area for improvement."

"Adobe's technical support is so-so."

"Tool-wise, the Adobe Experience Manager support team is not very responsive when the user face issues in AEM as a Cloud Service."

"A little bit of background knowledge of coding and website structure is required."

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

"There is a feature missing where if content is created on the UAT environment and needs to be transferred or synced to the production environment, there is no direct way of doing the sync."

"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."

More Adobe Experience Manager cons

"Digital experience features like target, segmentation, and campaign management have a long way to go."

"I think the support needs to improve, as well as the integration with tracking and analytics systems."

"It is a little bit simplified."

"The user experience in designing layouts should be much easier or much more helpful."

"The documentation provided needs to be more detailed. It's sometimes hard to develop things because the documentation is so sparse."

"The plugins should be more affordable."

"It could have better built-in integration with a wider variety of extensions out-of-the-box."

"The integration and configuration need to be simplified."

"Social area and capabilities need improvement."

"It could be improved in terms of adding filters to some of the rules. Therefore, you can retain how long a document would need to stay in an archive."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 really costly."

"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."

"I would like to see better pricing."

"The product is neither cheap nor expensive. What Liferay Digital Experience Platform offers at its current price can be considered something that is worth the money."

"It is a bit expensive."

"Licensing costs can be very expensive."

"Their pricing model should be modified to include per user options instead of just servers/cores, etc."

"It's an open-source structure. Other costs are for professional services to integrate Liferay to other existing systems."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Content Management solutions are best for your needs.

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857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user8925

Developer with 51-200 employees

Aug 23, 2013

Jive vs Sharepoint vs Drupal Commons

At Mediacurrent we often get requests to compare Drupal to other platforms used for intranet sites and social business platforms (like https://dev.twitter.com/ for example). This is often referred to as “Social Business Software”, which has grown in popularity in recent years. I decided to do a…

What do you like most about Adobe Experience Manager?

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

23%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

17%

Manufacturing Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

15%

Educational Organization

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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 feat...

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 thei...

What is the best feature of Liferay?

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

A tricky question because it'd depend on what your focus will be on Liferay as a digital experience platform. I mean...

Is Liferay suitable for complete beginners?

A non-developer here, and frankly, a little bit of a tech beginner in general. My company branched out into digital e...

What is Liferay’s capacity for backup?

Yes, I think you can trust the cloud feature of Liferay pretty well. It gives you the option to back up your data as...

Adobe CQ5 vs Adobe Experience Manager

Comparisons

Compared 12% of the time

OpenText Extended ECM vs Adobe Experience Manager

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle Content Management vs Adobe Experience Manager

Compared 7% of the time

OpenText TeamSite vs Adobe Experience Manager

Compared 7% of the time

SharePoint vs Adobe Experience Manager

Compared 4% of the time

More Adobe Experience Manager Competitors

SharePoint vs Drupal

Compared 11% of the time

Ibexa DXP vs Drupal

Compared 10% of the time

WordPress vs Drupal

Compared 9% of the time

Atlassian Confluence vs Drupal

Compared 8% of the time

OpenText Documentum vs Drupal

Compared 8% of the time

More Drupal Competitors

SharePoint vs Liferay Digital Experience Platform

Compared 14% of the time

Strapi vs Liferay Digital Experience Platform

Compared 12% of the time

WordPress vs Liferay Digital Experience Platform

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle WebCenter vs Liferay Digital Experience Platform

Compared 6% of the time

Atlassian Confluence vs Liferay Digital Experience Platform

Compared 6% of the time

More Liferay Digital Experience Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Adobe Experience Manager

Download Adobe Experience Manager product report

Download Drupal product report

Liferay Digital Experience Platform

Download Liferay Digital Experience Platform product report

Liferay Digital Experience Platform report

Also Known As

Adobe Day CQ5, Ektron Social Marketing, Episerver Content Cloud

No data available

Liferay DXP

Overview

Adobe Communique 5 (Adobe CQ5), currently manifested as Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), is a web-based content management system which is developed to help businesses in offering high-end digital experience to their customers.

Adobe

Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications

Liferay is a top-ranking digital experience platform used by companies in industries such as financial services, manufacturing, and energy and utilities. This product allows companies to initiate highly personalized digital experiences through mobile, social, and web. Organizations can use Liferay DXP for customer, partner, supplier, or employee portals, as well as integrational platforms, taking advantage of the platform's many customization options to suit their needs completely. The Liferay Experience Cloud offers companies the ability to use the Liferay DXP to build their own digital experiences, as well as to use it as a fully managed cloud platform, including options for self-management and self-hosting.

Liferay Digital Experience Platform Features

Liferay Digital Experience Platform provides various features in the following categories:

Identity management and access control (application security): These features include identity management support, user management, service access policies, and personal data management.
Platform services: Clustering and performance monitoring, auditing and optimization, back-end APIs, dynamic virtual hosting, site and search administration, and single-page applications.

Integration and interoperability: The features in this category include integration framework, developer studio, front-end toolkits, IntelliJ IDEA Plugin, Liferay connected services (LCS), Liferay marketplace and workspace, and Blade CLI.
Collaboration and social: Blogs, knowledge base, social networking, wiki, forums, message boards, calendar, AlloyEditor, inline image editor, and polls, among other features.
Forms, workflow, and business process automation: Features include forms, validation, field library, various types of form entries, data provider integration, and several other features.
Content management: Vast array of features for companies to take advantage of when preparing and publishing different types of content, including text and images.
Experience management: The features in the experience management category include building pages through fragments and editors for them, various widgets, as well as templates for pages, and SEO-friendly updates.
Segmentation and personalization: These features are designed for the full personalization of the platform in order to reach different types of customers and appeal to their individual needs regarding the company that is using Liferay.
Multichannel support: The features in multichannel support include APIs, adaptive media, and responsive design, providing companies with the ability to apply Liferay's full customization to their digital experience platform's design and function.
Search: Liferay Digital Experience Platforms provide various features for search integrations, multi-language search, and options for filtering and sorting.
Analytics and optimization: A crucial part of every digital experience platform is the analytics option for companies to monitor the data of their users and, based on it, improve their approach. That is why Liferay Digital Experience Platform provides five different analytics features.
Cloud capability: To provide companies with the best possible experience, Liferay offers various features regarding the proper operation of the platforms, including real-time alerts, monitoring, and options for backup and restoration.

Liferay Digital Experience Platform Benefits

Liferay Digital Experience Platform offers the following benefits:

Creation of custom solutions
Simplification of IT management
Unity of disparate systems
Developer freedom.

Reviews from Real Users

According to a Communications head at a university, Liferay is a secure platform and the interface is user-friendly, with a great look and feel.

Preeti S., Senior Manager - Cloud Transformation at a computer software company, remarks that she's seenmultiple projects where Enterprise portals are implemented using Liferay, confirming the popularity and vast user base of this digital experience platform.

Liferay

Sample Customers

Metra

BMJ, The Economist, New Republic, SpaceX, Lush, Danone, Tesla Motors, Peugeot, Stanford Law, Harvard, Oxford University, MIT Media Lab, The Beatles, MTV UK, The Weather Channel, NBC, BBC, grammy.com, Mus_e du Louvre, Whitehouse.gov, London.gov.uk, Gouvernment.fr, New Zealand Government, The Prince of Wales, British Council, NYC Metropolitan Transport Authority, Gatwick Obviously

Adidas, Carrefour, Cisco Systems, Danone, Fujitsu, Lufthansa Flight Training, Siemens, Société Générale and the United Nations

Web Content Management