Adobe Experience Manager vs Drupal vs Liferay Digital Experience Platform comparison

Liferay Digital Experience ...

Read 37 Drupal reviews

2,399 Views
1,847 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Read 45 Liferay Digital Experience Platform reviews

2,468 Views
1,357 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Adobe Experience Manager

Liferay Digital Experience ...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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 Adobe, Microsoft, Wordpress and others in Web Content Management.

To learn more, read our detailed Web Content Management Report (Updated: March 2026).

Web Content Management

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Helped 885,444 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 April 2026, in the Web Content Management category, the mindshare of Adobe Experience Manager is 9.6%, down from 11.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Drupal is 8.0%, up from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Liferay Digital Experience Platform is 5.0%, down from 9.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Content Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Adobe Experience Manager	9.6%
Drupal	8.0%
Liferay Digital Experience Platform	5.0%
Other	77.4%

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.

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.

Optimizing digital presence with customizable design and seamless integration

PratyushRaj

E-Governance Head at Creant Technologies

The main benefits that Liferay Digital Experience Platform brings to the table are numerous. First is rapid application development and many features. Features such as content management and document management make your life easy; workflow management is also present. Workflow can be designed and derived. Form development and everything is very smooth and easy to deliver to the end customer, and you can find many features in one box. You have blogs, wikis, and everything with out-of-box functionality. My experience with actionable insights is positive; they help in refining content strategies. The content creation is helpful. For external content creation, I use headless CMS APIs for Liferay Digital Experience Platform, and headless APIs for content creation are also available. My thoughts on the integration capabilities are that integration is seamless. You have headless APIs where you can integrate seamlessly with any other application such as LDAP or SSO, or you can also integrate with different external systems. You have an SAP connector; everything is available. Liferay Digital Experience Platform's open source flexibility has helped in customizing functionalities for the specific needs of my customers as it is a highly flexible application that can be optimized. My advice for other organizations considering Liferay Digital Experience Platform is that if it's available, we need to improve on the performance, which is currently what we are seeing. Otherwise, earlier Service Builder was acceptable. On a scale of 1-10, I rate Liferay Digital Experience Platform a 9.

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

"Adobe Experience Manager is pretty stable."

"Using Adobe Experience Manager has positively impacted our organization by improving our efficiency significantly."

"The best feature is the experience fragment; if you want to replicate content across multiple websites with 1,000 or 20,000 pages, this feature helps accomplish it in a fraction of seconds."

"It helps us with analytics, application design for specific platforms, and enables us to easily create applications for iOS and Android."

"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.)."

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

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

"The search capability in Adobe Experience Manager is superior, as search capabilities are determined by the metadata, and it also has metadata automation using AI."

"In the end, you’ll have a solid CMS platform with which to work."

"With over 23,000 contributed modules, there’s a high chance that any feature you want has already been built, and is available for you to use at no cost."

"Its scalability, content management practices, security and the community are valuable features."

"It has a huge community and support from all over the web."

"Drupal is an open source content management system which provides an easy installation process, a good range of modules for features' expansion, as well as a supportive community that will help resolve issues that you face with Drupal."

"We have built a production ready, heavy content website using this product within two to three months."

"We now have more time to focus on crucial features that our client needs, like custom mail notifications, statistics, or other features that can give our clients business value."

"I encourage others to use this product; it is a very powerful CMS tool with a lot of themes and modules and is great for enterprise use."

More Drupal pros

"Customers liked this portal software platform because Open Source platform with no stack agenda can run in any existing infrastructure with low cost of adoption and offers over 70 out-of-the-box bundled features with an open API architecture that allows you to maximize aggregation and back-end integration."

"All the features that are provided by Liferay are very useful, such as Web Content, Document Library and Media, Roles, Permissioning, Resources, Organizations, Users, Sites, Custom Fields, Plugins, and so on."

"We like Likeray because it's a secure platform."

"I would recommend Liferay for any company that is looking at deploying an enterprise-wide content management system."

"You can create and manage dozens of sites with a single installation of Liferay, without a single line of Java code."

"It’s fast, easy, scalable, and stable with a competitive price."

"Liferay Digital Experience Platform has helped us optimize our digital presence and deliver rapid application development, every customer is happy, and they are giving us repeat orders for whatever we have delivered on Liferay Digital Experience Platform."

"The product has helped our members and communities to freely connect, share knowledge, develop initiatives and share expertise in a secure environment."

More Liferay Digital Experience Platform pros

Cons

"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."

"Last but not least, Adobe AEM TCO (total cost of ownership) is very high with return on investment is slow (ROI is not necessarily low), which is why Adobe's focus is mostly large companies with deep pocket"

"Programming model could be improved, it's a monolithic solution."

"Even more out of box components, UI designs."

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

"I love DAM, but still think there are improvement areas."

"AEM, when setup using Mongo, rapidly gains size; hence it consumes a lot of storage space in a very short period of time."

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

More Adobe Experience Manager cons

"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."

"Migration from one major version to the next major version requires significant effort."

"The main complaints of the clients or newcomers to Drupal are about the UX of the admin interface."

"There are not enough Drupal developers to satisfy demand."

"The initial setup was very complex, due to the lack of proper documentation."

"Modifying the themes (colors, dimensions, and pictures) could be easier."

"We had some stability issues."

"It needs a shorter learning curve."

More Drupal cons

"As for now, Liferay DXP was just released, so there are many issues."

"The documentation could be better."

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

"Licensing costs can be very expensive."

"We tried the 'eat your own dog food' approach and used Liferay for our company's website, but Liferay just isn't meant to build websites."

"It lacks true multi-tenant support."

"Major upgrades switch the Liferay framework core structure dramatically in EVERY occasion."

"As it is open source, it has lots of features and it is constantly updating. Therefore, bugs also keep coming."

More Liferay Digital Experience Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

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

"I would like to see better pricing."

"It is a bit expensive."

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

"Licensing costs can be very expensive."

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

"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."

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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

No data available

Government

13%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Marketing Services Firm

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

10%

Construction Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	23

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	11

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	23

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?

Adobe Experience Manager performs well overall, though some improvements could be made. Bug troubleshooting is challe...

What is your primary use case for Adobe Experience Manager?

Adobe Experience Manager is one of the most powerful and scalable CMS platforms I have ever used. It serves as our ce...

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...

SAP Extended Enterprise Content Management vs Adobe Experience Manager

Comparisons

Compared 7% of the time

Oracle Content Management vs Adobe Experience Manager

Compared 7% of the time

SharePoint vs Adobe Experience Manager

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle WebCenter vs Adobe Experience Manager

Compared 3% of the time

Salesforce Community Cloud vs Adobe Experience Manager

Compared 3% of the time

More Adobe Experience Manager Competitors

SharePoint vs Drupal

Compared 10% of the time

WordPress Business-Enterprise vs Drupal

Compared 8% of the time

Atlassian Confluence vs Drupal

Compared 6% of the time

Magnolia CMS vs Drupal

Compared 6% of the time

Tridion the Intelligent Content Platform (CMS & CCMS) vs Drupal

Compared 5% of the time

More Drupal Competitors

SharePoint vs Liferay Digital Experience Platform

Compared 10% of the time

Sitefinity vs Liferay Digital Experience Platform

Compared 4% of the time

Atlassian Confluence vs Liferay Digital Experience Platform

Compared 4% of the time

Acquia Cloud vs Liferay Digital Experience Platform

Compared 3% of the time

Strapi vs Liferay Digital Experience Platform

Compared 3% 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, Adobe CQ5

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