Adobe Experience Manager vs Joomla comparison

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Adobe Experience Manager

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Adobe Experience Manager and Joomla 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. Joomla Report (Updated: June 2026).

Adobe Experience Manager vs. Joomla

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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)

Joomla

Ranking in Web Content Management

13th

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 Joomla is 2.2%, down from 2.4% 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%
Joomla	2.2%
Other	89.2%

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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Jay Stoeber

Techvangelist & CEO at IT Guru Solutions, Inc.

One of the most robust, stable, secure, feature-rich CMSs on the market

I would like to see more back-end admin power pulled into the front-end, therefore the admins will not have to use the back-end as much, especially for the menu manager, user manager, etc. versus using third-party extensions to achieve this. As it is today, it often ends up introducing some potentially serious security concerns. When I turn over a Joomla site, editing content is easy for most folks (i.e., changing the Contact Us or About Us pages). However, when it comes time for them to edit menus and navigation to add a new page or article into the menu somewhere, it starts to get a little complex for many users to build these menu items, especially when there are multiple menus being used in different positions. I also would like to see the same sorting and attributes available through the web browser on the JED (sorting by free or commercial license, sort by rating, popularity, etc.) within the back-end Joomla Web Installer when browsing extensions. I would also like to see the Joomla security bulletins pulled into the admin back-end with better publishing of known extension issues, especially for ones we have installed. Therefore, if we do not have them installed, we never see those bulletins. If we do, then pertinent messages showing up like "there are X number of extension updates available" can pushed upfront and center like updates and security notice usually are.

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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

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

"It is a first-in-class product."

"If you're looking for a .NET based CMS, do yourself a favor and go with an open source CMS."

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

"Brand management, Digital Transformation of organization and Most dynamic site."

"The cost can be high, but for large websites with a lot of dynamic data like e-commerce, or for clients looking for user-data based campaigning, the solution can be very efficient in the long-term."

"I've used several CMS tools, but Adobe Experience Manager is feature-rich, especially for web security and content management."

"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."

More Adobe Experience Manager pros

"Joomla is a complete and easy-to-use content manager system; it's possible to create a website, manage its structure and contents, and add features using hundreds of extensions, and the most valuable thing for us is the easy way you update content, add articles, modify structure, and apply SEO tags and info."

"This CMS lets you create an own website within minutes, no matter if the user has knowledge in coding."

"The speed in which you can take a CMS and make it a full-blown shopping cart with analytics tracking, SEO, user accounts, security, and ease of use through a robust framework of modules and plugins to enhance and promote-related content is about as turnkey as it gets with Joomla."

"Joomla is one of the most popular CMSs today."

"Despite some limitations, Joomla stands out from the crowd and manages to retain its position in the market."

"With a fairly small learning curve for the end user who wants the basics, Joomla is one of the most robust, stable, secure, feature-rich CMSs on the market."

"Do your project in Joomla; you will see that it is a better solution for website development."

"Simplicity and security are basic elements to build a website quickly and safely, and with JoomShaper it was for me even easier."

More Joomla pros

Cons

"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"

"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."

"The licenses are very expensive."

"I assigned a rating of eight because there are certain limitations we must consider, and there are restrictions in Adobe Experience Manager that we cannot resolve."

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

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

"The integration of the product with other Adobe Marketing Cloud products could be improved."

"In comparison to other CMS products, Adobe Experience Manager is missing some capabilities such as proper versioning or a better versioning system and backend connectivity. If something is deleted in AEM, the user cannot recover it. You have to call technical support, and they will need to recover the whole instance. So, it's really difficult. For example, if you delete a page, you cannot recover it. There should be an option to recover it. In AEM, you have to go to the previous state of the instance itself or the virtual machine, and you have to restore everything, which is not good."

More Adobe Experience Manager cons

"When it comes time for them to edit menus and navigation to add a new page or article into the menu somewhere, it starts to get a little complex for many users to build these menu items, especially when there are multiple menus being used in different positions."

"I would like to see more back-end admin power pulled into the front-end, therefore the admins will not have to use the back-end as much, especially for the menu manager, user manager, etc. versus using third-party extensions to achieve this."

"Web applications created in Joomla eat up a lot of server resources."

"Customizing components is not so easy."

"I would like to see the same sorting and attributes available through the web browser on the JED (sorting by free or commercial license, sort by rating, popularity, etc.) within the back-end Joomla Web Installer when browsing extensions."

"Joomla itself seems to be secure, but many add-ons are badly written and allow LFI, RFI, SQL injection and XSS attacks."

"With even basic Joomla, it requires a course."

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."

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

"It's really costly."

"Joomla is open source, therefore free. Only hosting, the time to build it along with the training time is your startup cost."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Construction Company

Outsourcing Company

No data available

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	9

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Adobe Experience Manager

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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

Joomla is a versatile content management system tailored for building websites and powerful online applications. Known for its adaptability and extensive features, Joomla supports diverse requirements from blogs to corporate websites.

Joomla offers a comprehensive platform for managing digital content with ease. Its flexibility allows users to customize websites effectively, leveraging a library of extensions and templates. Suitable for different industries, it balances simplicity with robust website management capabilities, making it a preferred option for developers and enterprises.

Which features make Joomla valuable?

Extensions Library: Offers thousands of extensions to enhance website functionality.
Template Management: Provides diverse templates for custom design.
Multi-Language Support: Enables sites in several languages to reach a global audience.
Access Control: Advanced permissions for content management.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Scalability: Ability to grow with your website and business needs.
Customization: High level of personalization in web development.
Community Support: Extensive user and developer community for troubleshooting and inspiration.
SEO Friendly: Built-in SEO features enhance content visibility.

In specific industries like healthcare, Joomla allows the creation of secure, reliable platforms for patient engagement and service delivery. Educational institutions use Joomla to develop interactive platforms for students and faculty, integrating diverse educational tools and resources for enhanced learning experiences.

Sample Customers

Metra

Artisan Web and Print, HLVC Design, Media A-Team Inc, Holdingbay - Tristan Bailey, Molehill Web Works, Sysgen Media, Pappy Productions, Inc., Turn To The ProsPB Web Development, LC Publishing - LambCottage Foundation

Adobe Experience Manager vs. Joomla