16 Adobe Experience Manager Pros and Cons

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) works with the customers today who are more empowered, more demanding, and savvier than at any other time in history. If you wish to attract them and retain their revenues, then your organization must incorporate relevant content that maximizes the interaction opportunities you receive each day.

AEM provides a comprehensive content management solution that can help you to build websites and their complementary applications. That includes paperless forms, online communities, and mobile applications. This combination makes it easier for marketing professionals to manage their content or arrange their assets so that they are deliverable to the correct person at the best possible time.

Every essential strategic component that you need to have for marketing success, including social, print, email, web, and mobile, is accessible because it is housed within a single platform. That means it is faster and easier to give your customers what they want using the built-in features and friendly UX that is available with the product.

Whether you are a technical marketer or you just want to improve your digital footprint, these are the pros and cons of Adobe Experience Manager that you will want to review today.

List of the Pros of Adobe Experience Manager

1. Adobe Experience Manager can handle a lot of content.

If you have a significant amount of content that you need to manage on a daily basis, then Adobe Experience Manager provide you with a platform that can make this a possibility with less overall work once you get to know the system. The CMS gives you the option to create custom components and templates so that it is always easy to create. Authors can sometimes struggle with the system, but the interface offers a user-friendly UX once you spend a few weeks learning all of the options. It is a well-managed structure that can help you to take your marketing efforts to the next level.

2. You have access to Creative Cloud Integration.

When you start to use Adobe Experience Manager, then you can take advantage of its Creative Cloud Integration, connecting the DAM and the marketing side of your business. This advantage helps you to simplify your workflows, making it possible to deliver high-quality content that meets or exceeds the branding standards which are available in your company. That includes the ability to use tags and metadata to manage how you can find specific media items in the future.

You can integrate Adobe Experience Manager with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and Adobe Campaign to manage your content effectively in other ways as well. You get the API that allows you to build additional extensions if you want as well, although you’ll need to know how to do it to take advantage of this benefit.

3. AEM incorporates an intelligent search approach.

Adobe Experience Manager uses an intelligent search approach to help you find the information that you need to have at any given time. This advantage even allows you to customize how the software can filter the information in your database to find the correct media files for any situation. The attached tags and metadata to the uploaded files are useful to facilitate this work, and there is an indexing feature provided as well that can make all of your future searches a lot faster.

4. You will have a task management solution that you can use.

Adobe Experience Manager gives each user their own workspace for uploaded projects. This advantage allows fewer cluttered dashboards for each team so that you can see the real increases in productivity that are possible. This advantage also means that you can avoid the risk of teams colliding with each other on the interface. Everyone knows what their tasks are in the different work groups, reinforcing the organizational structure that you have because each member is assigned to a specific role.

Each worker can also use the commenting and annotating features to provide feedback within the system. When their own assets receive a reaction, like an update request, then an instant alert goes to them to offer a more controlled workflow.

5. You can use AEM for your video content.

Some content management systems only let you manage text-based information. If you can upload files, then you must download them to the local system to see what the data contains. AEM provides a different user experience to consider. Brands can utilize Adobe Experience Manager to showcase their goods and services with the use of interactive videos that can show on multiple screens. This benefit allows your team to begin leveraging the customer experience to their advantage because it makes it easier for everyone to stay on the same page.

You can also use Adobe Experience Manager as a platform to create media that’s tailored to the exact needs of your customers. This process makes it a lot easier to accurately communicate your value proposition to each person, eliminating the threat of confusion during the sales process.

6. You can manage multiple sites with a single solution.

Adobe Experience Manager allows you to take your content needs to the next level without a significant work investment once you have the platform up and running. You can manage multiple websites at once using the single option. It will translate your pages into different languages so that you can have assurance in the translations that are displayed to global users without relying on browser-based translation mechanisms. If you have a complex website and market your website to different countries, then this CMS will help you to navigate the marketing processes at each location with relative ease.

7. AEM will help you to increase traffic to your website.

The customization options which are available through Adobe Experience Manager give you the opportunity to boost the traffic that your website receives because you can customize the outgoing message to each demographic. That means most agencies will also see higher conversion rates since each interaction feels like a one-on-one conversation to the visitor instead of a cookie-cutter sales pitch. Interactive documents can be personalized to facilitate communication and create more interest in what you have to offer.

You get to build your forum and user groups in a way that works well for your customers and prospects, making it a lot easier to stay in contact with your users to keep your brand at the top of the mind.

8. You have a variety of installation options to consider.

You can install Adobe Experience Manager as a stand-alone CMS platform if that is what your organization requires to expand its marketing reach. It can also serve as an on-premises WCM platform if that suits your requirements better. There is also the option to use a hosted cloud service, including Adobe, so that AEM can meet your needs. It is a licensed product, so the final pricing relies on what your particular requirements happen to be with this item.

You may need to pay an on-demand fee to the cloud services for consumed resources if you choose that option, but users can bring their own licenses to the hosting provider to avoid any additional licensing fees.

9. It offers a WYSIWYG preview of your content.

One of the nicest advantages that you receive when using Adobe Experience Manager is that it offers a what-you-see-is-what-you-get preview of the content that users develop. You can view it as a visitor would see it, even when there are a variety of different methods of access to consider. You’ll know how good your stuff looks from a mobile device or a desktop computer. It’s a low-code content management option that allows you to use pre-designed templates if you want or quickly create the ones you need. Then you can use either UI option, touch or classic, to manage your outreach efforts.

List of the Cons of Adobe Experience Manager

1. This platform can be difficult to learn, especially if you are not a tech-savvy person.

Adobe Experience Manager has a robust reputation for being a highly flexible platform. It is also known to give experience marketers a headache because of the extreme levels of complication that are present in the user experience. The complexity of AEM means that all new users must be ready for a lengthy and very high learning curve. If you are a non-technical user, it may take a long time to pick things up – if you can do so at all.

After an 18-month rollout, significant training sessions may be necessary to help you and your team advance beyond the base functionality of the system. You can expect it to take several weeks for everyone to learn the basics of the system if they are unfamiliar with Adobe Experience Manager before starting. It could take months to become productive. That means you must expect delays in publishing, which adds another level of cost to this investment.

2. The user interface with AEM can be quite inconsistent.

Adobe has the reputation of acquiring different companies and then absorbing their technologies into their various platforms. AEM tends to be the recipient of a mish-mash of different ideas that don’t always work well together. You will see an enhancement in the potential outcomes of this customer management system’s capabilities, but the user interface tends to be something that’s a little less than desired.

It is impossible to accomplish all of your tasks with Adobe Experience Manager when using only one of their user interface styles. There are currently two different ways to publish: Touch UI and the Classic version, and each one has its own set of advantages and disadvantages to consider. It is important to know that you must learn both of them if you want to publish the full range of content you want for your marketing.

3. You need different sign-ins to access other areas of the system.

To make matters even worse when using Adobe Experience Manager, it is not unusual for you to need different sign-ins if you want to access the unique areas of this system. This disadvantage comes about because of the various mechanisms that the platform has assumed over time. It’s like you had a handful of companies put something together with a common login process, but then they created proprietary areas to safeguard information from every other publisher.

This disadvantage doesn’t apply to everyone, but it can significantly reduce the productivity that some users can experience with this system.

4. AEM requires a heavy IT presence throughout the lifespan of this product.

Adobe Experience Manager requires your IT department to be heavily involved with the initial installation and daily operations of this platform. Your engineers can expect a complex installation and setup for AEM, requiring them to build everything, from the templates to the text boxes to the edit screens for each user. Because there are so many different systems working together through AEM, it can become a little buggy and require a technical intervention. It is not a product that you can install, and then hand over to your editorial team to further your marketing goals.

Even when you make tweaks to your content, your IT team must stay involved with the daily processes provided by Adobe Experience Manager. If you do not have advanced HTML skills, then the platform can be a challenge to grasp. The responsibility of creating, developing, and managing tends to fall on that lap of your IT people instead of your editors.

5. There is no much flexibility available in AEM’s structure.

The rigid structure of Adobe Experience Manager can be another disadvantage to consider for organizations who are looking at this platform. You are forced to publish within the confines of the establish paradigm without very many customization options. Although you can use this system to follow your business processes, configuring it in such a way to do so it comes with a steep price.

This disadvantage also applies to the folder-based structure that you must navigate with AEM. If you don’t know the exact location of something that you saved, then searching for a specific item can become a time-consuming process. It is also essential to note that Adobe comes with less than a dozen integrations out of the box, so there can be challenges with your system integration.

6. AEM is an integrator-dependent platform.

If you want to deploy Adobe Experience Manager, then you will need to have a third-party implementation partner available to get the job done. These partners will not have direct access to Adobe and the implementation processes and setup of your system depend upon the quality of the vendor who does this work for you. That means you are never able to go straight to the source of your software to address the glitches and bugs that can hide on this platform. Your maintenance costs increase as well, forcing you to rely on a single, third-party partner whenever problems arise.

7. The cost of Adobe Experience Manager puts it out of reach for most companies.

99% of the companies in the United States that fuel the economy are classified as a small business. Even though they could benefit from the content management that is possible with Adobe Experience Manager, the total cost of ownership is significantly higher than the other competitive programs that are in the marketplace today.

The minimum expense to consider with this platform is about $250,000 per year. If you use all of the features consistently and have a large database to manage, then the expense can approach $1 million annually. AEM works best when it can serve a large enterprise setting where organizations use sophisticated web content development and have a staff that can fully support the wide range of capabilities which are available for this product.

Verdict on the Pros and Cons of Adobe Experience Manager

Adobe Experience Manager provides a scalable option which is a definite benefit for large organizations. It is essential to remember that this platform is a web application and not just a simple content management system. That means the only thing that is holding you back from discovering everything that AEM can do is your imagination. It can be connected to just about anything with the computer, including large television screens, vending machines, or monitors in your vehicle.

Because it is also part of your marketing cloud, AEM is extremely valuable when it combines with your other content so that you can have a full view of your customer. This process allows you to have a better overall marketing performance.

The pros and cons of Adobe Experience Manager make it possible for you to manage all of your content in a meaningful way without sacrificing the customer experience. Although it may not be suitable for small businesses, sole proprietors, and similar vendors, large-scale information is easy to manage when you have the correct personnel available to help you manage your marketing outreach programs.