What is Adobe Experience Manager & why is it the best CMS for your organisation

Are you considering Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) as your content management system (CMS), but feeling overwhelmed by its so-called complexity and cost? You’re not alone. Many organisations have the same concerns

However, in this article we’d like to change your mind and show you why AEM is worth considering. Buckle up and discover the essence of Adobe Experience Manager and why it is more suitable and affordable for your organisation than you might think.

What is Adobe Experience Manager?

Adobe Experience Manager is Adobe’s content management system (CMS) that offers extensive capabilities for managing your digital assets and delivering flawless, personalised customer experiences. It is used by over 1000 organisations globally and has been recognised by Forrester and Gartner as one of the most leading and complete tools.

It combines a WYSIWYG editor (literally ‘what you see is what you get’). This makes it easy to use for marketers. It has extensive authoring features, including headless capabilities. These headless capabilities make it extremely effective in delivering personal experiences and managing digital assets.

Create digital masterpieces with WYSIWYG and headless capabilities in Adobe Experience Manager

Adobe's WYSIWYG editor is a visual editor that allows marketers to see exactly what they are editing while they are editing. It is a visual interface with drag-and-drop functionality, displaying components exactly as they will appear on the website. That way you can see exactly what the end result will be once you publish your content. You can easily change the styling of components with Adobe Experience Manager's Styles options of components and it adapts immediately.

The WYSIWYG editor has been around for several years so the maturity level is high - making it an easy-to-use tool for marketers to manage web content. Thanks to the editor, you no longer have to be a techwizard or html mastermind to create awesome digital experiences with this tool.

On top of the interesting author capabilities, Adobe has adjusted its offering to match the latest revolution in content management - headless content management and headless CMS - with their own headless solution within Adobe Experience Manager. This allows for greater flexibility in the way the content is displayed as it can be delivered through various channels beyond the web such as mobile apps, marketing automation (e.g. Adobe Campaign), voice assistants and kiosks.

As a result, Adobe combines the easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor and headless capabilities, allowing people to edit the web channel with a visual editor and still being able to share content across other channels as well.

Debunking the myth: the costs of Adobe Experience Manager

One of the comments Adobe regularly faces is that Adobe Experience Manager isn’t the most affordable tool out there. In the past, we can’t deny that Adobe was one of the most expensive tools in the market. Since they were targeting the enterprise market, this was a solid strategy.

Nowadays, however, Adobe offers a cloud offering to support medium to large organisations as well. It is a platform-as-a-service that you can buy while hosting, maintenance, etc. is managed by Adobe. Thanks to this, there are no downtimes, no upgrade cycles and no additional investment needed.

Plus, it’s ready to go right from the start. Adobe has a set of starter components and they offer personal support during your onboarding to make sure you can get started as efficiently as possible with Adobe Experience Manager.

The “starter pack” of components, or what Adobe calls their Core Components, include all the components a content website needs. This makes it possible to get a content website live in a matter of weeks instead of many months. And that includes Adobe Experience Manager's out-of-the-box multi-language, multi-site and multi-branding capabilities.

Whether you’re looking to improve the customer experience, increase engagement or streamline your digital marketing efforts, Adobe Experience Manager is a solution worth considering for your organisation.