The Forrester Wave™: Digital Experience Platforms, Q4 2023

Digital Experience Platforms Vendor Product Comparisons 2023

Key features and pros and cons of top Digital Experience Platforms products:

Adobe - Leaders

Pros:

Strong customer data and analytics that power journeys at cloud scale
Strength in most current-offering criteria, notably in AI/ML, customer data, and journey orchestration
Released three new applications built on Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) in past two years, with two more by end of 2023
All products built on AEP designed to help brands thrive using first-party data
Differentiated roadmap featuring Workfront as connective tissue to realize content supply chain vision
Supports use cases like campaign planning record with personalized content variations created by Sensei genAI

Cons:

Reference customers note that with great flexibility comes great responsibility and want Adobe to offer guardrails to keep them on the right track

Optimizely - Leaders

Pros:

Portfolio of integrated SaaS apps built around a PaaS core
Strong supporting services and offerings that enable digital businesses to compose their DXP
Strength in experience experimentation, AI/ML, and content
Content marketing platform (formerly Welcome) orchestrates work across applications
Balances prioritizing practitioner experience while catering to needs of broad swath of businesses
Monthly test-and-learn approach to AI roadmap driven by customer needs

Cons:

Reference customers remark on identity crisis that has emerged after acquisitions
Not all clients are capturing the value of the platform investments

Salesforce - Leaders

Pros:

Strong partner ecosystem offering wide range of industry expertise and best-in-class software from AppExchange
Full-company roadmap squarely focused on genAI with CRM data to deliver safe, proprietary brand experiences
Strength in AI/ML, campaign management, and practitioner tools
Vision spans entire portfolio beyond Experience Cloud, unifying everything behind Slack as the UX
AI is the UI mantra across company

Cons:

Continues to struggle with enterprise content support and has pivoted to partners to shore up this gap
Salesforce declined to participate in the full Forrester Wave evaluation process

Acquia - Strong Performers

Pros:

Strength in content, practitioner tools, and developer tools
Strong community of agencies that build solutions with expanding portfolio
Roadmap includes SaaS version of Drupal with support for any flavor of JavaScript front end
Treats marketers and developers as first-class citizens

Cons:

No enterprise-class digital commerce, relying exclusively on partners like commercetools and Shopify
Reference customers hungry for more learning resources and perspective on genAI
References tell Forrester that Acquia's people make the difference even more so than the technology

Bloomreach - Strong Performers

Pros:

Strong search and journey orchestration
Strength in journey orchestration, search, and AI/ML
Acquisition and integration of Exponea positions it to engage shoppers across channels
Reference clients delighted by good blend of capabilities that work together to drive online revenue
Unified workflows that cohesively bind products
Plans AI-powered interactive shopping assistant named Clarity

Cons:

Lacks core commerce - intentionally avoids investing in commerce platform of its own
Prefers to provide experience layer to any commerce platform

Oracle - Strong Performers

Pros:

Strength in customer data, customer analytics, and developer tools
Built cloud-native platform of shared capabilities used to build individual applications and industry solutions
Spent years refactoring acquisitions into modular components that provide features across Fusion application suite
Components use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and underlying services

Cons:

Five-year roadmap is secretive - shared with clients and analysts under NDA only
Clients benefit most when they're Oracle shops, doesn't play well in best-of-breed market
Oracle declined to participate in the full Forrester Wave evaluation process

Sitecore - Strong Performers

Pros:

Strong commerce and front-end capabilities
Strength in digital commerce and experience front end
Digital commerce capability top-rated due to ability to adapt to wide variety of business models
Invested heavily in building modern, component-oriented, decoupled front-end content apps
Bold four-stage roadmap for Sitecore Autopilot powered by genAI

Cons:

Reference customers indicate Sitecore appears to be in early stages of integrating portfolio and finding product-market fit
Composability is a pivot for Sitecore and its clients alike

Amplience - Contenders

Pros:

Good content support and strong application architecture
Built as cloud-native, headless CMS with ambitions of orchestrating more elements of complete digital experience
Good partner ecosystem built as part of MACH Alliance

Cons:

Weakness in vision and innovation - new product strategy announced in 2023 has not yet delivered full first year
Amplience declined to participate in the full Forrester Wave evaluation process

Arc XP - Contenders

Pros:

Strong application architecture built entirely on AWS
Good pricing flexibility and transparency optimized for news publishers market
Reference customer migrated from homegrown solution, reducing publish time from hours to 2 minutes
Analytics on readership helps understand what content resonates with audiences

Cons:

Lags in customer data and digital commerce (narrowly built for supporting paywalls)
Partner ecosystem lags due to infancy and narrow industry focus
Lacks AI capabilities

Contentful - Contenders

Pros:

Good content support and AI/ML
Robust application framework allows partners to build connectors that blend with native interface
Roadmap features single content graph to unify disparate content sources behind one API
Plans native personalization using multiple LLMs to generate segment-specific variants

Cons:

Favors developers over marketers - described as 'a developer's dream'
Authoring and editorial workflows need improvement confirmed by reference customers
References want marketplace apps that require less or no development
Relies on partners for digital commerce, campaign management, and customer analytics

Contentstack - Contenders

Pros:

Strength in AI/ML and relatively good content support
Strong vision of what 'the new spine' of a composed DXP needs to contain
Roadmap features layered genAI for brand intelligence, personalization engine, and visual builder

Cons:

Small portfolio of parts - relies on partners for customer data, journey orchestration, and other components
Reference customers say Contentstack sometimes delivers updates too fast
Documentation not optimized for nontechnical users
References seeking more prebuilt connectors

Crownpeak - Contenders

Pros:

Good experience experimentation (white-labeled from Dynamic Yield) and search (from Attraqt acquisition)
Established good track record harmonizing flagship CMS with e-Spirit acquisition
Solid vision of building platform with shared capabilities for current and future applications

Cons:

Lost some momentum harmonizing acquisitions
Currently has weak supporting services and offerings - still early in M&A playbook
Lags in customer data and customer analytics - capabilities exist in individual applications, not platform layer
Reference customers note one site administration tool must still be run locally with cloud connection issues

Liferay - Contenders

Pros:

Solid content and customer analytics capabilities
Good community due to long heritage, open-source edition, and partner-first go-to-market
New design system decouples content from presentation
New all-in-one packaging allows customers to use what they need without additional procurement cycles

Cons:

Late with cloud-native architecture
Weakness in vision - lacks first-mover or fast-mover perspective
Lags in experience experimentation, customer data, and AI/ML with basic capabilities for simple use cases
Reference customers note scaling isn't entirely solved under load when accessing large volumes of data

Magnolia - Contenders

Pros:

Good content support and extensibility and integration
Good SI partner ecosystem that has built industry applications on its core using Connector Framework
Spent years making 'some assembly required' stance easier, more prescriptive, and reliable

Cons:

Lacks cloud-native architecture
Weaker innovation compared to others - focused on pragmatic, incremental advancements
AI strategy relies strictly on third-party services
Lags in experience experimentation and journey orchestration with no visual tooling for multichannel flows
Reference customers report interface is a bit old

SAP - Contenders

Pros:

Strength in journey orchestration and campaign management
Good supporting services and offerings that continue to tactically integrate across portfolio
Roadmap targets applications as parts of industry solutions integrating with other SAP applications

Cons:

Lost momentum struggling to both modernize and innovate
Weak innovation - seemingly prefers to cross-sell to current customer base than refactor for new growth
Lags in practitioner tools
Weakness in experience front end and content provided by Commerce Cloud
Capabilities spread across acquired applications at different stages of cloud maturity
SAP declined to participate in the full Forrester Wave evaluation process

FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2023?

A: Adobe, Optimizely, Salesforce

Q: What does "Leader" mean in Forrester Wave terms?

A: Leaders in the Forrester Wave are vendors that have the strongest current offering and strategy in the digital experience platform market. They demonstrate excellence across key criteria including experience experimentation, customer data, AI/ML capabilities, developer tools, extensibility and integration, and application architecture. Leaders also show strong vision, innovation, roadmap execution, partner ecosystem development, and market adoption.

Q: How do I interpret a Forrester Wave?

A: https://www.forrester.com/policies/forrester-wave-methodology/

Report:

Top Vendor Products for Digital Experience Platforms in 2023

Digital Experience Platforms Vendor Product Comparisons 2023

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FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2023?

Q: What does "Leader" mean in Forrester Wave terms?

Q: How do I interpret a Forrester Wave?

Reference