Report:

Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms

Top Vendor Products for Digital Experience Platforms in 2025

• Acquia
• Adobe
• Optimizely

Digital Experience Platforms Vendor Product Comparisons 2025

• Acquia - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Centralized development environment: Acquia supports development and governance of a portfolio of websites and digital applications on a single, unified platform. This enables increased reuse of coding and components, which maximizes the benefit of development efforts.
  • AI integration: Acquia offers AI support for content strategy, including writing assessments for search engine optimization (SEO). Developers benefit from an AI chatbot that acts as a virtual assistant for common configuration tasks, machine learning studios and models, and AI-augmented code creation via a Drupal developer code assistant.
  • Open-source community: Acquia's continued support of its large and innovative open-source Drupal community offers 50,000 plug-ins and 1,000 distributions. This allows for additional product innovation, connectors and recipes, and acts as a bridge between open-source and commercialized versions of the Drupal CMS.

  Cons:

  • Lack of SaaS: Acquia estimates that its SaaS deployment option will be generally available in July 2025. It is slow to respond to the demand of a SaaS deployment option for its DXPs. Clients evaluating Acquia should ensure that they understand the timeline of deliverables in the SaaS offering.
  • Pricing: Some customers cite Acquia's prices as unpredictable with a high initial price point and additional costs required for the products and services not included under the subscription. Prospects should ensure that their proposals include clear pricing for all products and services needed to meet their organization's objectives.
  • Declining momentum: Acquia's presence on prospects' shortlists has been declining. Based on Gartner client interactions, this raises concerns for viability and health of the ecosystem. Prospects should ensure that customer references are recent and, if relevant, implementation partners are aligned to their industry and technical requirements.


• Adobe - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Brand awareness: Adobe's DXP offering is well-regarded in the market with high brand awareness. It is often adopted by buyers with sophisticated digital marketing strategies that are looking to adopt high-end personalization, analytics, content and customer data management.
  • Innovation: Adobe is known for technological innovation and a unique blend of end-to-end functionality that provides broad support — from creative ideation to delivery and optimization — across a variety of different digital channels.
  • Partner support: Adobe has one of the most developed partner channels that includes design and creative agencies, systems integrators, and marketing and advertising agencies. This provides customers with many options to deploy and support the vendor's products.

  Cons:

  • Price: Adobe continues to be one of the most expensive DXP offerings in the market. The recently launched unified pricing metric is geared at simplified and centrally managed consumption, but is only available to selected customers in certain scenarios. As a prospect, you need to investigate if the Unified Pricing Metric is available and appropriate for your organization.
  • Complex product portfolio: Adobe struggles with an increasingly complex product portfolio, resulting in a suboptimal user experience for nontechnical users. Prospects should plan for significant change management, and user training and enablement.
  • Technical skills required: The learning curve for Adobe's technical skill set is steep and is unique to each product under the DXP umbrella. Prospects should know that success depends on finding the right partner, and dependence on such partners/systems integrators can add complexity and cost for both initial implementation, and enhancements and integrations.


• Optimizely - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Platform breadth and modularity: Optimizely has the broadest set of features in this research, with aligned UIs making modules easy to move between and consume. Customers can replace native with third-party capabilities for best-of-breed technologies for those who desire more composability.
  • Pricing and packaging: Optimizely pricing is simple, scalable, modular and transparent. This lowers the barrier to entry and enables customers to use an iterative approach over time.
  • Global momentum and growth: Optimizely is growing faster than the industry average in this space, is established in all regions, and is successful in targeting the marketing function.

  Cons:

  • Marketing focus: Optimizely's current focus on the marketing function means that other buyers — such as B2B sales or digital commerce leaders — are less targeted. Its approach to the market and its customer base is weighted toward B2C operations, which may reduce its relevance to other use cases over time.
  • Core SaaS immaturity: Optimizely's core SaaS CMS/DXC products were less than a year old during this research. The features and functionality of the new deployment type is not broadly adopted and lacks real-world testing. Prospects should ask for proofs of concept and assurances, or demonstrations of performance and other nonfunctional requirements.
  • Customer interactions: Optimizely's purchase process can be difficult for some customers, while implementation is a challenge for others. Gartner Peer Insights reviewers have given the company lower scores for evaluation, contracting, integration and deployment.


• HCLSoftware - Challenger
  

  Pros:

  • Governance and compliance: HCLSoftware focuses on security and governance, making it suitable for large organizations with strict data protection, compliance and security needs.
  • Global presence: With a strong worldwide presence, HCLSoftware serves organizations in underserved regions. It provides strong regional support from its global network of technology partners for its geographically diverse customer base.
  • Analytics and intelligence: HCLSoftware launched HCL Discover in 2024, featuring real-time activity monitoring, funnel analysis, root cause analysis, impact analysis, and behavioral insights. HCL Discover enhances its DXP's analytics, intelligence and dashboard features.

  Cons:

  • Implementation cycle: Some HCLSoftware customers note longer-than-expected implementation cycles, along with delayed query resolution for both developers and business users. Prospects should ensure that any proposed implementation plans are coordinated and kept on track.
  • Outdated UI: HCLSoftware's DXP has an outdated user interface with limited usability. Some customers also report inconsistent timelines for future releases that address these shortcomings. Prospects should be wary of any key requirements that are supposed to be met by future releases.
  • Technical bloat: Getting to a full DXP remains a complicated proposition for some HCLSoftware customers, as some required functions are available in adjacent products (such as HCL Unica and HCL Connections). This approach can create technical bloat when organizations need certain functions without paying for the full feature sets of those products.


• OpenText - Challenger
  

  Pros:

  • Authenticated experience: OpenText's expertise at serving organizations in highly regulated industries makes it suitable for buyers needing governance, security, account management and auditability in authenticated experiences.
  • Product development: The vendor launched OpenText Core Journey in April 2024, with customer journey mapping, insight generation, and action orchestration features in a SaaS-based application. OpenText Experience Aviator provides GenAI, image AI and content analysis for improved user experience.
  • Beyond DXP: OpenText extends beyond DXP to support broader IT strategy areas, including content services, customer communications management, analytics and business intelligence. Its 2023 acquisition of Micro Focus added observability and IT operations management. This serves organizations seeking a single-vendor relationship.

  Cons:

  • Complex UI: OpenText's DXP UI is complex, inconsistent and outdated compared with others in this evaluation. When issues are addressed in new releases, some customers cite lengthy upgrade cycles with inconsistent timelines. Prospects must define scenarios for the demonstration stage that allow them to assess suitability for their business needs.
  • Postacquisition focus: OpenText's DXP caters for postacquisition use cases like customer service and may not be as well-suited for prospects that focus on the preacquisition marketing use cases that drive most DXP investments.
  • Platform complexity: OpenText's perception as broad and complex results in many buyers not considering the DXP on shortlists unless they have made substantial investments in its other information management products.


• Contentstack - Visionary
  

  Pros:

  • Front-end hosting: Unlike similar headless and composable vendors in this market, Contentstack is differentiated through its native offering for front-end hosting. Buyers seeking an integrated and bundled approach for both back-end and front-end hosting find this appealing.
  • Personalization: Contentstack chose to develop its own built-in personalization functions organically as opposed to acquiring a separate vendor. Its personalization features and product roadmap allow for an incremental approach for customers.
  • Customer service: Contentstack is well-regarded for customer service and support, documentation and user education. Its customers like the unique approach of the Care Without Compromise service product, which yields high customer satisfaction and retention rates.

  Cons:

  • Complexity: Contentstack presents a comparatively steep learning curve for nontechnical users. Its product has grown organically in complexity. It can also be difficult to navigate due to its vast number of integrations. Prospects should assess usability by specifying essential use cases in the demonstration phase.
  • Pricing: Contentstack's pricing is most suitable for large enterprises. Small and midsize businesses find the price tag high for their needs. Prospects should compare pricing for their use case and future growth with other similar vendors.
  • Partner channel: Contentstack's partner channel is comparatively small and is primarily concentrated in North America and Europe. Buyers in South/Latin America or Middle East and Africa may experience difficulties finding an appropriate systems integrator.


• Magnolia - Visionary
  

  Pros:

  • AI innovation: The latest releases of Magnolia DXP include differentiated AI functionality, such as AI assistants and AI accelerators. Customers looking for a more conservative iterative approach with AI may benefit from this functionality.
  • Composability: The vendor embraces lean architecture and composability by offering native PBCs and providing integration frameworks for third-party tools and custom PBCs in Magnolia's marketplace.
  • Pricing structure: Magnolia's pricing and packaging is clear and easy to understand, and is also easily able to start small and grow as and when needed. Its pricing model provides a lower barrier to entry for its customers and prospects.

  Cons:

  • Limited brand awareness: Magnolia's presence and brand awareness, as well as availability of partners and systems integrators, remain low outside of its core base in Europe. This makes it more challenging for prospects in other geographies to consider Magnolia on their product selection shortlists.
  • Lack of SaaS: Magnolia is yet to provide a SaaS option with feature parity to its self-hosted and PaaS DXP. Prospects with SaaS requirements should pay attention to the roadmap for feature rollouts in this area.
  • Technical skills required: Because Magnolia DXP carries a steeper learning curve, it is less suited to smaller organizations with low technical skills, or those without the technical resources to make the most out of the platform and its integration.


• Sitecore - Visionary
  

  Pros:

  • Innovation: Sitecore has made strides in innovation and Completeness of Vision due to recent product developments, including a visual builder, AI for marketer intelligence, a new analytics dashboard and a visual forms workflow tool.
  • Composable DXP: Sitecore has advanced in its composable DXP vision. It offers composability at product level and at PBC level where these are available as stand-alone components, and plans to expand its marketplace.
  • B2B appeal: Sitecore has experienced growth and traction in B2B and authenticated experience scenarios. It offers security and compliance, as well as deep integration and customization features that B2B customers find appealing.

  Cons:

  • XM Cloud SaaS transition: Some existing Sitecore customers have reported high efforts in transitioning to its newer SaaS offering, Sitecore XM Cloud. Customers also cite higher costs compared to PaaS or self-hosted licensing, and significant effort required to migrate existing legacy Sitecore XP and XM implementations.
  • Complex product portfolio: Sitecore is navigating a complex product portfolio, following multiple product acquisitions and continuous integration efforts, which can see some feature overlap in content creation tools. Prospects should ensure that they are clear on which content creation features they need between Sitecore Content Hub and XM Cloud for their use cases.
  • Expert skills required: Sitecore's learning curve can be steep, requiring specialized expertise. This can lead to continued reliance on the partner channel for initial implementation, enhancements and integrations if organizations don't have enough on-staff development resources.


• Uniform - Visionary
  

  Pros:

  • Composable flexibility: Uniform allows the gradual transition to a composable approach as multiple CMS or DAM instances can be the source of content. It provides reusable components that are not reliant on back-end systems or the front-end language — ideal for clients that are transitioning from monolithic solutions and that must reskill their development teams.
  • Developer-friendly: Uniform provides front-end developers with the tools they need to enable their nontechnical business users, which decreases the reliance on developers for simple tasks, and increases their autonomy. This avoids gaps in some composable implementations where marketing requires developers, and developers must focus on differentiating applications, not daily marketing updates.
  • AI innovation: Uniform features powerful AI agents that can help users create content and experiences — for example, the webpage layout. It can also understand performance and suggest improvements without discovering trends in reports and hypothesize next actions.

  Cons:

  • CMS maturity: Uniform's CMS is relatively new and does not have the maturity or customer usage of others in this report. Prospects with complex content management needs, such as defining rules and relationships between content, should consider integrating a different CMS.
  • Non-native capabilities: Uniform's clients must supplement with other providers for capabilities that are not provided natively (such as customer journey analytics and customer data).
  • Uncertain future: Uniform Systems is a startup vendor with an uncertain future as larger vendors add similar capabilities that differentiate Uniform Systems to their DXPs. Prospective buyers should perform due diligence to assess how it serves their organizations' implementation needs if a partner is required.


• Builder.io - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Easy design functionality: Builder.io's design-to-code functionality reduces a major bottleneck in many projects by allowing Figma designs to be imported without the need for a specialist developer. This reduces training needs for in-house teams and the need for expensive DXP implementation partners.
  • Flexible layout: Builder.io's layout control caters for nontechnical users. It offers guardrails and flexibility over traditional templated approaches by allowing rapid adoption of modern, performant digital experiences.
  • Price structure: Builder.io is cost-effective, with pricing that can scale with increased adoption. This means that projects can be implemented as a proof of concept with predictable costs as adoption widens within the organization.

  Cons:

  • Uncertain future: Builder.io is a startup vendor with a future that is uncertain as some larger vendors add what is currently differentiated functionality for Builder.io to their DXPs. Prospects should closely examine the partner network and consider whether Builder.io has sufficient resources to support their requirements.
  • Retail focus: Builder.io has a strong retail focus in its existing customer base. Prospects with content-heavy digital experiences, where the volume of content takes priority over the design of the experience, should closely examine its CMS functionality.
  • Non-native functions: Builder.io clients must supplement and integrate with other providers for features such as customer journey analytics and customer data. Prospects should be aware of where they need to procure and integrate third-party solutions in order to meet their requirements.


• Contentful - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Composable, headless architecture: Contentful is available as a pure-play cloud-native, multitenant SaaS solution in a headless architecture. Prospects looking for modernization of their cloud infrastructure and leaning toward a composable, headless architecture find this appealing.
  • Brand awareness: Contentful has notable brand awareness and has been building out its portfolio from CMS-only toward a composable DXP. It is often included on shortlists by buyers interested in a composable approach.
  • Partner network: Contentful has a broad network of partners and systems integrators in Europe and North America, which gives new and existing customers plenty of options for both partners and surrounding technologies.

  Cons:

  • Organizational changes: Contentful has experienced a number of growing pains, from a complete overhaul of its C-suite to declining product innovation. This has resulted in stability concerns. Prospects should examine its roadmap and deliverables to help evaluate Contentful's ongoing vision.
  • Personalization: Contentful's native personalization features are comparatively nascent, as they're based on a recent August 2024 acquisition of Ninetailed. Prospects should be aware of potential challenges with user experience and the lack of some expected functionality like predictive analytics. Prospects must have a clear understanding of their own requirements when assessing this newly acquired functionality.
  • Developer focus: Contentful has historically been known for targeting the IT audience in its go-to-market and product strategy, rather than marketing and nontechnical business users. This leads to it not being considered by prospects with requirements around usability and ease of use for nontechnical users.


• CoreMedia - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Artificial intelligence: CoreMedia's AI (KIO) and 'blueprints' extend the utility of the platform, perform multistep processes, and provide in-app guidance showing a broad range of uses for AI.
  • Customer journey management: CoreMedia's customer journey management features are differentiating. It has increased the touchpoints that can be managed, including its contact center, to provide a broad picture of customer interactions.
  • Pricing: CoreMedia has updated its pricing to better align to the digital needs and maturity of its clients. Both composable and packaged pricing is available across its portfolio, meaning there is no need to overcommit, and that value can be aligned to each prospect's business cases.

  Cons:

  • UI needs simplification: CoreMedia Experience Platform's back-office UI is in need of an update. It provides powerful utility, but its usability falls behind other vendors in this evaluation. Prospects should assess usability for their use cases in customized demonstrations.
  • Limitations outside of Europe: CoreMedia has limited awareness and vendor resources outside of Europe. Prospective buyers in other regions should assess whether this solution can serve their needs.
  • Platform suitability: Some organizations that are less digitally mature, or that have less-sophisticated digital experience management requirements, are less likely to benefit from the full CoreMedia platform.


• Kentico - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Platform vision: Kentico has a broad range of DXP capabilities in a packaged 'one-stop shop' that is easy to use. It includes forms-based workflow and consent management as well as basic CRM functionality, making it a good choice for small to midsize organizations that lack these functions.
  • Strong growth: Kentico is growing its annual recurring revenue well above the market average, and investing in its new cloud offering, which now acts as its single go-to-market product.
  • Personalized experience management: Kentico's new visual page builder has built-in visual rule-based personalization features and integrations to third-party optimization tools, making content personalization easy to implement for nontechnical business users.

  Cons:

  • Innovation: Kentico has focused on replatforming and migrating customers to its new product and reaching feature parity with its previous platform. As a result, in 2023 it had a reduced focus on innovation compared with other vendors. Prospects should examine whether the current roadmap for deliverables aligns to their core business cases.
  • Market presence: Kentico has a good customer presence across a broad range of industries in EMEA and North America, but remains a small vendor compared with others in this research, and lacks market awareness elsewhere. Prospects might struggle to find regional implementation partners outside of EMEA and North America.
  • Search: Kentico's DXP lacks a productized site search engine. While a basic index can be implemented for customers, this requires configuration by the client. Prospects need to factor search requirements into their costs.


• Liferay - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • AI integration: Liferay's DXP wraps prebuilt integrations with various GenAI and applied AI applications into useful wizards for content and layout. An extensive set of headless APIs and batch processing facilitates ease of connectivity and utility of AI platforms.
  • Low code: Liferay's low-code development for nontechnical business users includes a new low-code API builder for intuitive control and configuration of API responses. This reduces the development resources needed for integration and configuration.
  • Composability: Liferay has embraced composable architecture by offering native PBCs and Liferay extensions that move native functionality into its extensions architecture. This balances SaaS service convenience with customizations or integrations outside of the core services.

  Cons:

  • Cloud strategy: While SaaS has become an available option, a high percentage of Liferay customers still run Liferay DXP primarily on-premises. Customers will slowly transition, which could impact both adoption rates and Liferay's investment in and innovation of its SaaS version.
  • Go-to-market: Liferay has historically focused on IT buyers, and not the customer base of nontechnical users. This may result in features and functionality that prioritize IT functions and efficiencies over business functions. This may not suit prospects who require improvement in those areas.
  • Documentation: Gartner Peer Insights reviewers report that Liferay documentation is hard to understand and often lacks the best practices required by developers. Prospects who are looking to customize this solution should carefully examine the documentation and training available.


• Pimcore - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Experience orchestration: Pimcore exposes data and interfaces from multiple applications and provides a single location in which to manage the delivered experience.
  • Developer flexibility: Pimcore appeals to builders rather than buyers as a highly extensible, open-source solution, providing a foundation on which developers build a solution suited to the customer's needs.
  • Data management: Pimcore's ability to manage content, digital assets, product information and master data — along with integrating, augmenting and transforming other sources of data — make it well-suited to retail and manufacturing clients that need to combine multiple sources to power their digital experiences.

  Cons:

  • Complex UI: Pimcore's appeal to developers comes at the expense of out-of-the-box user-friendly features. Its UI is at times complex. Prospective buyers should assess whether they have the necessary developer resources for this product.
  • Lack of brand awareness: Pimcore, which has historically provided an open-source solution, is now beginning to introduce commercial products and services that are intended to reach a global audience. Prospective buyers should conduct due diligence to resolve any concerns about its future market direction.
  • Limited geographic reach: Pimcore is relatively small in this market. It has limited geographic reach, and is reliant on its open-source roots. With a limited presence outside of EMEA, prospective buyers should consider whether they can access regional implementation partners.


• Progress - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Technology stack: Progress offers a solid technology stack for midcomplexity scenarios that combine out-of-the-box features with customization requirements that are well-addressed by deep and broad developer tooling. Midsize organizations find this balance particularly appealing.
  • Customer data management: Progress has advanced in its expansion of its customer data management feature set, with real-time predictions and conversion probability aimed specifically at business and marketing users.
  • Authenticated experiences: Progress is a good fit for authenticated portal-like experiences. B2B and B2C organizations with a strong emphasis on logged-in experiences, or B2C organizations with security and customization requirements, find this appealing.

  Cons:

  • Cloud strategy: Progress' cloud strategy can be confusing to both existing customers and prospects due to multiple hosting options, from on-premises to self-hosted to PaaS to SaaS. Client adoption of its newest SaaS with Next.js release is lagging compared with other vendors in this market, and the majority of its customers prefer the Microsoft PaaS stack.
  • Brand awareness: Progress has low brand awareness. Many prospects do not consider it in their DXP selections and shortlists, even when there is a good fit. Where it meets their core use cases, prospects should carry out due diligence.
  • Developer-focused legacy: Progress' history is as a developer-centric DXP. Although it has added many marketing-related features in recent years, it doesn't offer the same breadth of marketing-focused features and solutions as some of the larger marketing-focused DXP vendors featured here.


• Squiz - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Sector expertise: Squiz has a good understanding of the needs and system integration requirements of higher education, local government and energy and utilities clients among other verticals, with accelerators available to decrease time to value.
  • Licensing flexibility: Squiz DXP licensing is flexible and does not preclude clients from accessing any of the more advanced features of the platform, enabling a 'try before you buy' approach as customer demands and priorities change.
  • AI innovation: Squiz provides AI tools that help with migration from other systems, including analysis of HTML for common traits for components. This provides potential savings on a significant area of work for most DXP implementations.

  Cons:

  • Innovation: While improved, Squiz's innovation pace remains behind some others in this report. Prospects that are looking to differentiate their digital experiences may need to integrate with other solutions for more advanced functionality.
  • Complex functionality: Some functional areas in Squiz DXP are more co-dependent than the majority of vendors in this report. Prospects must examine the dependencies and the functionality needed to meet their use cases.
  • Limited market visibility: Squiz DXP is rarely a candidate in DXP selections outside of the regions in which it has offices. Prospects must examine Squiz's ability to serve them in their region.

Reference

• Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms, 28-Jan-2025, ID G00811676

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