Gartner has released its 2023 Magic Quadrant for digital experience platforms (DXP).
Such platforms help to manage the digital experience for partners, employees, and customers.
The emphasis is typically on the latter, with several features designed to enhance online customer journeys.
Content management, journey mapping, and analytics tools are just a few examples.
Yet, with so many capabilities to flitter through, isolating the best-fit DXP vendor is challenging.
Thankfully, the Gartner Magic Quadrant pulls out some of the most pressing strengths and cautions of 14 prominent players.
This year, the analyst isolated four market leaders.
A Definition of Digital Experience Platforms
A DXP platform centralizes a suite of solutions that enable businesses to build, manage, and optimize digital experiences.
It does so by combining journey orchestration with several other applications, paving the way for a more seamless customer experience.
However, DXP platforms also contain capabilities that allow employees to support their journeys.
All these features come either natively or in the form of tight integrations.
They include content management tools, personalization engines, analytics, account services, data management solutions, collaboration kits, and more.
Leading providers also delve into spaces such as digital commerce, marketing automation, and sometimes even CRM.
As such, the sector is incredibly diverse, making the task of categorizing vendors tricky.
Nevertheless, Gartner has attempted to do so, splitting 14 providers into four categories: Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, and Niche Players. Here, we review them all.
Gartner Magic Quadrant Leaders
Leaders influence the market direction, pairing a carefully constructed, creative vision with a track record for delivering the desired customer outcomes. As such, they excel in many arenas, including market understanding, completeness of features, and overall viability. This year’s leaders are:
- Adobe
- Optimizely
- Acquia
- Sitecore
Adobe
The Adobe Experience Cloud is perhaps the most prominent DXP in the report. Gartner believes its substantial market share stems from it being a "proven and mature" solution. Other strengths include its broad set of functionalities and expansive ecosystem, which help the vendor serve customers across businesses of all shapes and sizes. It is also starting to deliver sector-specific innovations, with the recent launch of Adobe Experience Cloud for Healthcare an excellent example.
Optimizely
Like Adobe, Optimizely offers a deep product set devised for businesses that take a suite approach to digital experience and those that prefer a more modular, mature strategy. Its Liquid templating and JavaScript hosting for front ends also support diverse delivery needs. Gartner acknowledges these as key strengths, alongside its pricing and packaging strategy that is "simple, scalable, modular and transparent" compared to rival offerings.
Acquia
Acquia’s Drupal Cloud and Marketing Cloud come together to form a comprehensive DXP. A "standout feature" of which – according to Gartner – is its Site Factory. The solution allows customer experience teams to design, launch, and manage websites from a single code base. Acquia also secured plaudits for data management, machine learning, and low-code applications across its portfolio. Finally, its commitment to employee experience innovation gains praise from the analyst.
Sitecore
Sitecore combines its Content Cloud, Engagement Cloud, and Commerce Cloud solutions to provide an "all-in-one DXP". In driving forwards toward the cloud, Sitecore champions composability, building incrementally rather than in one fell swoop. Gartner considers this approach a core strength, alongside Sitecore’s investment in delivering technology that is quick to deploy and its customer support and guidance prerogative.
Gartner Magic Quadrant Challengers
Challengers boast a track record for driving outcomes that meet customer demands. With this, these vendors have developed a significant install base. Nonetheless, Gartner deems that they trail leaders in their vision, which may impact their ability to meet future requirements. This year’s leaders are: