Adobe’s website announced shutting down of Business Catalyst as well as ending development of the design application Muse. While the initial date publicized for the Business Catalyst end of life was scheduled to be 26th March 2020, it has extended this date for a year to 26th March 2021.
One more announcement that Adobe has made following customer complaints other than Business catalyst closing down timeline, is the ability to upgrade trial sites to pay.
Recognizing these challenges, Adobe made the second announcement that it is “extending the ability to upgrade trial sites to paid until 8/27 (was 6/18). This new date provides you with 5 months past the End of Life Announcement to close all of your on-going projects”.
Plus, it has also declared that “New sites will no longer be available to purchase starting with June 18th, 2018”.
So, starting end of March 2021, Adobe will start to delete all websites and data, clearly, this is something you can’t put off to the last minute. While the extended date does give you extra time to move to a different platform, you are probably stumped as to what to do next.
Now that Business Catalyst is dead- what to do?
One of the biggest appeals of the Adobe business Catalyst was that it provided an “all-in-one” solution for sites, e-commerce stores, lead forms, CRM, email marketing and analytics.
While the solution is fantastic, the service is, unfortunately, shutting down. It not just moving a website but finding a new solution for almost every part of a modern business’ necessary marketing tools.
But, there are few important things to remember.
- Between now and 2021 you have adequate time to migrate and rebuild your website.
- Your website still functions the same way it has always had- this doesn’t change.
- With other changes (like https security browsing now being standard), this is another reason for you to appraise your website strategy.
So, what are the best Adobe Business Catalyst alternatives?
SAP Hybris
SAP Hybris assists businesses to sell more goods, services, and digital content via every touchpoint, device and channel through its multi-channel e-commerce solution, available as a SaaS (Software as a service) or on-premise. It provides ‘OmniCommerce’ approach which means offering master data management along with unified commerce processes providing a business a uniform view of its customers, products, and orders. Vice-versa, it also gives the customs a unified view of the business; it is built modularly and flexible in order to match B2B and B2C commerce needs.
Sitecore
Sitecore web content management is an enterprise-grade CMS which delivers fairly comprehensive in-built features. Within Sitecore, WCM editing can be done from within the page with inline editor-permitting editors and authors to generate display rules and content within the context of the page in an integrated process.
Its features also include analytics, social media integration, mobile accessibility to provide a tailored environment that is sensitive to user’s characteristics. Regionalization means that it allows end-user to view content in their language, consistently. It also has an AppCenter, where features can be augmented and expanded.
Sitecore is a paid platform and prices vary as per implementation and scale.
Magento Enterprise
Magento is an open-source e-commerce content management solution. The enterprise edition displays a simple solution developed for larger businesses or the speedily growing ones.
In Magento, visitor data is employed for customer segmentation and personalization of shopping experience – via targeted promos, coupons and recommendations. Sites generate SEO friendly URLs, customized meta tags, a Google site map for product discovery. Segmented or complete site-wide and targeted suggestions are created from rule-based product-relations logic, to increase up-sells and cross-sells, and interactive features including “likes” and tweets allow visitors to broadcast their choices and create buzz around products.
Magento is extremely extensible with add-ons like more advanced caching, searching, themes to modify appearance etc. Training and implementation support are available, and a free demo to try Magento is also available.
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is an e-commerce plugin for WordPress; like it, it is designed to be extendable, adaptable and open-sourced platform. WooCommerce permits merchants to sell goods, download-ables or services. The free core comprises of various features which include Storefront, five pre-installed payment gateways (including Direct bank transfer and PayPal), product listing management, free WordPress theme designed for e-commerce, shipping and cart calculators, coupons and customer account registration etc.
There are many extensions available – like WooCommerce Bookings which are for e-merchants selling rentals, appointments or services.
Umbraco
Umbraco CMS is an open source .NET content management system. There are a number of add-ons available to extend the product.
Umbraco is free (but there are fees tied to support and some add-ons) and highly flexible. Its features include full-version control of all content, over design and markup, simple editing and publishing, scheduling content publishing, fully-flexible grid editing, multi-language capabilities, workflow and event tracking.
There is vast developer community for Umbraco which issues many free and open-source add-ons – extending to themes, analytics, social connectors etc. Umbraco puts emphasis on speed, performance, and simplicity.
While a new install with an entirely modified design may take more time to run – as the document types, partial views, page templates, and controls – all are required to be made by a developer, but, this does give an advanced level of flexibility in the development of the site. Plus, CMS Connected writes that Umbraco’s back office is fully responsive, so edits via tablet or phones can be done.
Conclusion
Explore the recommended list of Business Catalyst alternatives for your business in 2018 and compare them side by side to find out which suits you the best.
