Selecting Your DXP Vendor: The Importance of B2B Online Software Reviews

If you’re considering making the move to a new web content management solution (CMS) or digital experience platform (DXP) to help you engage customers with personalized, content-rich digital experiences, sifting through the field of potential choices can be a bit overwhelming. 

DXPs give both marketers and developers a core set of software tools for orchestrating digital experiences across a vast array of customer touchpoints, and the decision to invest in a particular DXP is often made jointly across the marketing and IT departments. Once you’ve made the decision to re-platform, the selection process typically involves three major steps: 

1. Select a short-list of vendors
2. Develop an RFP process 
3. Create an RFP template for vendors

The first step – creating your short-list – is crucial.

Before you get started on your short-list, it’s important to have a clear vision for your desired buyer’s journey and an understanding of the delta between how you are meeting their needs today (with whatever CMS you have in place) and all the ways you want to create more compelling digital experiences across all potential customer touchpoints. This will help you understand the points of greatest impact and what type of technology you need to accelerate your time to revenue.

Do the research.

Everyone knows that vendors all believe their solutions are the greatest innovations since avocado toast, so while poring over vendor websites and marketing material is important for gathering broad information, you’ll also want to dig deeper.

Many companies rely on software industry analyst firms that provide insights about various vendors in a specific space. For DXPs, this includes reports like the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms or Research in Action’s Vendor Selection Matrix for Digital Experience Management. These reviews will give you more objective, expert assessments of the quality and capabilities of the various software vendors and platforms and which vendors are innovating and leading in the market (which are not always the same).

Dig into B2B online software reviews.

A relatively newer – and potentially even more valuable – source of information about vendors is through B2B online software reviews on sites like Gartner Peer Insights, TrustRadius, G2 and Capterra. These reviews from users augment the experts’ opinions by gathering real-world experiences of companies like yours that are using the solutions you are evaluating. 

The importance of these customer-driven reviews cannot be understated. Just as Airbnb or TripAdvisor can help you avoid choosing the wrong hotel on your next vacation, reviews from customers who have kicked the tires, implemented the solutions, and experienced the vendors’ quality of customer support can give you a clearer view of the vendors that are doing the best job of delivering on their promises. 

Gartner Peer Insights and TrustRadius elevate customer voices.

Two of the top sources for these independent customer reviews, Gartner Peer Insights and TrustRadius, provide an open mic for customers to have their say on which vendors are doing the best job for them. In the Gartner Peer Insights 'Voice of the Customer' for Digital Experience Platforms report, the e-Spirit FirstSpirit DXP has one of the best overall rating scores of 4.6/5 and the highest rating for customer support (4.7/5)* among the companies listed. And if you explore a bit further, you’ll see that Crownpeak has one of the highest ratings in the category (4.8/ 5 over the last12 months)**. In TrustRadius, users of Crownpeak DXM voted it the Top-Rated CMS and DXP for two years in a row. 

It’s great to see these reviews, because with the Crownpeak acquisition of e-Spirit, we’re now a double powerhouse when it comes to customer reviews of the high ROI of our DXP-related offerings. While we love to showcase the industry accolades the Crownpeak family of best-of-breed, composable Digital Experience Management Solutions (Crownpeak DXM and e-Spirit FirstSpirit DXP) has received from top analyst firms, the evaluations and comments from our customers are especially gratifying because they tell other potential customers that we are walking our talk.  

Here’s just a sampling from our collective Gartner Peer Insights customer reviews:

Crownpeak: Fantastic versatility, flexibility and support
"Crownpeak is a highly versatile and flexible platform allowing companies to leverage their strong foundation and build on that as needed. In addition, as a SaaS product, there is no need to handle system or infrastructure upgrades which are costly, time-consuming and challenging. They are always evaluating the platform and capturing customer feedback to provide enhancements to their platform. In addition, Crownpeak has an excellent team of account managers, support staff and development teams. There can be a lag/slowness when using the system. I recognize that some of this could be attributed to my company's network bandwidth at certain times of the day, but it can be a challenge." 
— Director, Digital Experience in the Healthcare Industry

FirstSpirit: A reliable tool
"FirstSpirit helps us with automate personalization. It is a tool that has helped us to deliver quality and relevant content to our customers whatever the channels they use. We have been able to reach customers on multiple channels, curate and tailor our content to meet their expectations. The visual content editing feature is fun to use as well."
— Environmental And Social Risk Analyst in the Finance Industry

Crownpeak: Excellent Product / Best Support Team Ever
"Great support. Highly knowledgeable and talented development team. Appreciate the professionalism and being made to feel like a high priority!"
— Webmaster in the Government Industry

FirstSpirit: A DXP that helps us to improve overall customer experience and increase conversion rates
"A flexible DXP with easy multiexperience orchestration with great AI personalization. Fast reaction and it always took only a short time to answer our questions - this is how customer service should look like."
— Online Content Manager in the Manufacturing Industry

Crownpeak: Crownpeak - CMS/DXM Speed to market and flexibility
"Excellent experience with Crownpeak. The flexible architecture allows us speed-to-market advantages. They have a very responsive service from a dedicated customer success team and they have been very engaged in ensuring our success."
— Senior Director of Digital in the Finance Industry

FirstSpirit: e-Spirit FirstSpirit CMS is best in class 
“e-Spirit FirstSpirit CMS has been running for our NA business since 2018 and is now implemented for our WE business as well. It has performed well with our CMS editors and is a great integration with the Salesforce Commerce Cloud e-commerce platform."
— Web Developer in the Retail Industry

According to marketing expert Scott Brinker, the martech landscape now includes 8,000 solutions and has experienced 5,233% growth within 10 years’ time. Sorting through that kind of volume makes anyone’s head spin. 

When selecting a DXP, we strongly encourage everyone to narrow the field by including peer reviews as key components when developing short-lists. To get a better feel for what a DXP can do for you, nothing beats a personalized demo. Get yours now!

* Ratings based on 29 reviews as of April 2021.
** Rating based on 9 reviews as on 7 July 2021.
Gartner Peer Insights reviews constitute the subjective opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences and do not represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates.