1. Cloud-first strategy
Ektron CMS has been a great platform for companies looking to host their licensed solution on-premise or with a third party hosting provider. But the future is Cloud, and who wouldn’t want to take advantage of all of the benefits a cloud solution has to offer?
The Episerver Digital Experience Platform service provides elastic scale, super high speed, robust security, a continuous release cycle, and a fully managed service with expert support – all without the large and costly up-front investment. With Episerver’s cloud service, you pay only for the needs you have today but are ready to grow in an instant. Episerver eliminates the need to plan your IT infrastructure all at once, so you’re able to adapt to new opportunities as they come up. One partner manages the entire delivery, ensuring a simple, fast and effective project lifecycle.
Customers who implement the Digital Experience Platform service can save up to $690,500 over five years compared to similar high-end infrastructure and management setups.
2. GDPR, Data Privacy and Security
Episerver runs on ASP.NET MVC, rather than ASP.NET Web Forms, which means the technology is inherently more secure. While the Ektron CMS has been updated and improved over the years, addressing security vulnerabilities as they arise, Episerver Digital Experience Platform™ is supported by a model of security-by-design where security is considered an integral component of the architecture. Beyond web based security, many other considerations are addressed and covered by the Episerver Digital Experience Platform including protection of assets, monitoring, reporting, and advanced technologies that continuously stay ahead of the curve, preventing potential threats.
Utilizing Episerver’s Digital Experience Platform Service is also the most effective way to ensure your organization is best placed to accommodate the rigors of the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) adopted in April 2016. GDPR will replace the Data Protection Directive 95/46/ec in Spring 2018 as the primary law regulating how companies protect EU citizens’ personal data. The fastest way to achieve GDPR readiness and compliance is via our cloud package, as opposed to a perpetual Ektron license.
To learn more about Episerver security, please visit the Episerver Trust Center.
3. Advanced e-commerce capabilities
While both Ektron and Episerver have given companies an edge by combining content and commerce into one unified platform, it’s no secret that Episerver has done a better job. Ektron Commerce is less of a product and more of a module, offering customers limited extensibility and minimal control over the UX, and lacking a true product catalog. Episerver Digital Experience Platform for digital commerce provides Ektron customers a way to expand their commerce initiatives with better catalog management, a vastly improved content and commerce UX for authors and visitors alike, increased support for multiple markets, coupons, pricing, inventory, and the ease in which it integrates and works with other business systems.
4. Intelligent personalization
Ektron CMS users can access limited personalization functionality via the Targeted Content Widget in Ektron, which works similar to personalizing blocks in Episerver. But Episerver’s method of combining structured content schemas with page layout management makes it easier to personalize content on all pages, not just on PageBuilder-managed layouts. The Ektron widget also requires personalization rules to be configured for each and every placement, while Episerver Visitor Groups centralize necessary criteria to identify each audience segment making it easier to target relevant content to them. Authors can then preview personalized pages as a member of each group. This, of course, only describes the differences between personalization in Ektron and the rules-based personalization capabilities provided out-of-the-box in Episerver.
If you consider the differences between personalization in Ektron and personalization with the new Episerver Personalization suite of intelligent personalization products including Personalized Find, Episerver Reach, Episerver Advance, Episerver Perform, and Episerver Insight, it’s a whole new ballgame.
By applying machine learning, artificial intelligence and statistical analysis to your visitors’ behavioral data, Episerver Personalization can autonomously present individualized content and product selections in multiple channels, without complicated configuration. These product recommendations for web and email, and automatic triggers and actions quickly increase conversions, average order value, and customer satisfaction.
5. On-page editing (and preview across devices!)
Ektron CMS currently supports on-page editing in very select contexts (e.g. PageBuilder and plain HTML content), meaning the majority of content discovery and editing is performed in a tool called the ‘Workarea.’ Episerver instead places nearly all content editing in-context. Text is entered as it is to be styled on the page, bringing the idea of WYSIWYG to every property of the content. Episerver also allows authors to work on atomized content elements – blocks and media – while working on the page that hosts them. Images can be dragged and dropped into the system and then directly onto the page without ever navigating away from your content. Editors can preview content as it will appear to visitors on any screen including, for example, an iPhone or iPad. Content will dynamically adjust to the best display for phone, tablet or computer, while also giving editors the freedom to edit directly in each screen preview.
Overall, the unparalleled ease of use offered by the Episerver user interface provides a more seamless and discoverable experience for authors, reducing the time and cost of training (and re-training) employees.
