# Best Salesforce Experience Cloud Alternatives in 2026

> Salesforce Experience Cloud is the best portal you can put in front of CRM data and a weak content platform to put in front of a marketing team. Most organizations bought it for the first and fight the second.

Platform Alternatives by DXP Scorecard Analyst Team · Published 2026-10-03 · Reviewed 2026-10-03 · Ratings updated 2026-10-03
Source: https://www.dxpscorecard.com/editorials/salesforce-experience-cloud-alternatives

## The short answer

HubSpot Content Hub and Contentful are the strongest Salesforce Experience Cloud alternatives in 2026. HubSpot Content Hub gives marketers landing pages, forms, email and SEO on a CRM at published prices. Contentful, now owned by Salesforce, is the headless content layer Salesforce itself recommends. Contentstack, SitecoreAI and Optimizely SaaS CMS are strong alternatives, Liferay is the closest portal match, and Acquia covers the public sector.

## Key takeaways

- Nobody leaves Experience Cloud because the portal is bad. They leave because the marketing site, the help center or the brand pages ended up on it, and every landing page needs a Lightning Web Component developer at $150 to $250 an hour.
- The bill has three axes that are hard to forecast: internal seats from $195 per user per month, unpublished per-login or per-member external licenses, and Flex Credits for agents. Contracts carry an 8 to 10 percent renewal uplift and no mid-term downgrade.
- Decide what stays. Authenticated customer and partner portals that read live CRM records, B2B Commerce and Agentforce are hard to replace. Public content is easy to move and is where every platform here does better.
- Salesforce now owns Contentful and positions it, not Experience Cloud, as its headless content platform. If you want the Salesforce relationship without the Experience Cloud authoring model, that is the sanctioned path.
- Compliance is the one place Experience Cloud is hard to beat: FedRAMP High, Department of Defense Impact Level 5, HIPAA and 17 or more residency countries. Acquia, Adobe Experience Manager and SitecoreAI get closest; the rest hold SOC 2 and ISO 27001 and stop there.

## Our picks at a glance

- **Best within the Salesforce family:** Contentful. Salesforce-owned headless, four APIs, audit streaming.
- **Best for marketing teams:** HubSpot Content Hub. Landing pages, forms, email, published prices.
- **Best enterprise suite:** SitecoreAI. Multi-brand governance, bundled personalization, AI agents.
- **Best for experimentation:** Optimizely SaaS CMS. Native testing Experience Cloud never had.
- **Best portal replacement:** Liferay. Field-level permissions, B2B commerce, no per-login fee.
- **Best for public sector:** Acquia. FedRAMP, HIPAA and site fleets on Drupal.

## Our analysts' take

Salesforce Experience Cloud is the strongest platform we rate for authenticated portals. Customers, partners and employees see live CRM records governed by the same sharing rules as internal staff, B2B Commerce runs on the same pages with account-specific pricing and request-for-quote, and Agentforce puts governed AI agents in front of portal users from one vendor. Its compliance portfolio, from FedRAMP High and Department of Defense Impact Level 5 to the Hyperforce EU Operating Zone, is among the broadest in software. Organizations that bought it for a portal on a Salesforce estate should probably keep that portal. This guide is for the content that should never have lived there.

That content is usually the marketing site, the help center or a set of brand pages. On Experience Cloud those run on a flat content model of up to 100 types with 15 fields each, with no nested components, no co-editing, no A/B testing and no asset versioning. New layouts need Lightning Web Component development at $150 to $250 an hour. The bill stacks per-user CRM editions, external licenses that Salesforce publishes nowhere, and consumption credits, then adds an 8 to 10 percent uplift at renewal; the September 2026 edition overhaul raised the Core seat from $175 to $195 per user per month. Two guest-user data exposures, one unnoticed for about 17 months, and a 7.5-hour outage during Dreamforce 2026 gave security teams their own reasons to look.

This guide rates eight realistic destinations. Two are content platforms a marketing team can run without a Salesforce developer, one of them now owned by Salesforce. Three are enterprise suites with built-in personalization and multi-brand governance. One is a portal platform for the logged-in experience without the CRM license model. Two are compliance-first platforms for regulated buyers. The ratings lean on marketer self-service and budget predictability, because those are the two complaints that start every Experience Cloud exit, then on campaign tools and compliance.

## What to look for

1. **Pages without a Salesforce developer.** Have your marketers build a landing page, change a component and publish in each trial. On Experience Cloud that is a development ticket. On most platforms here it is an afternoon.
2. **A bill with one meter, not three.** Write down what you pay for internal seats, external logins or members and consumption credits. Ask each vendor what it meters and for the price at twice today's traffic and users. Several platforms here publish prices; the rest at least sell a fixed subscription.
3. **Testing and conversion built in.** Experience Cloud has no A/B testing, conversion tracking or campaign tooling of its own. Decide whether the replacement must include experimentation and personalization. The suites include it; the headless platforms hand it off.
4. **The CRM connection you keep.** List what flows from the site into Salesforce today: leads, cases, account data for personalization. Every platform here connects to Salesforce CRM, but the depth differs. Ask for the connector in a live demo.
5. **Compliance you will not waive.** FedRAMP High, Impact Level 5 and HIPAA rule out most of the market. Write down the certifications procurement requires, then check each vendor's documents. If the mandatory list is long, the shortlist is Acquia, Adobe Experience Manager and SitecoreAI.

## The ratings at a glance

Fit score out of 10, weighted for this topic. Ratings run Limited, Fair, Good, Strong, Excellent.

| Rank | Platform | Fit | Marketer self-service | Budget predictability | Campaign & growth tools | Security & compliance | Speed to launch | Low IT upkeep |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | [HubSpot Content Hub](https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/hubspot-cms) | 7.1 | Good | Good | Strong | Strong | Good | Fair |
| 2 | [Contentstack](https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/contentstack) | 6.9 | Good | Good | Good | Strong | Good | Good |
| 3 | [Contentful](https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/contentful) | 6.4 | Good | Fair | Fair | Strong | Good | Fair |
| 4 | [SitecoreAI](https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/sitecore-ai) | 6.3 | Strong | Limited | Good | Strong | Fair | Fair |
| 5 | [Optimizely SaaS CMS](https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/optimizely-saas) | 6.2 | Good | Limited | Good | Good | Fair | Good |
| 6 | [Acquia](https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/acquia) | 5.8 | Good | Limited | Good | Good | Limited | Fair |
| 7 | [Adobe Experience Manager](https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/aem) | 5.7 | Strong | Limited | Strong | Strong | Limited | Limited |
| 8 | [Liferay](https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/liferay) | 5.4 | Fair | Limited | Fair | Strong | Limited | Limited |

## The shortlist, reviewed

### 1. HubSpot Content Hub (Fit 7.1/10)

The CRM-attached CMS that marketers can run alone. Landing pages, forms, email, automation, SEO and answer engine optimization are built in, with closed-loop attribution to the HubSpot CRM. A two-way Salesforce sync keeps leads flowing to sales, and every tier has a published price with no onboarding fee.

- **Best for:** Marketing teams that put a campaign site or help center on Experience Cloud and want to publish and convert without a developer.
- **Watch out for:** A rigid content model built around the CRM, templates written in the proprietary HubL language, and A/B testing, SSO and custom objects reserved for Professional and Enterprise. Not a portal and not a commerce platform.
- **What it costs:** Published. Professional from $450 per month (three seats), Enterprise from $1,500 per month. AI runs on HubSpot Credits.
- **Full scorecard:** https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/hubspot-cms (Markdown: https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/hubspot-cms.md)

### 2. Contentstack (Fit 6.9/10)

The enterprise headless platform with the strongest publishing governance in its class. Workflows run to 20 stages, publish rules gate releases by branch, language and environment, and Agent OS runs AI agents with every action logged. A Salesforce Commerce Cloud product picker is official, and the Free, Build and Growth plans are published.

- **Best for:** Global content teams with strict approval chains that want governed AI agents, a published entry price and no upgrades to run.
- **Watch out for:** No forms, email or personalization of its own, nothing for portals or intranets, and protected health and payment card data are prohibited by contract.
- **What it costs:** Free plan, Build at $29 per month, Growth at $299 per month plus $25 per extra user; Enterprise quote-only. AI runs on metered credits.
- **Full scorecard:** https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/contentstack (Markdown: https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/contentstack.md)

### 3. Contentful (Fit 6.4/10)

The headless content platform Salesforce bought on September 1, 2026 and now positions ahead of Experience Cloud for content. Four purpose-built APIs, field-level localization across 100 or more locales, native personalization since the Ninetailed acquisition, and audit logs streamed to your own cloud storage. Nothing to patch.

- **Best for:** Salesforce customers with a development team who want a modern content layer for web and mobile while keeping the CRM relationship.
- **Watch out for:** Only the $300 a month Lite plan is published; single sign-on, custom roles and workflows need an Enterprise contract. No integration roadmap with Salesforce has been published and several API changes are in flight on short notice.
- **What it costs:** Free plan, Lite at $300 per month; Premium and Enterprise quote-only. AI Actions are metered.
- **Full scorecard:** https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/contentful (Markdown: https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/contentful.md)

### 4. SitecoreAI (Fit 6.3/10)

The enterprise suite with the broadest match for a multi-brand marketing estate. Page builder is a drag-and-drop editor, Site Collections isolate each brand, and the customer data platform and Personalize are bundled. Agentic Studio runs 20 prebuilt agents under AI governance certified to ISO 42001, with SOC 2 and ISO 27001 behind it.

- **Best for:** Large multi-brand enterprises that chose Experience Cloud for governance and compliance and now want a marketing platform with personalization built in.
- **Watch out for:** Quote-only with no free tier, no native commerce, and a record of pulling retirement dates forward: Explorer's date moved from October 1 to September 22, 2026, about 20 days' notice.
- **What it costs:** Quote-only. No published tiers. Customer data platform and Personalize are included in the base license; AI usage has a fair-use cap of 50,000 interactions a year.
- **Full scorecard:** https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/sitecore-ai (Markdown: https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/sitecore-ai.md)

### 5. Optimizely SaaS CMS (Fit 6.2/10)

The managed suite with the deepest experimentation in the market, the biggest gap in Experience Cloud. A/B and multivariate testing and contextual bandits run inside Visual Builder, Opal orchestrates AI agents, and Optimizely handles every upgrade. ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type 2 and a HIPAA-enabled variant cover most regulated buyers.

- **Best for:** Enterprise marketing teams that want testing and personalization in the editor and a fully managed platform with nothing to operate.
- **Watch out for:** Quote-only with median contracts near $78,000 a year, add-ons for experimentation and AI, auto-renewing terms, and no fit for portals or intranets. A February 2026 breach by voice phishing weighs on the security record.
- **What it costs:** Quote-only. Priced on traffic and feature tier, with experimentation and AI as add-ons on credits.
- **Full scorecard:** https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/optimizely-saas (Markdown: https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/optimizely-saas.md)

### 6. Acquia (Fit 5.8/10)

The compliance match for public-sector and healthcare buyers who cannot drop below FedRAMP. Acquia Cloud is FedRAMP Moderate authorized with 26 agency authorizations and holds HIPAA with a business associate agreement. Site Factory runs hundreds of Drupal sites from one codebase, and Drupal Canvas gives marketers a page builder.

- **Best for:** Government, healthcare and higher education organizations running many public sites under strict compliance mandates.
- **Watch out for:** Quote-only enterprise tiers, production work that still needs Drupal specialists, and a stack of vendor-set deadlines including Drupal 10 end of support on December 9, 2026. FedRAMP Moderate is a step below Experience Cloud's High.
- **What it costs:** Quote-only for the enterprise platform; tier names are public, dollar figures are not.
- **Full scorecard:** https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/acquia (Markdown: https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/acquia.md)

### 7. Adobe Experience Manager (Fit 5.7/10)

The widest enterprise platform we rate and the natural destination for organizations already on Adobe Experience Cloud. AEM Assets is the strongest digital asset manager in the market, Multi Site Manager governs hundreds of sites from a blueprint, and the compliance portfolio covers SOC 2, ISO 27001 and a HIPAA business associate agreement.

- **Best for:** Large enterprises standardized on Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target that need asset management and multi-site governance at scale.
- **Watch out for:** Quote-only pricing metered on content requests, a proprietary Java stack with scarce specialists, and 111 vulnerabilities published in September 2026 alone. It swaps one expensive specialist platform for another.
- **What it costs:** Quote-only. Third-party guides put full site builds at $500,000 to $1 million in services alone.
- **Full scorecard:** https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/aem (Markdown: https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/aem.md)

### 8. Liferay (Fit 5.4/10)

The closest match for the portal itself. Permissions reach the field level and inherit through an organization hierarchy, SAML, OpenID Connect, LDAP and SCIM are built in, and native B2B commerce covers account hierarchies, contract pricing and quote workflows. Salesforce and SAP connectors are included, and a $0 Free Tier arrived in 2026.

- **Best for:** Organizations that need customer, partner or employee portals with fine-grained access control and B2B commerce but do not want to pay per CRM seat and external login.
- **Watch out for:** Quote-only enterprise pricing, a Java platform with many concepts to learn and a 3 to 5 person team to run, a mandatory Jakarta migration described as a re-platforming project, and no co-editing or native email.
- **What it costs:** Quote-only for every enterprise, SaaS and PaaS plan; a $0 Free Tier arrived with the 2026.Q1 release. SaaS plans meter monthly active logged-in users and anonymous page views.
- **Full scorecard:** https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/liferay (Markdown: https://www.dxpscorecard.com/platform/liferay.md)

## Three things people mean when they say Experience Cloud

Experience Cloud is one license covering three very different jobs. Migrations go wrong when they try to move all three at once. Name which one hurts before you shortlist.

- **The authenticated portal.** Customers checking cases, partners registering deals, employees raising requests. This is the job Experience Cloud does better than anything here, because the sharing model and the CRM are one system. Replace it only if the per-login license is the problem; then Liferay is the honest match.
- **The public marketing site.** Campaign pages, brand sites and the corporate home page. This is where marketers wait weeks for component work and get no testing. HubSpot Content Hub, SitecoreAI, Optimizely SaaS CMS and Contentful all do this better, and most of them do it cheaper.
- **The help center.** Knowledge articles, FAQs and self-service content. Keep Salesforce Knowledge as the system of record if agents write in it, and publish it through Contentful or HubSpot Content Hub when the public help site needs SEO, design and faster publishing than Experience Builder allows.

## Questions to settle before you commit

- **Which content reads live CRM records?** Pages that show account-specific data, case status or partner pricing depend on the sharing model. Those stay or move to a portal platform. Everything else is ordinary content and migrates to any CMS here.
- **What is the real external-user bill?** Salesforce publishes no price for Authenticated Portal or Customer Community licenses, and secondhand figures run $2 to $35 per login or member per month. Get your actual rate and the renewal uplift in writing, then compare it with a flat subscription.
- **Who owns the Salesforce connection afterward?** Leads, cases and consent still need to land in CRM. HubSpot Content Hub syncs natively, Contentful pulls customer profiles from Salesforce CRM into its personalization engine, and every suite here has a connector. Test the one you will rely on before signing.
- **How do you prevent the next guest-user exposure?** Two campaigns harvested data from over-permissioned Experience Cloud guest users, one of them for about 17 months. Whatever stays on Experience Cloud needs a guest-profile audit now; whatever moves should land where public pages carry no record access at all.
- **What does the exit cost?** Salesforce content exports in formats no other platform imports, and Apex logic, Flows and sharing rules do not travel. Budget 6 to 18 months for a portal rebuild and three to six months for a marketing site, and make sure the replacement exports cleanly.

## Frequently asked questions

### Why do companies leave Salesforce Experience Cloud?

Mostly because marketing content ended up on a portal platform. Experience Cloud has no A/B testing, no co-editing, a flat content model capped at 15 fields per type and no asset versioning, and every new layout needs a Lightning Web Component developer. The bill stacks CRM seats from $195 per user per month, unpublished external-user licenses and consumption credits, with an 8 to 10 percent uplift at renewal.

### What is the best alternative to Salesforce Experience Cloud?

Contentful for organizations that want a modern content platform and the Salesforce relationship, since Salesforce now owns it and positions it as its headless CMS. HubSpot Content Hub for marketing teams that want landing pages, forms, email and SEO on a CRM at published prices. SitecoreAI and Optimizely SaaS CMS are the suite options, and Liferay is the closest replacement for the portal itself.

### Is Contentful replacing Salesforce Experience Cloud?

Not officially. Salesforce closed its acquisition of Contentful on September 1, 2026, and Experience Cloud continues to ship seasonal releases. Salesforce positions Contentful as its headless content platform and Experience Cloud as its portal product, and the two overlap on content. No integration roadmap has been published, so ask for commitments at renewal.

### Can I keep my Salesforce portal and move only the marketing site?

Yes, and it is the most common pattern. Authenticated customer, partner and employee portals stay on Experience Cloud, where they read live CRM records under the sharing model. Public campaign and brand pages move to HubSpot Content Hub, Contentful, SitecoreAI or Optimizely SaaS CMS, with leads flowing back to the CRM through a connector.

### How long does a migration off Salesforce Experience Cloud take?

Three to six months for a public marketing site, because the content is ordinary pages and media that export and import cleanly. Six to 18 months for a full portal, because Apex logic, Flows, sharing rules and content models have to be rebuilt rather than moved. Ask any partner for a reference of similar size.

## How we rated these platforms

Each rating combines the relevant criteria from the DXP Scorecard's independent scorecards into a five-point scale. The Fit score blends these ratings, weighted for this topic, into one number out of 10, and is recalculated whenever a scorecard is updated:

- Marketer self-service (29%): Can my team build and change pages without filing a ticket?
- Budget predictability (24%): Will the price be clear up front, and will it stay reasonable as we grow?
- Campaign & growth tools (18%): Does it help us convert: personalization, testing, SEO, forms, martech?
- Security & compliance (12%): Will legal, security and procurement sign off?
- Speed to launch (12%): How fast can we go live, and how big a team does it take?
- Low IT upkeep (6%): After launch, how much effort does it take just to keep it running?

Scorecards and platform inclusion are unsponsored: no vendor pays to appear in this guide or to change a rating. Methodology: https://www.dxpscorecard.com/scoring-framework