The DXP Label Is Dying. What Are You Buying Now?
Three of the best-known digital experience platforms dropped the name in about three months. The capabilities it described did not go anywhere, and the name that replaces it will shape how platforms are bought.
The short answer
The vendors who built the digital experience platform category are retiring the label: Optimizely is now the AI platform for marketing, Acquia an agentic content platform, Contentstack an agentic experience platform, and Adobe folded Experience Cloud into CX Enterprise. We think the term still makes sense, because it named a clear set of capabilities. Its successor will be AXP, the agentic experience platform, or our preference, the content orchestration hub, where AI, authors, audiences and marketing meet.
Key takeaways
- The label went in one summer. Contentstack launched its Agentic Experience Platform, AXP, on 9 June 2026, Optimizely relaunched its brand as the AI platform for marketing on 22 June and retired the Opal name for Optimizely Agent Platform on 1 September, and Acquia rebranded as an agentic content platform, powered by Drupal, on 14 September. Adobe replaced Experience Cloud with CX Enterprise in April.
- The term deserved better. A digital experience platform meant a content system plus personalization, testing, analytics and customer data under one roof, and a buyer who heard the word knew what to expect in the demo and on the invoice. We still think it makes sense as a description, and we still use it, because nothing the vendors have offered yet draws the line as clearly.
- The analysts who coined the term have gone quiet. Gartner's last Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms is dated 28 January 2025, with Optimizely, Adobe and Acquia as Leaders, and no 2026 edition had appeared by November. Forrester's DXP Wave from November 2025 named Adobe, Optimizely and Sitecore, and its analysts now write about agentic content management instead.
- Two names are competing to replace it. AXP, agentic experience platform, is the vendors' term, and it fits the platforms building an AI orchestration engine deep into the product rather than bolting an assistant onto the editor. Content orchestration hub is the term we expect to win, because it describes what the platform now does: coordinate AI, authors, audiences and marketing around one body of content.
- Whatever it is called, buy it by layer. Ask what the content system, the experience layer, the data layer and the agent layer each cost, who owns each one after launch, and which of them you already have. A vendor that can answer by layer is selling you something. One that answers with a platform name, old or new, is selling you a label.
Our analysts’ take
Digital experience platform was never a product. It was an analyst's description, adopted by Gartner around 2014 to replace web content management when the leading vendors had bolted personalization, analytics, commerce and customer data onto their content systems and needed a name for the bundle. For a decade it did useful work. It told a chief marketing officer that Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore and Optimizely belonged on the same shortlist, it gave a Magic Quadrant a title, and it drew a clear line: a CMS manages content, a DXP manages content and the experience built on it. That line is why this site carries the word in its name, and we have not changed our minds about it.
In 2026 the vendors who benefited most from the label began walking away from it. Contentstack went first, launching an Agentic Experience Platform, which it shortens to AXP, on 9 June. Optimizely followed on 22 June with a new brand that calls the company the AI platform for marketing, then renamed its Opal assistant Optimizely Agent Platform on 1 September and introduced a personified marketing AI called Mark, a model family, a data layer and an open benchmark to go with it. Acquia rebranded on 14 September as the agentic content platform that marketing loves and IT trusts, with Powered by Drupal written into the logo. Adobe had already folded Experience Cloud into something it calls CX Enterprise in April, and talks about customer experience orchestration rather than experience platforms. Sanity calls itself a Content Operating System. Bloomreach calls itself the agentic platform for personalization.
We rate the same 46 platforms whatever they call themselves, so the renaming changes nothing on our scorecards. It changes a great deal for a buyer, because the shortlist, the analyst reports and the search results are all organized around a word the leaders no longer use, and the words replacing it do not yet agree on what they include. This editorial is our position on what the label meant, why the vendors are leaving it, which term we expect to take its place, and what to put in the next RFP while the market decides.
What to look for
- 1
Which layers you are actually buying
Every platform in this market is some combination of four things: a content system, an experience layer for personalization and testing, a data layer that knows who the visitor is, and an agent layer that does work on the content. Ask the vendor to show which of the four are in the quoted product and which are separate licenses, because in most suites at least two are.
- 2
Whether the AI is an engine or an add-on
This is the line between an agentic experience platform and a CMS with a chatbot. Ask whether agents can read the content model, the audience data and the publishing workflow, whether they run on your own model contract, what each action costs, and whether a human approves the result. An engine orchestrates all of that. An add-on drafts text in a side panel.
- 3
What the meter counts
The old DXP license was a platform fee. The new ones are metered: page views, visitors, API calls, seats, and increasingly AI credits or tokens for the agent layer. Ask for the price at twice your current usage and for the overage schedule in writing. A rename that arrives with a new meter is a price change.
- 4
Who owns each layer after launch
A bundle has one throat to choke. Four layers from two or three vendors have four. Before the contract, name the person on your side who owns the content model, the experimentation program, the customer data and the agent configuration, and the vendor who supports each. If the same name appears four times, you have found your bottleneck.
- 5
Whether the analyst map still matches
The most recent Gartner DXP Magic Quadrant is from January 2025 and the most recent Forrester DXP Wave from November 2025. Both predate every rename above and the Salesforce acquisition of Contentful. Use them for the vendor list, then verify each placement against what the vendor sells today, because the two best-known Leaders no longer describe themselves the way the report does.
What the label meant, and why the vendors are leaving it
The term still works as a description. A digital experience platform is a content system with personalization, testing, analytics and customer data built around it, and that is exactly what Adobe, Sitecore and Optimizely still sell. The vendors are not retiring it because it stopped being true. They are retiring it for three reasons that have more to do with how the products are sold than with what they do.
The bundle was unbundled years ago
The promise of a DXP was one license for content, personalization, testing, analytics and customer data. By 2026 almost every suite sells those as separate products with separate meters: Optimizely's experimentation and personalization are licensed apart from its content management, Adobe's Target, Analytics and Real-Time CDP are separate purchases around Experience Manager, Acquia moved personalization to a third-party engine, and SitecoreAI is the rare suite that still bundles personalization and testing in one price. The capabilities are all still there. The single invoice that the word implied is not.
The composable decade made the layers visible
Headless content systems, standalone experimentation tools and customer data platforms taught buyers that each layer could be bought alone, and the MACH Alliance's February 2026 report found that organizations with mature composable stacks were far more likely to report clear returns from AI than those without. Once buyers think in layers, a platform name that hides the layers is a disadvantage in the sales call, which is why Acquia now writes Drupal into its logo and Contentstack describes a content core for humans and agents rather than a platform for experiences.
Agents gave the vendors a better story
The one thing every rename has in common is the word agentic or AI. Agents are the first genuinely new layer since customer data platforms, they justify a new meter, and they let a vendor claim the future rather than a category Gartner has not refreshed in almost two years. The vendors who kept the label, Sitecore, Liferay, Magnolia, Uniform, Kentico, Sitefinity and the rest, mostly put agentic in front of it rather than dropping it, which tells you the word still carries meaning in a sales conversation.
What comes next: AXP or the content orchestration hub
A category does not stay nameless for long, because analysts need a report title and buyers need a search term. Two candidates are already in use, and they describe different things. We expect the market to settle on one of them within two years, and we have a preference.
AXP: the agentic experience platform
Contentstack coined the short form in June, and Uniform, Magnolia and Kentico sell agentic versions of the DXP idea under their own names. The term fits a specific kind of platform: one where an AI orchestration engine sits deep in the product, with access to the content model, the audience data and the publishing workflow, so agents can plan, build, personalize and publish rather than draft text in a side panel. Optimizely's Agent Platform, Contentstack's Agent OS and SitecoreAI's Agentic Studio are the clearest examples. AXP is the right word for them. It is the wrong word for the many platforms whose AI is an assistant and whose orchestration is a roadmap slide, and that is the risk: a name that every vendor can claim describes nothing.
Content orchestration hub: the term we expect to win
Our preferred name describes what the platform has become rather than which technology it bolted on last. The modern platform sits at the intersection of four parties who all need the same body of content: AI agents that draft, translate, personalize and answer; authors who create and approve; audiences, human and machine, who consume it across the website, apps, search and answer engines; and marketing, which needs campaigns, measurement and governance over all of it. A content orchestration hub is the system that coordinates those four, and the word hub is honest about the fact that the experience layer, the customer data and the agents may live in other products connected to it. It describes Acquia's rebrand, Contentful under Salesforce, Sanity's content operating system and Adobe's orchestration language better than either of the names those vendors chose.
Why the name matters to a buyer
The term that wins will define the next Magic Quadrant, the next Wave and the next decade of RFP templates, and it will decide which vendors are compared with which. If AXP wins, the market organizes around the depth of the AI engine and the headless content vendors are measured against the suites on orchestration. If content orchestration hub wins, it organizes around the content system and its connections, and the suites are measured on how well they share. Either way, the capabilities the DXP label described are the ones you will still be buying.
What buyers should ask for while the market decides
Here is where we land. Keep using the DXP shortlist, because the vendors on it have not changed, but write the RFP for the four layers underneath, in this order, with a price and an owner against each.
Start with the content system
This is the layer you will still be running in 2032, and the hub everything else connects to, so judge it on the content model, the editing experience your marketers will actually use, localization, workflow and what it costs at twice your usage. Every vendor on this page has one; several of the renamed ones, Acquia and Contentstack among them, now lead with it.
Price the experience layer separately, even if it is bundled
Ask what personalization, testing and search would cost if you bought them from the same vendor next year rather than today, and what they cost from a specialist tool. If the bundled price is the only price on offer, you are buying the old DXP under a new name, and the renewal will tell you so.
Decide where the customer data lives before the vendor does
Most organizations already have a customer data platform, a warehouse or a CRM that knows the visitor better than any content vendor will. Make the experience layer read from it rather than buying a second copy of your audience, and check how the content vendor's agents and personalization reach that data.
Test whether the agent layer is an engine
Ask the vendor to show an agent reading the content model, picking an audience, producing a variant and routing it to a human for approval, on your model contract, with the cost per action on screen. If that works, you are looking at an agentic experience platform. If the demo is a chat box that writes a paragraph, buy the content system and pilot the agents on a short contract with a credit cap.
Keep the old shortlist, drop the old question
The vendors are the same ones. Adobe, Sitecore, Optimizely, Acquia, Contentstack, Contentful, Sanity, Bloomreach, Uniform, Liferay and Magnolia all still sell what they sold last year. What changed is that asking which of them is the best DXP now returns the vendors who kept the word rather than the ones who lead. Ask which of them does each layer best for your team, and the label, whichever one wins, stops mattering.
Platforms in this piece
Contentstack
Optimizely SaaS CMS
Acquia
Adobe Experience Manager
Sanity
Bloomreach
SitecoreAI
Liferay
Magnolia
UniformFrequently asked questions
What is a DXP?
A digital experience platform is the analyst term, adopted by Gartner in the mid-2010s, for a content management system bundled with personalization, testing, analytics and customer data under one license. In 2026 most of the vendors that defined the category sell those pieces as separate products, and several, including Optimizely, Acquia and Contentstack, no longer use the term for themselves.
Which vendors dropped the DXP label in 2026?
Contentstack launched an Agentic Experience Platform on 9 June 2026, Optimizely relaunched as the AI platform for marketing on 22 June and renamed Opal to Optimizely Agent Platform on 1 September, and Acquia rebranded as an agentic content platform on 14 September. Adobe replaced Experience Cloud with CX Enterprise in April. Sitecore, Liferay, Magnolia, Uniform, Kentico and Sitefinity still use the label.
What will replace the term DXP?
Two candidates are in use. AXP, the agentic experience platform, is the vendors' term for platforms with an AI orchestration engine built deep into the product. Content orchestration hub is the term we expect to win, because it describes a platform at the intersection of AI agents, authors, audiences and marketing, with the other layers connected to it rather than bundled inside it.
Is there a 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms?
Not as of November 2026. The most recent edition is dated 28 January 2025 and names Optimizely, Adobe and Acquia as Leaders, with Sitecore, Magnolia, Contentstack and Uniform as Visionaries. Gartner published an Innovation Insight on agentic CMS in May 2026 instead. Forrester's most recent DXP Wave is from November 2025.
Does a company still need a DXP?
Most companies need the four things a DXP bundled: a content system, an experience layer for personalization and testing, a data layer that knows the visitor, and increasingly an agent layer. Few need all four from one vendor on one license. Buy the content system for the long term, price the other layers separately, and pilot agents on a short contract.
What is an agentic experience platform?
An agentic experience platform, or AXP, is a content and experience platform with an AI orchestration engine built into it, so agents can read the content model and audience data, build and personalize pages, and route work to humans for approval. Contentstack coined the short form in June 2026; Optimizely's Agent Platform and SitecoreAI's Agentic Studio fit the same description under other names.
About this editorial
This is a position our principal analysts took on November 11, 2026. It is not updated: when the view changes, we publish a new editorial. The scorecards linked above carry the current ratings for every platform named here.
Scorecards and platform inclusion are unsponsored: no vendor pays to be named in an editorial or to change a rating. Disagree with us? Tell us.
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