DXP vs CMS: Choosing the right platform for your digital strategy

If you’re in the market for a new content management system (CMS), you’ve probably heard the term digital experience platform, or DXP. You might be wondering, DXP vs. CMS, what’s the difference, and which one do I need?

In this post, I’ll explain how DXPs evolved from CMSes, what they do differently, and how to decide which platform best fits your business needs. You’ll walk away with a better understanding of the CMS vs. DXP debate and the information you need to pick the platform that’s right for you.

What's the difference between a digital experience platform and a content management system?

To understand the difference between a CMS and a DXP, it helps to look at how content management has evolved. 

In the early days, marketers only had to worry about publishing content on a static website. A channel-specific CMS was the perfect solution. As digital marketing expanded to more channels, traditional, single-channel CMSes became less efficient, and newer content management solutions entered the market. 

Fast-forward to today, and marketers aren’t just posting content; they’re creating engaging, omnichannel experiences enhanced with personalization, localization, and interactive features. This requires a new type of solution: a digital experience platform.

Let’s look at how CMSes evolved from their content management roots into the powerful digital experience platforms brands need today.

Traditional CMS

A traditional content management system is designed to manage content, typically for a single channel such as a website or app. CMSes may deliver content to a webpage, but you can’t use a single CMS to create and manage digital experiences across channels. Companies end up with a sprawl of siloed CMSes that make it impossible to deliver the connected digital experiences customers want. 

Headless CMS

Headless CMSes decouple the content and the presentation components of a traditional CMS. They enable companies to separate how content is created and managed from how it is delivered and displayed. In this way, a headless CMS can deliver content across multiple channels. Learn more about the differences between traditional, decoupled, and headless CMSes.

Composable CMS

Composable takes the concept of a headless CMS and applies it to the entire stack, separating the capabilities of all-inclusive monoliths into individual microservices that are tightly integrated. This empowers you to integrate the tools you need into a flexible, connected system with reusable components for greater efficiency. 

The best composable CMSes combine composable architecture with composable content, enabling teams to reuse it in any number of combinations across multi-brands, use cases, channels, and regions. See how composable content is fueling the next generation of customer experiences. 

DXP

Digital experience platforms take the flexibility and omnichannel delivery capabilities of a composable CMS a few steps further to go beyond content management and into experience management. In addition to websites, mobile apps, storefronts, etc., DXPs empower companies to build more robust experiences such as chatbots, IoT, AR/VR, and digital assistants in a way that is replicable. 

In recognition of these more robust capabilities, Gartner created the DXP category, separating DXPs from their CMS predecessors. According to Gartner, “a digital experience platform (DXP) is an integrated set of core technologies that support the composition, management, delivery, and optimization of contextualized digital experiences.” Learn more about the capabilities you should get in a DXP.

Key takeaway

Gartner’s definition of a DXP sets the minimum criteria. From there, everyone has their own spin on what differentiates a DXP from a CMS. We believe that CMS functionality is the core of a DXP. Content management, content operations, and content marketing are 80% of what companies need from their DXP. The remaining 20% are capabilities such as digital asset management (DAM), product information management (PIM), and ecommerce.

Differences within the DXP category

Not all DXPs are created equal. One of the biggest differences within the category is how vendors deliver the capabilities brands need. 

Composable DXP vs. monolithic

Some vendors offer a traditional or monolithic DXP, while others, like Contentful, take a more modern approach and offer a composable solution. The difference here is in the flexibility and control you get. With an all-in-one or suite solution, you get a limited set of tools that meet the criteria for a DXP. A composable solution gives you the flexibility to choose the best tools for each capability you need.

With a composable approach, the way you choose to assemble your DXP becomes a competitive advantage. What’s more, a composable DXP evolves with you, enabling you to easily add the tools you need to propel your business forward.

All-in-one solutions sound good, but these monolithic DXPs are too rigid to meet ever-changing business needs. They require a lengthy and costly implementation, deliver limited flexibility, and can leave you locked into mediocre tools that are hard to replace.

The fact of the matter is that no one company is best at all the things your business wants to do. A composable approach lets you integrate the solutions you know and love with other tools you need to build your digital experience stack of choice. 

DXP vs. CMS: Which one is right for you?

For some brands, a CMS might offer everything you need now. The question is, how well will the platform support your future needs? Gartner assumes that, “by 2026, at least 70% of organizations will be mandated to acquire composable DXP technology, as opposed to monolithic DXP suites.”

Composable platforms give you the capabilities you need today and enable you to easily add capabilities as your business expands

What specific DXP features do brands need to create the digital experiences customers want? Find out in this post from my colleague.

Contentful’s journey from CMS to DXP

My advice to choose a composable DXP is based in part on what we see with our customers. Contentful supports 4,200 organizations worldwide, giving us a broad view of market trends and what it takes to be an industry leader. Our commitment to delivering market-leading capabilities has driven continued innovation from pioneering a headless CMS to empowering brands to craft market-leading customer experiences with a composable DXP.

Contentful officially entered the DXP space when we released personalization capabilities and Contentful Studio, a visual experience assembly tool. This wasn’t about checking boxes to meet the criteria for a DXP; these are capabilities we believe our customers need. 

Contentful already excels in core content capabilities and composable architecture. We’ve been API-first and cloud native from the start. Shipping experiences to any channel is part of our core functionality. And we’ve built a huge ecosystem of tech integrations, which means you can build your DXP your way. Our customers don't need to rip and replace the tech they use to run their business. They can incrementally build out their digital experience stack of choice with our ecosystem, getting the benefits of a modern DXP without the pain of disruptive replatforming.

We go beyond what Gartner considers core DXP requirements. And we’re not done yet.

Preparing for the future

Analysts are recognizing a shift in the DXP space toward foundations and functionalities that have been fundamental to Contentful since our inception, including composability and a cloud/SaaS approach. Rather than catching up with these trends, we’re leading the way in offering our customers the flexibility they need to stay ahead of the competition with future-ready solutions. 

In keeping with our focus on your future, our DXP platform includes contextual AI. Our AI uses your style guidelines, content both inside Contentful and from external systems, audience information, and experience data to generate targeted recommendations and content that sounds like you and resonates with your audiences. This makes it more efficient than ever to deliver relevant, personalized content for every digital experience, across all your digital properties, on every channel. It’s one more way we’re giving our customers the tools and flexibility they need to excel in an uncertain future.

Still mulling over the CMS vs. DXP debate? Let us show you what the future of content management looks like. Schedule a call.

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