The Danish have this lovely concept called hygge, which conjures a soft mood of coziness and conviviality. It’s about taking time away from the daily rush and wrapping yourself in a cocoon of comfort.

Even if you haven’t heard of hygge (pronounced “hooga,” BTW), you know the feeling. It's like being curled up on the couch on a cold winter’s night, toes covered in thick wooly socks as you stretch out by the fire. In one hand, a steaming cup of cocoa spiked with Rumchata. In the other, a signed copy of Fredrik Bachman’s Beartown.

Cozy, right?

Hygge can be more than just you. It might involve an informal gathering with family or friends to celebrate the small joys of life, or a deep and winding discussion with a close pal and a bottle of Côtes du Rhône.

I wasn't thinking about hygge when I asked my digital brother-in-arms and CMS/DXP March Madness referee Matt McQueeny to chat about the 2025 Forrester Wave for Content Management Systems. But we ended up having a long and cozy conversation about it.

The report was published a few weeks ago, so we’ve had some time to marinate in its analytical juices. As a digital agency leader and three-time Sitecore MVP, I knew he could bring some real-world perspective to the hearth.

A modern-day “hygge” on CMS Critic's “Matt & Matt” show.

Authored by the esteemed Chuck Gahun (with assists from Fiona Swerdlow and Sarah Morana), this edition is deeply researched and deftly organized. Chuck an institution in our space and has developed Mentat-like skills for assessing the CMS field along a widening breadth of features and considerations.

Along with the famous/infamous infographic, the report features 13 vendors, accompanied by a set of scoring tables that reflect the weighting and results for each of the participating vendors – all of which meet Forrester’s specific criteria (the least of which is $30 million in AR for its CMS product). The analysis is based on each participant’s current offering, strategy, and feedback.

Both Matt and I concur with the basic locus that pure headless and hybrid platforms are competing around similar offerings at multiple levels, compounded by the continuing growth of downstream options (new ones are still popping up). That’s why market intelligence – like analyst research – is a valuable tool for limiting the field for decision-makers based on their goals and architectural requirements.

“Having 13 here is really good for customers, because we're all unique, from our needs to our stacks,” Matt said, relaying an example of how evaluation works in his practice. “I was conducting a CMS identification with one customer, and literally all they needed was a headless CMS, because their source of truth was going to be a CRM or ERP system, like a like an SAP. In that case, what you're looking for in a selection really comes to a few that make a lot of sense here.”

Matt and I shared several reflections during our hygge, but the one big takeaway is how AI is continuing to tear up the roadmap. As the report suggests, data and AI-powered solutions like hyper-personalization and experimentation are taking center stage and ushering in what lies beyond the wave of composability: that CMSes are becoming API-powered service centers that apps and AI agents will interface with to drive experiences.

Over the last two years, we’ve witnessed a breathtaking, unabated acceleration of AI features across nearly every product. I know, because I’ve spent countless hours watching AI demos, trying to absorb everything. One thing I can say is that most vendors have struggled to telegraph their differentiated value relative to their high-utility AI gains, resulting in a confusing morass.

This report has many dimensions, and we won’t touch on all of them (you know, analysis paralysis, and this is already a long drink of water). If you want to go deeper, I recommend throwing a log on the fire, pouring a stiff one, and reading it yourself.

In the meantime, I hope our little hygge will add some spice to your rum.

Things keep shifting, so don’t get too cozy

Before we jump into our toastable takeaways, I thought it might be helpful to compare this year’s CMS Wave with a previous edition for context. I opted to go back to 2023, when GenAI was taking root in a serious way. As expected, there are some changes worth noting:

A diagram of a diagram of a company

AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: Forrester

You might recall that Forrester shifted from the “Agile Content Management System” moniker a few years back, which emerged in the wake of Gartner eliminating its CMS focus to double down on DXPs. The diagrams, much like the categories we track, continue to evolve – and the 2025 Wave has continued to drop its “Challengers” ring.

Here are a few things we chatted about:

Adobe vs. Optimizely: Can matter occupy the same space?

On this infographic, we’re bending the laws of physics as both vendors appear in the same spot with identical scores. Until recently, Optimizely (and everyone else) had been trailing Adobe. But that’s been upended in recent reports, including the Gartner MQ for DXP – where Optimizely is now leading the pack.

Adobe continues to be the domain of large enterprises, and AEM the jewel in its experience crown. Along with its expansive ecosystem of technologies, many of which were acquired over the last decade (think Magento, Marketo, the list goes on), Adobe still has a key advantage when it comes to funding innovation – or buying it.

Sure, they get a bogie with the botched Figma escapade (I wrote about why it was a good thing for the latter), but they’re still cookin.’ Like its peers, Adobe has pursued a more composable roadmap while introducing some keen innovation with its Franklin/Helix initiative.

As Matt noted, Optimizely’s strategy has been elevating its competitive posture. Its agency channel is an important point of differentiation, and it continues to grow positively. But that’s also been the mantra for numerous vendors I’ve spoken to, who are betting on digital agencies and system integrators to drive market gains.

“You see a lot of partners looking at Optimizely, potentially building new relationships,” he said.

At the wrap of this year’s Opticon, I spoke with Hero Digital’s Chris Kostakis about the impact of Optimizely One and the Netspring acquisition, which is tying experimentation, analytics, and data into the platform. Optimizely’s new Opal AI assistant amplifies this, which is fully accessible across its suite of DXP tools – including CMS.

As Chris told me, he likes Optimizely's overall approach to AI, including the flexibility to bring your own models to the table. The company has also partnered with Google to increase access to its Gemini models.

Will one vendor pull ahead? It’s hard to say. As economic headwinds bring potential cuts to enterprise IT budgets – and MACH-oriented architectures become more popular – the most adaptable platform will likely win out. Right now, our money is on Optimizely.

Contentstack crosses the line (in a good way)

There’s no doubt about it: Contentstack is on the right track.

In a shock-and-awe moment, the headless pioneer has passed into the “Leaders” ring on this report, buoyed by its recent acquisition of Lytics – a real-time customer data platform that is helping to shape its personalization strategy within a composable, MACH-first architecture. It also scored high in areas like backend extensibility via its APIs and connectors.

Founded in 2018, Contentstack is still young and well-funded, and managed to keep its powder dry until the Lytics deal (which was its first large-scale acquisition). The company was also early to embrace generative AI with high-utility applications; I did a deep dive demo of their Automation Hub and AI Assistant in mid-2023, and they had a solid vision for where brand-aware AI and focused training might lead.

Both Matt and I spent the day at Contentstack’s office in Austin a few weeks ago, where we met with CEO Neha Sampat. From a cultural perspective, they’re tacitly focused on innovation and disrupting within their own ranks. As Matt noted, there’s been a lot of energy and enthusiasm building, and that much was obvious.

“Overall, the Contentstack news is really big, and it speaks to something,” he said. “We've been around them a bit lately, and I was also at their Partner Day. Everyone always says this when things are going well, but I felt I did feel they were really locked in around their strategy, how they were integrating best-of-breed systems into one stack where you could plug in other things if you need to.”

I caught up with Neha after the report was released, and she explained how the convergence of AI, real-time data, and personalization is breaking down barriers that previously made one-to-one digital experiences impossible.

“For years, brands struggled with fragmented data, siloed systems, and the overwhelming complexity of delivering personalized content at scale,” she said. “But with AI-driven automation and real-time customer insights, we are now entering a new era where hyper-personalized, adaptive experiences are not only possible, they’re effortless.”

This is where Contentstack is making big gains, enabling brands to dynamically tailor content based on a host of customer engagement variables. By unifying AI-driven content with actionable first-party data, they’re providing a pathway beyond the existing limitations of personalization. As Neha described, the result is digital experiences that are not just reactive, but predictive – anticipating customer needs before they arise.

Contentstack also made the leap to the DXP MQ given its more expansive offerings (which now includes CDP). But given the crowd of contenders, they're clearly looking to make up the maturity miles with increased awareness and a growing partner base. They're certainly seizing this moment, and it could pay off in a big way.

There’s strength in the middle

I thought it might be worth peering back another two years to see how this middle layer has evolved. 2021 was still the “age” of Forrester’s Agile Content Management System, and the shift back to a pure “Content Management System" moniker is a welcome change. As you can see, several of the same vendors are still sandwiched in this nougaty center.

A diagram of a company's management system

AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: Forrester

While there are some notable shifts, many of the same vendors are still in play, and we discussed a few we’ve been tracking more recently – particularly the headless contingent.

Sitecore

As a Sitecore MVP, I asked Matt what he made of their current position, knowing they’re been on a growth run. Over the past year, the company has seen an explosion in popularity of its XM Cloud offering: Global revenue for the SaaS CMS grew 100% in 2024, with 130% growth in the U.S. alone.

XM Cloud also reflects the broader shift in market winds regarding headless versus hybrid. As Matt pointed out, the pure headless CMSes have their place, but they need a much larger position to justify their valuations and ambitions.

“One of the things Sitecore did when they started going composable was to say that their XM Cloud is a headless CMS, but with all the things people liked about its legacy CMS,” he said. “It had visual editing and site trees. It had embedded personalization with up to 8 variants, which is pretty solid.”

While the entire cohort of “Strong Performers” is lancing the AI dragon, Sitecore has bet big on its Sitecore Stream service, which brings marketing-focused, brand-aware AI capabilities across its ecosystem. I remember seeing it roll out at Symposium '24, and it continues to bring the promising potential to bridge the DXP ecosystem of CMS, DAM, and more.

Sitecore's AI/ML heritage goes back quite a ways – with machine learning features like Sitecore Cortex rolling out in 2017, when recommendation engines were all the rage. While Stream might find its greatest appeal among existing Sitecore customers, the company is hoping that choice around AI strategies will draw more interest.

I just spoke to Sitecore’s CEO, Dave O’Flanagan, about this conundrum of AI flexibility, and how organizations might want to leverage it in different ways to shape experiences. This is one area where Sitecore excels.

“The way we see it, we want our content platform to be able to really interact effectively with LLMs and support agent communications, and we're working on that,” he said. “But equally, when somebody comes to your website, you really have to make it count. So the experience needs to be personalized. It needs to be tailored. The content needs to be right. So there's the opportunity.”

While Sitecore has vacillated within Forrester's grid, they continue to deliver solid enterprise value. By investing in security, governance, and HIPAA compliance – which applies not just to XM Cloud, but its Content Hub, CDP, and Personalize – it continues to reinforce its position. And with one of the most robust user communities in the industry, they remain undeniable.

Contentful

Before CEO Steve Sloan departed Contentful, we chatted about the company’s high-utility enhancements and generative AI features. This was Q4 of 2023, and the chase for generative AI parity was on. And while other platforms (both headless and monolithic) were pivoting toward a composable DXP position, Contentful was doubling down on its mantle as a “content platform.”

As one of the leading headless players in the CMS space, Contentful – like Contentstack – was feeling the pressure of establishing its long-term value roadmap amidst an impressive investment run and solid growth to over $200 million.

At that time, we could see the identity crisis emerging as headless CMSes began to introduce the attributes of legacy platforms, adding visual editing and other marketing-focused features. But AI was also emerging as a key factor for powering multi-variant personalization.

Now under the astute leadership of Karthik Rau, Contentful is kicking up its AI strategy. As Matt noted, last year’s purchase of Berlin-based Ninetailed, a pioneer of structured content personalization and experimentation, tipped the scales.

“Contentful purchased Ninetailed as its personalization play,” Matt said. A sage move, by all accounts. That’s now being bolstered by the launch of advanced orchestration features along with a new Experience Builder in its Contentful Studio. They also firmed up a relationship with Shopify – all of which could give Contentful even more reach beyond the middle.

Storyblok

It’s hard not to like Dominik Angerer. He's just perpetually happy (at least when I talk to him). When we spoke last June – just after the company raised a tidy $80 million Series C – he was flying high. Maybe that exuberance is baked into his CMS; as he once told me, "I've never had a customer leave because of our product.”

According to Matt, Storyblok is a name we’ve been hearing a lot – and one that certainly has the potential to grow. As a pure headless CMS (and clear about that distinction), Storyblok has always presented itself as a “refreshing” solution. I’ve always found it to be clean, intuitive, and easy to use, from its visual editor to its content modeling.

I might even call it “joyful,” but their marketing team already snagged that word to describe its new Storyblok Labs, a product playground for test-driving new features like their content Ideation Room. I did a deep dive into this experience, and it’s a truly unique conduit for testing, validating, and optimizing its feature horizon.

This is all indicative of Storyblok’s strong understanding of its users’ needs, and the kind of culture they’ve built around product innovation. That gives it a solid edge as it looks to expand in the addressable U.S. market and grow its channel partnerships. Definitely one to keep an eye on.

Webflow

I've used Webflow over the years, and I can attest to its beauty and impressiveness. It delivers unparalleled fine-grained control that would give any designer the butterflies.

It is complicated? Intimidating? Maybe at first glance. But despite its robust, Photoshop-like UX, the product’s dynamite self-training videos and tutorials give it an edge as a website builder with an onboard CMS and API centricity. That last fact speaks to its composability, which earned it membership in the MACH Alliance.

Since 2013, Webflow has presented itself as a toolbox for building visually compelling sites. This has appealed to designers, but the enterprise is catching on. Under the leadership of Linda Tong, a company veteran, Webflow has doubled down on its large-scale ambitions, and is now serving over 3,000 brands.

Last year, I spoke to a WordPress agency that was shifting projects to Webflow for its scalability, localization, and other features. As Matt codified, Webflow’s value is becoming more well-known – and thus a consideration where it previously wasn't.

“Webflow appearing in this discussion is very interesting to me, because it’s super low-code, no-code,” he said. “But we had a customer that made the leap from Sitecore to Webflow for that ease of use.”

I still think Webflow’s best play is with discrete enterprise projects rather than hefty, integrated workloads. It lacks some of the tooling that its CMS competitors bring to the table, and that makes sense – it’s not cut from the same cloth. Still, it says a lot that it offers comparisons on its website with Contentful, Sitecore, and WordPress.

As far as AI goes, Webflow has introduced content generation into the mix, but the bigger fuss is around its AI-powered site builder, which is now in beta. This puts it more in line with Squarespace and Wix, which have made nifty gains with their automated site generators.

Like those tools, Webflow’s AI Assistant can modify website components, build new sections, and spin up new pages that match your design system and the voice and tone of your site. My experience testing these AI site generators has been mixed at best, but Webflow's look promising.

As far as the report is concerned, does this fit our current definition of a CMS? Matt and I discussed this, and it’s certainly challenging the status quo. My prediction is that we'll see other platforms ramp up the granularity of their visual editors. Right now, Webflow has a big lead in that department.

Acquia and WordPress VIP give us open source (sort of)

Poor WordPress. This hasn’t been an easy year as Matt Mullenweg and Automattic have poured on the drama. Still, with 43% of all websites using the open source CMS, it deserves a place on the map – even if it’s an enterprise distribution of the software.

In past articles, I’ve been critical of the analyst reports for not including the broader open source solutions in their assessments. But their methodologies are clear, and platforms like WordPress VIP are demonstrating how open source has tackled the security, scalability, and trust barriers – attracting enterprise brands like Time and Salesforce to the fold.

Like WordPress VIP, Acquia’s open source community is one of its biggest assets. When I spoke to Acquia’s SVP of Product Deanna Ballew back in 2023, the real innovation for its early GenAI roadmap was driven by its community. Later that year, when I attended Acquia Engage, they were full steam ahead on rolling out more AI features sprung from this experimentation.

Crowdsourcing innovation. This is where open source shines.

I asked Matt for his thoughts, and he asked another question in response: “Is there still a stigma to ‘open source’ in the enterprise? Is it easier to look towards a licensed, proprietary system? And was headless a way of achieving more of an ‘open source feeling’ based on decoupling things from the monolith?”

The easy answer is: Sort of? On the one hand, there’s ample evidence that enterprise applications of open source frameworks have been proven. At a recent Boye & Company CMS Experts meeting, we met with Pat Ramsey, Director of Technology at Crowd Favorite – a WordPress agency. Crowd Favorite counts large enterprises like Disney and Nvidia as customers, and they’ve been successfully managing complex CMS workloads with WordPress for years.

As Pat pointed out, it’s not a question of WordPress's security. Now, we’re wrestling with understanding the custody of our software supply chains. To Matt’s point, proprietary platforms offer more assurances when it comes to that question, while the recent WordPress debacle has opened a new fissure around trust.

Platforms like WordPress VIP and Acquia help bring more assurances to the open source enterprise dilemma. Acquia has certainly built an expansive beachhead by adding the DAM power of Widen and the accessibility layer via Monsido (now Acquia Optimize). But its Drupal heritage is still at its heart – and so too is its community.

I think open source deserves more credit in the mix, but I’m preaching to the choir. Every CMS platform listed in this report has relied on underlying open source libraries or resources, like Linux or Docker or even Kubernetes. It’s an intrinsic part of who we are as practitioners, and that’s worthy of a bigger nod.

Give the pricing to the people!

If you’ve hung on this far, here’s the last bit of our hygge – and it has to do with the almighty pricetag. It’s the most basic and grounded variable in the mix, but it still manages to elude us.

I really enjoyed scouring the “Pricing Flexibility and Transparency” data in Forrester’s research, and it got Matt and me talking about this issue. Most vendors are doing better than I expected, and a couple are killing it with top-line scores. Part of this is due to SaaS platforms disrupting the field with more predictable pricing models, forcing legacy vendors to come clean. Er… cleaner.

Matt, on the other hand, was less enthusiastic about the performance around price transparency. He was recently on the front line, gathering quotes from vendors to assemble project responses – and in his mind, there’s more work to be done.

“When it comes to pricing, not a lot of companies are doing as well,” he explained. “This is vetted. This is something we can believe in. At the same time, SaaS is providing a lot of iterative value, like Sitecore’s XM Cloud. But pricing in general needs to be more transparent. That ‘contact us’ on a website pricing page can feel like a black box around trust.”

I think it’s encouraging to see Optimizely set a stronger standard at the top around pricing, even though its overall cost might be more enterprisy. As Matt noted, this is a critical part of the scope for all of us, particularly as economic headwinds could force a need for greater flexibility.

Bringing the hygge home

According to my Scandinavian sources, once a hygge is over, you should take a moment to reflect on the experience and how it made you feel. For me, I'm reminded that the CMS market is still blazing, and the spirit of innovation is still on fire – even if trade wars and other factors toss a bit of cold water on things.

There's a lot of great research in this Wave, but AI is clearly a game changer. In my recent interview with Netlify's CEO Matt Biilman, we discussed the rise of the “agent experience,” or AXP. As he sees it (and I tend to agree), websites need to evolve as they begin to serve agents alongside people. As such, the CMSes powering them have to be ready for this evolution – and some of the vendors in this Wave are further along in that transformation.

At the same time, we can't discount the tangible value of the CMS on overall content operations. Authors, marketers, and developers need reliable tools that support their goals, and enterprises require secure and scalable platforms that play with the rest of their stack. So while AI is key, so too are workflows, content models, and many other dimensions of the CMS user experience – especially at a time when budgets might need to reflect greater value in a technology purchase.

It's important to remember that these research expeditions are meant to help buyers make sense of their choices. At the same time, we tend to put an outsized amount of weight into these infographics and reports. I mean, I’m writing a long article about it. We’re discussing it with our industry comrades and communities. It’s relevant – but it's not the end-all, be-all.

Whether you’re receiving this report with applause, confusion, or ire (maybe all three), remind yourself that these maps are just a starting point. And like any big decision about enterprise software, you should always engage with integrators and practitioners on the front line as part of your assessment. At the end of the day, customer outcomes say a lot more than what Matt and Matt – or any analyst – say about these tools.

My advice is the same as it is every year: Do your homework. Consider what these reports offer, but look beyond the numbers and consider what isn’t on the infographic. There are a lot of great tools out there, and smart people who can help guide you to the right choice.

So get hygge with it.

Upcoming Events

The Composable Conference 2025

April 22-24 – Chicago, USA

Experience the future of composable and MACH principles in “The Windy City” and dive even deeper into the innovative world of MACH architecture and its benefits for your business. Building on the momentum of MACH THREE, this conference will provide your teams with the expert, impartial guidance needed to craft a winning transformation strategy and leverage the latest advancements in automation and Al to maximize efficiency and drive your organization forward. This event is ideal for executives, business leaders, technologists, and everyone in between who is looking to harness the power of composable. Secure your spot today.

CMS Summit 25

May 13-14, 2025 – Frankfurt, Germany

Don't miss the first European edition of our prestigious international conference dedicated to the global content management community! CMS Summit 25 will bring together top-notch speakers, our renowned learning format, and engaging social events. Hear from leading practitioners like Deutsche Bahn, Dr. Oetker, and more – and join customers, agencies, and CMS vendors as we discuss current trends and what's ahead for the content and digital experience fields. Connect and network at the only vendor-neutral, in-person conference focused on CMS. Space is limited for this exclusive event, so book your seats today.

CMS Connect 25

August 5-6, 2025 – Montreal, Canada

We are delighted to present the second annual summer edition of our signature global conference dedicated to the content management community! CMS Connect will be held again in beautiful Montreal, Canada, and feature a unique blend of masterclasses, insightful talks, interactive discussions, impactful learning sessions, and authentic networking opportunities. Join vendors, agencies, and customers from across our industry as we engage and collaborate around the future of content management – and hear from the top thought leaders at the only vendor-neutral, in-person conference exclusively focused on CMS. Space is limited for this event, so book your seats today.

News

Gettin’ hygge with AI (and more): A few cozy takeaways from the Forrester CMS Wave 2025