Some teams ask for Adobe Experience Manager on day one. Most do not need it. If you are wondering when you do not need something as powerful as AEM, keep reading.
AEM just shipped 6.5 with shiny features for fragments, headless delivery, and smarter asset tools. It is a serious suite that shines for global brands with many sites, many authors, and strict rules. It also asks for a lot. You are paying for licenses, expert engineers, training for authors, and a real release chain with Dispatcher, Sling, OSGi bundles, code reviews, and on call support. The power is real, and so is the curve. If your marketing team needs five pages, a form, and good search presence, there is a faster path with a smaller bill. You can ship that site with WordPress and Gutenberg, or a static stack like Gatsby and Contentful, and you can get strong Lighthouse scores without wrestling a full stack editorial platform. The question is not can AEM do it. The question is what is the smallest setup that meets the goal today and still leaves room to grow.
Here is a simple rule. If your plan fits in one sprint and one pizza, you probably do not need AEM.
Picture a seed stage startup. The goal is three product pages, a blog, a pricing table, a contact form, and a newsletter signup before launch day. They need quick edits by two non technical founders and clean meta tags for search. A strong move is WordPress with Gutenberg on managed hosting, plus Yoast for meta, and a CDN in front. If code free is a must, Webflow can get them live in days with good markup and fast rendering. Want extra speed and tighter control without a panel full of plugins. Use Gatsby plus Contentful, publish to Netlify, wire forms to Netlify Forms or Formspree, and watch build previews catch content errors in pull requests. That stack gives instant rollbacks, HTTPS by default, and zero servers to babysit. It is friendly for search, meets the editing need, and keeps costs low while the product finds its fit.
AEM here would be like bringing a tour bus to pick up coffee.
Now think about docs for a developer product. The must haves are versioned pages, code samples, fast search, and easy contributions from engineers. A static site works wonders. Hugo or Docusaurus with content in Git gives you reviews, history, and branch previews. Algolia DocSearch gives relevance in milliseconds. For translations, plug in Crowdin or Phrase and sync strings. Host on Netlify or ZEIT Now and every pull request becomes a private preview for product managers to sign off. No server patching. No complex editor training. You get uptime and speed from the CDN edge and a workflow developers already trust. That meets the reader where they are and keeps the writing flow snappy.
You give up a built in DAM, heavy author permissions, and a big editorial desk, which you did not need for docs anyway.
Let us do a campaign site. You need a microsite for a seasonal promo with a countdown, a gallery, and a raffle. Launch is next week. The stack could be Unbounce or Webflow for the layout, Netlify Functions or Lambda for entries, and Google Tag Manager with events into Analytics and maybe Google Optimize for simple split tests. The site is static with one tiny serverless piece, taps a CDN for speed, and dies gracefully when the promo ends. You can hand it to the paid media team without a long training deck. That is enough power without dragging a full suite through procurement and a security review for a short lived microsite.
Where does AEM win big. When you have many brands and many markets, translation workflows, strict review steps, asset rights tracking, content fragments feeding multiple apps, and a team that edits every day across time zones.
So how do you decide. Count authors who publish weekly and the number of sites. Check if brand governance needs structured review and expiration dates. Map content reuse across channels and if fragments must flow into apps and email. Look at current traffic and the spikes you expect. Check single sign on, audit needs, and content ownership by region. Ask if editors need rich page building or a tidy form for fields. List the systems that must connect today like CRM, analytics, and ad pixels. If that list is short, lighter tools win. If that list spans several teams and regions, AEM pays off.
Money matters too. AEM licenses and skilled teams cost more than most lightweight stacks. A fast WordPress or a static site with a headless CMS covers a lot of ground for a fraction of that.
There are tradeoffs. Static sites are fast and safe but long builds can bog down for giant catalogs. WordPress is flexible but plugin sprawl can slow edits and hurt render time if you are not careful. AEM centralizes governance but comes with heavier deployments and a longer runway for new features. CDNs help in every case. Good caching rules, image resizing through services like Cloudinary, and lazy loading keep pages snappy. Think about preview needs for authors, scheduled publishes, and rollbacks. Think about permissions and audit trails. Think about how you will migrate content later if you outgrow your first choice. The smallest tool that cleanly solves these needs is the right pick right now.
For search, your stack choice is not the magic. Speed, clean HTML, descriptive titles, structured data, and solid internal links move the needle. The mobile speed update is real, so a CDN backed site with smart images beats a heavy theme every day. Do not pick AEM for SEO alone. Pick good practices and measure with Search Console.
There are sweet combos if you want room to grow. WordPress as headless with the REST API can feed Gatsby for static builds and still give editors a familiar screen. Contentful or Prismic with a React front end on Netlify gives clean content models and fast deploys. ZEIT Now makes previews trivial and rollbacks instant. Cloudinary handles assets and transforms without a big DAM. Add service workers for offline support and set a performance budget the team can see in Lighthouse. You get modern speed and a tidy author story without the weight of a suite you may not need yet. If you outgrow this, you can revisit AEM when the org and traffic justify the move.
Pick boring tools that fit the job, not the logo you think you should have.