Understanding Digital Experience Platforms
A Digital Experience Platform (DXP) is a software solution designed to help businesses build, manage, deliver, and optimize personalized digital experiences across multiple channels (like websites, apps, and portals).
Squiz DXP integrates content management, customer data, analytics, personalization tools, and more to deliver seamless user experiences.
The Squiz Digital Experience Platform (DXP) is an enterprise-level platform built for complex, service-led organizations managing sophisticated digital experiences at scale.
It solves the challenge that countless organizations face: dependency between marketing and development teams. Squiz DXP provides marketing teams with no-code tools to build pages with drag-and-drop, personalize content, run A/B tests, and more without requiring developer support for day-to-day tasks. Developers work with web standards (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) to establish the design system and components once, then shift focus to strategic projects rather than routine content maintenance.
With Squiz DXP, marketing manages websites independently, developers focus on innovation, and users receive faster, more relevant experiences.
Modern DXP platforms like Squiz DXP are built to grow seamlessly with your business needs. Here's how Squiz DXP ensures scalability:
- Automatic infrastructure scaling: The platform automatically detects traffic spikes and adjusts server resources instantly through SaaS delivery, meaning your website stays fast and responsive whether you have 100 visitors or 100,000, without any manual intervention required.
- Composable architecture: Squiz DXP’s flexible foundation allows you to switch on different capabilities and features within your DXP, or add third-party tools as your needs evolve, without disrupting existing systems or requiring complete rebuilds. Think of it like adding rooms to a house without having to tear down the existing structure.
- Multi-site management: You can manage multiple websites from a single platform. Squiz DXP customers successfully manage hundreds of websites from one installation, allowing you to expand your digital presence without multiplying your management complexity.
This approach contrasts with traditional CMS solutions that often struggle with high-traffic demands or require expensive system overhauls as organizations grow. Squiz DXP's enterprise-grade architecture ensures your digital experiences can evolve alongside your organization.
Squiz DXP is designed to empower both technical and non-technical users with intuitive tools that reduce reliance on developers. Here's how different team members can work effectively:
- Content creation: The Visual Page Builder enables true in-context editing with drag-and-drop functionality. Content editors can self-serve from a library of multi-column layouts and pre-approved components such as accordions, carousels and callouts, making it easy to create rich, engaging content without coding knowledge.
- Personalization and A/B testing: Non-technical marketers can independently set up personalization rules and A/B testing campaigns directly within the page builder, eliminating the need to wait for developer availability for these critical marketing activities.
- Intuitive forms: The drag-and-drop forms builder allows teams to create complex forms with conditional logic without requiring coding skills.
- Developer benefits: By empowering content editors and marketers to handle day-to-day content management, developers are freed from routine support requests. This allows development teams to focus their time and expertise on more strategic, value-add projects rather than simple content updates.
This user-friendly approach helps organizations reduce development bottlenecks and enables faster time-to-market for complex, enterprise-scale digital initiatives.
There are three main options when it comes to weighing up which platform type is best for you.
- Traditional CMS: An all-in-one system where content creation, management, and website display are tightly connected. Think of it like a cookie-cutter house with pre-defined walls, roof, and foundation; you can live there, but it's hard to change the layout or extend to other buildings.
- Headless CMS: Separates content creation from how it's displayed, giving more flexibility to show the same content across different platforms, like websites, apps, and social media. It's like taking that house and separating the foundation from everything else; the foundation (your content) stays put, but you can build whatever you want on top of it.
- Digital Experience Platform (DXP): Goes far beyond just managing content and is best for complex, service-driven organizations. Squiz DXP provides a comprehensive suite of tools for creating, managing, and optimizing complete digital experiences across multiple channels. It includes advanced features like personalization, analytics, integrations, powerful search functionality, and AI-powered content tools, all designed to help organizations deliver cohesive and tailored customer experiences at scale.
The Squiz DXP is built for lean teams in complex, service-led organizations that need sophisticated digital capabilities without the overhead.We built Squiz DXP with marketers in mind. Marketing teams get the independence to build pages quickly, personalize content, run tests, and manage data without relying on developers for day-to-day work. It's designed for organizations where marketing needs to move fast, but governance and brand consistency can't be compromised.
The platform also addresses IT priorities: enterprise-grade security (ISO 27001, SOC 2), scalable infrastructure, and integration capabilities that connect with existing tech stacks. Marketing gets autonomy. IT gets the security and scalability they need.
Squiz DXP is a unified digital experience platform, not a collection of disconnected, standalone tools. Capabilities such as CMS, Search, Integrations, Personalization, DAM, and Customer Data Platform (CDP) are designed to work together as connected parts of the same platform experience.
Every Squiz DXP customer deploys on the shared DXP foundation, but organizations can adopt capabilities progressively based on their needs, priorities, and digital maturity. For example, some organizations may initially use Squiz DXP primarily for Search and Integrations while continuing to transition from an existing CMS. The underlying experience platform still provides the connected foundation that brings these capabilities together seamlessly.
Some capabilities may scale based on usage, implementation scope, or organizational requirements, meaning customers only invest in the services they need at a given stage. However, these capabilities are delivered as integrated parts of the Squiz DXP platform rather than separately purchased bolt-on products.
We also offer selected standalone products for organizations looking to address specific challenges outside of a full DXP deployment. These include Squiz Funnelback Search and Squiz Content Intelligence.
Choosing the right DXP
When considering enterprise-grade solutions, security is paramount. Squiz DXP prioritizes security through
- ISO 27001 certification and SOC 2 accreditation
- CSA STAR compliance
- AWS-certified data centers with 24/7 protection
- Role-based access control
- Data encryption at rest and in transit
- Regular security testing and vulnerability monitoring
- Automatic security updates via SaaS delivery
As a trusted platform for leading organizations in government, education and professional services worldwide, Squiz DXP holds these top-level accreditations in place to eliminate common security risks associated with traditional CMS plugins while maintaining the highest security standards. View our security accreditations here.
Selecting the right platform requires careful consideration of both your current situation and future growth plans. Here are the key factors to evaluate:
- Current platform assessment: Consider whether your existing CMS is becoming difficult to maintain, has poor content governance, or lacks support for your evolving business needs. These are strong indicators that it's time to explore alternatives.
- Budget and ongoing costs: Factor in not just initial costs, but long-term expenses including upgrade costs, ongoing maintenance, and potential scalability investments. A platform that seems cheaper initially may become more expensive as your needs grow.
- Content governance: Evaluate how well a platform supports your content approval processes, user permissions, and compliance requirements. Strong governance becomes increasingly important as your organization scales.
- Future-proofing: Look for platforms that can adapt to changing technology landscapes and business requirements without requiring complete system overhauls.
- Migration flexibility: Consider platforms that offer practical transition pathways. Squiz DXP enables you to "come as you are", offering the ability to pilot new pages or subsites in parallel with your existing platform. This means you can shift rapidly without the stress of migrating everything before you can start building new experiences.
Squiz DXP is designed with flexibility in mind, allowing you to connect seamlessly with the tools you prefer. The built-in Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) replaces fragile custom integrations and third-party integration platforms with a centralized, low-code approach that keeps your tech stack working seamlessly together.
Connect your tools using:
- Pre-built connectors: Configure integrations to CRM, marketing automation, DAM, and analytics tools (like Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft, Google) in minutes through a point-and-click interface. Squiz maintains these connectors so they don't break when tools update.
- Low-code builder: Connect any system with an API using the low-code integration builder. No fragile point-to-point connections or custom code to maintain.
- Integration recipes: Deploy pre-built templates for common workflows (like syncing form submissions to your CRM) or create your own.
All integrations are managed from one centralized platform, so you can diagnose and fix issues in one place. This approach means less maintenance overhead, faster troubleshooting, and the flexibility to swap tools as your needs change without expensive rebuilds.
Squiz DXP capabilities
Squiz DXP brings together the tools marketing teams need to manage sophisticated digital experiences independently
- Content Management: Create and publish pages in minutes, not weeks, with built-in governance to keep everything on-brand, even across 100+ sites.
- Digital Asset Management: Manage every image, video, and file from one library, so only approved, on-brand assets are used across your sites and campaigns.
- Component Service: Create reusable page elements, like CTAs, carousels, accordions, that maintain your design system to stay on-brand everywhere.
- Forms: Build dynamic, no-code forms that convert, with submission data that syncs with your CRM and marketing tools.
- Keyword Search: Help users find what they need fast across all your content sources, with accurate results from the first search.
- Conversational AI search: Q&A-style search that delivers accurate, brand-safe AI answers from your content to meet modern user expectations.
- Optimization: See content, accessibility, and SEO problems at a glance, fix them fast, and boost performance everywhere your users search.
- Behavioral Analytics: Give your marketing team the power to run A/B tests, map journeys, and refine what works, so every visit delivers results.
- Personalization: Deliver one-to-one experiences at scale. Real-time, relevant, and easy for marketers to manage.
- Customer Data Platform: Bring all your customer data together to understand your audience, segment them in real time, and deliver personalized experiences.
- Integrations: Build, swap, and maintain integrations with low-code or pre-built connectors centralized in one easy-to-manage platform.
Apart from the capabilities, the platform itself offers:
- Security and governance: Strong built-in security, compliance, and governance features suitable for highly regulated environments.
- Scalability and flexibility: Designed for growing organizations to quickly adapt and scale digital experiences as needed, without heavy IT intervention.
- Workflow and automation: Enables automation of content publishing, approvals, and marketing activities, speeding up processes and reducing manual workloads.
- Self-service capabilities: Empowers small, lean teams to efficiently manage and enhance their digital presence independently, saving significant time and costs.
Squiz DXP delivers personalization through its Customer Data Platform (CDP) with several key advantages:
- Unified customer profiles that combine data from multiple sourcesReal-time user segmentation based on behavior, location, and more
- A no-code visual page builder which allows marketers to create personalized content directly within their editing workflow
- Cross-channel personalization across websites, portals, and apps
- Built-in compliance (including GDPR) and security features
- Flexibility to work with your existing technology
Unlike traditional CMS platforms that require extensive development for personalization, or headless CMS solutions that need custom coding, Squiz DXP provides comprehensive personalization capabilities out-of-the-box. The platform is specifically designed for complex service-led organizations, offering more accessible tools for marketers while maintaining enterprise-grade functionality.
Squiz DXP empowers marketers with AI-driven tools designed to streamline content creation and optimization. Within the Visual Page Builder, built-in GenAI tools enable marketers to tweak copy, adjust tone of voice, and generate variants for testing. Guardrails set by your admins ensure your team enjoys creative freedom at scale, while keeping your content consistent and on brand.
The platform also includes a conversational readiness tool that helps you audit your content for AI-readiness. This tool allows you to simulate how AI responds to common customer questions, identify content gaps, and get actionable insights to improve your content's accuracy - particularly important in a world where users are increasingly discovering information about your organization through AI tools.
Squiz DXP helps organizations scale both traffic and operations through:
- Handling traffic spikes and performance
- Automatic resource scaling: SaaS delivery detects traffic surges and adjusts resources instantly.
- Cloud-native infrastructure: Dynamically allocates resources to handle fluctuations in demand.
- Built-in performance optimization: Ensures speed and reliability during peak usage.
- Scaling governance and managing multiple sites
- Centralized multi-site management: Control content, assets, and personalization across all properties from one platform.
- Composable architecture & flexible integrations: Add capabilities, integrate third-party tools, and maintain seamless connections as your organization grows, without disrupting existing systems.
Unlike traditional CMS platforms, Squiz DXP supports high-traffic, enterprise-grade digital environments, enabling rapid growth and consistent performance without manual intervention or system overhauls.
Squiz DXP offers better long-term value for large-scale websites by:
- Predictable scaling costs: While initial investment is higher than traditional CMS or headless platforms, you avoid escalating costs of developer maintenance and ongoing customization typically required.
- Reduced technical overhead: Empowers marketing and content teams with no-code tools and pre-built components, eliminating development bottlenecks for routine content and personalization tasks.
- Built-in maintenance: As a SaaS platform, security updates, feature upgrades, and maintenance are included in pricing, contrasting with traditional CMS solutions where these create additional workload and costs.
- All-in-one platform: Comprehensive toolkit includes personalization, content management, and analytics without requiring multiple third-party plugin licenses and integration work.
- Future-proof scaling: Architecture supports seamless growth without requiring costly system overhauls as traffic and complexity increase.
- Integration flexibility: API-first approach allows organizations to retain valuable existing tools while adding new capabilities, protecting technology investments.
Unlike traditional CMS or headless solutions that appear cheaper initially but accumulate costs through developer dependencies, plugin licenses, and maintenance overhead, Squiz DXP's comprehensive platform offers better cost control and efficiency for complex, enterprise-level websites. While the upfront investment is higher, organizations typically achieve significant long-term savings through reduced technical dependencies, streamlined operations, and simplified maintenance.
Implementation and support
Squiz supports customer training and ongoing success through a variety of resources and programs, including Squiz Academy (our digital learning platform), regular customer success check-ins, product roadmap updates, MySquiz support portal, and comprehensive product documentation for developers and content editors on the Squiz Help Centre.
During implementation, we offer a co-build process to upskill customers from the very start, enabling internal teams to be confidently self-sufficient on the DXP from Day 1. Our ongoing support includes access to a dedicated, in-region Account Manager and Customer Success Manager.
Migrating to Squiz DXP is fast, low-risk, and designed to reduce stress for your team. For a fast lift-and-shift, your content can be moved in a few weeks. If a more comprehensive content overhaul and redesign effort is needed, we can do a thorough review of your content, design, and site structure. Our migration tools automatically map content, URLs, and metadata to preserve SEO and reduce duplicate content.
We can also help replace legacy integration code with secure, centralized connections using our built-in integration platform. Pre-built connectors and best-practice integration patterns reduce custom code, maintenance, and ongoing costs, ensuring your systems work together seamlessly. This allows you to take a phased approach and pilot new pages or subsites on Squiz DXP in parallel with your existing platform, enabling a rapid transition to Squiz without the stress of moving everything at once.
This approach has been successfully proven for many customers, reducing cost, risk, and effort, and we can provide a migration proof-of-concept on your content.
We're also actively developing AI-powered migration tools to automate moving content, templates, layouts, and design systems. These include:
- Automated specification generation: AI tools automatically create migration specifications from existing content sources, including major CMS platforms, Figma designs, and live site URLs.
- AI-assisted build and implementation: Specialized AI agents handle much of the migration work, reducing manual effort. Developers simply review and validate the output, ensuring accuracy and speed.