Episerver rebranded as Optimizely in 2021. Episerver acquired Optimizely in 2020, then market research led it to adopt the better-known Optimizely name across the whole platform. The combined company pairs Episerver’s content management backbone with Optimizely’s experimentation, plus the product and content recommendation engines Episerver had already acquired.
The change was announced in early 2021 and took effect that September. Episerver’s brand recognition in North America was growing, but adopting the Optimizely name connected the platform to a brand already known inside larger enterprises.
What does Optimizely add to Episerver?
Optimizely’s strength is experimentation at a scale most CMS platforms cannot reach. Instead of testing a single page or one button against another, you can test steps in a user journey, and the experiments do not have to be permanent. The interface is drag and drop, so non-developers can run tests, and machine learning handles the statistical analysis. Bringing that into Episerver’s content management pushes what the DXP can do.
Why the merger mattered
The merger gave the platform clear differentiation. Episerver’s A/B testing and self-optimizing blocks were limited to point-to-point changes. With Optimizely integrated, the platform gained multivariate testing, and combined with the product recommendations from Peerius and the content recommendations from Idio, editors could test a workflow or user journey and push a change that served machine-generated personalized content or product recommendations. At the time of the merger, no other DXP had that combination built in.
As a digital strategy leader, watching that pace of integration at Optimizely was genuinely interesting. The platform’s experimentation roots are why applied AI now sits closer to the center of the product. For the wider platform decision, see Optimizely vs WordPress for enterprise.
