Beyond best-of-breed: the case for martech consolidation

Ever worry your tech stack looks more like Jenga tower than a finely tuned machine? Hate to break it to you, but you’re suffering from stack fatigue.

The symptoms are easy to spot. Tick any that apply:

• Overload of overlapping tools
• Daily struggle with silos
• Constant pressure to prove ROI
• Chasing disconnected data
• Integration headaches

And that’s before you even start to think where AI fits into an already fragmented ecosystem, which is only going to amplify your challenges rather than put a stop to them.

The result? Your marketing techstack isn't just inefficient. It's putting the brakes on growth. And while you're busy making sense of disconnected tools, your competitors are deploying unified platforms that deliver superior experiences at half the cost, a fraction of the time and none of the headaches.

The hidden cost of tech sprawl

A 2024 report by Ascend2 shows that 61% of marketers cite ‘cost’ as a major challenge with their current stack. And 32% admit they’re underutilizing what they already have. Yet the real price tag goes way beyond what you're paying vendors.

• Strategic paralysis: When your customer data lives in silos, your "data-driven" strategy is really just expensive intuition.
• Innovation gridlock: Your team spends more time syncing tools than executing campaigns.
• Invisible ROI: You’re paying for a bunch of platforms but still can't definitively connect that spending to revenue outcomes.
• AI dysfunction: Your new AI tools are not only a bolt-on, they are only as good as the data they access. Dang.

This isn't just operational clutter. It's a strategic mess. It’s costing time, budget, and even customer trust. And it means the time has come to re-evaluate everything from the ground up…before that tower comes crashing down.

Beware the illusion of integration

Trouble is, many organizations have bought the story that some well known legacy platforms like Adobe and Sitecore solve these problems. In reality, these so-called ‘best of breed’ suites come with their own sets of challenges.

• Hidden costs: What starts as a ‘comprehensive solution’ is suddenly a never-end story of implementation fees, ongoing maintenance and upgrade cycles.
• High complexity: Complexity can be compounded by distinct CMS products for different use cases.
• Locked-in by design: Their business model depends on making it painfully expensive to leave once you're embedded in the ecosystem.
• Show me the AI: Ai is going to be a core part of the future… but not of these systems.

2025: the year of the Digital Experience Platform

But times are a changing. The era of best-of-breed everything is making room for smarter, unified platforms that are built to work together, not bolted on together.

Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) provide a centralized, integrated foundation for delivering consistent, personalized, and measurable experiences across all touchpoints. They’re not just another system in your stack. They are your stack.

Embedded AI vs. Bolt-On AI

2025 is also the year when marketing AI budgets are growing fast, but watch out: most organizations are simply bolting AI onto an ecosystem that’s already broken. Real transformation doesn't come from adding yet another tool. It comes from engineering AI directly into the workflows where decisions happen.

• Bolt-on AI requires data movement, creates new silos, and adds complexity.
• Embedded AI lives where your team works, accessing unified data and accelerating existing processes.

This distinction isn't just technical. It's the difference between AI that delivers immediate value and AI that becomes another expensive experiment.

That’s we’ve embedded our transformative AI into every part of Optimizely One: CMS, experimentation, and optimization workflows.

And the results speak for themselves. As we’ve outlined in our latest blog AI = over 40% more productivity: How we use AI at Optimizely, embedding AI isn’t just theoretical, it’s delivering real value. With Optimizely Opal, marketing teams are seeing:

• ~30% boost in content creation
• 10–25% increase in content performance
• 40% overall uplift in marketing output

It’s like having an infinitely scalable workforce, and we’re just getting started.

Optimizely is your problem-solving platform

Did you know that analysts consistently recognize Optimizely as a leader in DXP? But we don’t just build the platform. We actively thrive on it.

Using our own DXP to run our digital marketing programs gives us a unique perspective: we get to see the pain points of modern marketing firsthand, so we can design around them. That doesn’t simply improve efficiency. It delivers a true competitive advantage.

This is what a truly unified platform looks like

• Truly unified: Content, experimentation, personalization and analytics. All in one place. That’s not just a technical detail, it’s a step change in the way we work.
• Embedded AI: Under the hood, some of the most sophisticated AI out there comes built-in and transforms how marketing gets done.
• Streamlined scale: Optimizely adapts to any size campaign, making it easier to scale content and experimentation without burning out the team.
• Marketer-first: We built Optimizely to fit the way marketing teams actually work. That means faster onboarding, more autonomy, and fewer bottlenecks.

The 5 ways our DXP will transform the way you do marketing

So if you’re rethinking your stack, our advice is this: consolidation isn’t just about cutting tools. It’s about making space for better marketing. And this is how we help you do it.

• Content creation at scale: Manage, personalize, and publish across channels without chaos.
• Test and learn at speed: A/B test directly within your CMS, powered by AI suggestions.
• Truly personalized experiences: Segment, target, and optimize in one ecosystem: no patchwork required.
• Progressive delivery: Launch new experiences gradually, gather feedback, then iterate quickly.
• Ready, set, scale: Use built-in AI to generate test ideas, launch campaigns and gain meaningful insights.

Ready to overcome stack fatigue?

Stack consolidation isn’t just a tech decision. It isn't just about operational cleanup. And it isn’t just about saving money. It's about creating the capacity to deliver better customer experiences, faster.

When you unify your marketing technology, you create the conditions for faster execution, stronger personalization, and smarter decisions, all at scale.

In a world overflowing with tools but short on time, the real competitive edge belongs to those teams who consolidate tech and embed AI from the very beginning. The future of marketing isn’t about managing tech, it’s about unlocking it. And consolidation is how you start.

Want to know how Optimizely can help you make it happen? Let’s talk.