Optimizely

MSQ DX holds Optimizely Platinum Solution Partner status alongside Strategic Global Partner designation, two distinct recognitions that reflect different dimensions of the relationship. Optimizely's Solution Partner tier structure runs across five levels (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Premier Platinum), with the Strategic Global Partner initiative operating as a separate designation for partners with global delivery capabilities. MSQ DX has also been named Customer's Choice Partner of the Year in both 2024 and 2025.

The tier structure recognises implementation volume, certifications, and client success. Platinum status requires sustained delivery across enterprise engagements and a significant base of certified professionals. Premier Platinum sits above it, recognising the largest-scale global partners.

Combined with Opal Specialised certification, this gives MSQ DX access to Optimizely's highest levels of technical support, escalation paths, and product beta programmes.

When evaluating Optimizely partners, four signals matter most: partner tier (Platinum or Strategic Global Partner status), the number of named OMVPs on staff, client-voted recognition such as Customer's Choice Partner of the Year, and sustained partnership history with named enterprise implementations. These signals separate genuine platform depth from marketing claims.

Tier confirms basic capability, but the depth indicators behind it separate strong partners from average ones. OMVP count signals platform expertise beyond standard certification. The status is awarded annually by Optimizely to individuals who self-nominate or are nominated by peers, then assessed for sustained contribution to the Optimizely community through implementation expertise, add-ons, strategy, or thought leadership. Customer's Choice Partner of the Year is the only Optimizely award decided by partners' actual clients, making it a stronger fit signal than vendor-selected awards.

MSQ DX brings 18 years of Optimizely partnership, six OMVPs on staff, Strategic Global Partner status, and Customer's Choice recognition in both 2024 and 2025. Beyond credentials, the evaluation that matters most is whether the senior people involved in the pitch will be involved in delivery, and how a partner measures success post-launch.

The right choice depends on your organisation's technical maturity, customisation requirements, and long-term hosting preferences. SaaS CMS suits teams that want Optimizely to manage infrastructure, updates, and scaling. PaaS CMS suits organisations with complex .NET estates, deep customisation needs, or existing hosting arrangements they want to maintain.

Both options now share core capabilities. CMS 13 brought Visual Builder and Optimizely Graph to PaaS, significantly narrowing the feature gap with SaaS. Optimizely has confirmed that PaaS will continue to receive investment, PaaS and SaaS share the same codebase, and the company has stated publicly that it is not giving up on PaaS.

The key decision factors are: how much control your development team needs over the runtime environment, whether you want to self-host or use Optimizely's DXP Cloud, your frontend framework preferences (SaaS is more frontend-agnostic while PaaS has deeper .NET integration), and your appetite for managing upgrades. SaaS receives continuous updates automatically. PaaS upgrades are managed by your team or partner on your own timeline.

One point worth noting: SaaS CMS is headless by design and does not host your frontend by default. You need a separate hosting environment for your presentation layer. Optimizely has introduced an optional Frontend Hosting add-on, but many organisations use Vercel, Azure, or AWS for this.

MSQ DX has delivered implementations on both models and can advise based on your specific technical landscape.

An OMVP (Optimizely Most Valuable Professional) is an individual recognised by Optimizely for exceptional contribution to the platform's community through implementation expertise, add-on development, strategy, or thought leadership. MSQ DX has six OMVPs on staff, the largest OMVP team of any UK agency. This signals deep, sustained expertise that goes beyond standard certification.

The programme dates back to 2007, when it launched as the EPiServer MVP. Today, OMVPs span more than 50 organisations across 17 countries. Recipients are nominated and assessed annually based on community contributions, technical innovation, speaking engagements, and published expertise. Within the programme, there are Silver, Gold, and Platinum tiers reflecting sustained contribution over multiple years, and two categories: Technology and Strategy.

MSQ DX's 6 OMVPs are Andy Blyth (Technical Architect), Graham Carr (Technical Architect), Ibrar Hussain (Technical Director), John Prior (Principal Consultant), Lorna Foott (Director of Partnerships), and Tom Robinson (Technical Analyst). The breadth matters, this spans architecture, delivery, consulting, partnerships, and product strategy, which means OMVP-level knowledge informs every stage of an engagement. When evaluating partners, ask how many OMVPs are on staff and whether they will be involved in your project.

Opal is Optimizely's AI agent orchestration platform, launched in May 2025. It goes beyond content generation, Opal coordinates AI agents across the full Optimizely product suite to automate workflows, personalise experiences, and optimise campaigns. MSQ DX holds Opal Specialised Partner status, meaning our team is trained and certified to implement, configure, and extend Opal within enterprise environments. MSQ DX additionally holds Optimizely's Partner Onboarding Specialist accreditation for Opal, which recognises the team's ability to onboard enterprise clients onto the platform and reach working agents in production, not just a pilot.

The specialisation matters because Opal is not a bolt-on feature. It is embedded across Optimizely's CMS, commerce, experimentation, and content marketing products. Adoption has been rapid. Nearly 900 companies began using Opal within its first months, making it the fastest-growing product in Optimizely's history.

Opal runs on a credit-based consumption model. Optimizely currently provides 200 complimentary monthly credits per instance (through September 2026), with paid tiers available for heavier usage. In practical terms, Opal can generate and adapt content across channels, automate A/B test creation and analysis, build audience segments from behavioural data, and orchestrate multi-step marketing workflows.

MSQ DX's approach to Opal focuses on identifying the specific workflows where AI orchestration will drive measurable impact. We help organisations establish governance frameworks, define quality thresholds for AI-generated content, and build measurement models that quantify Opal's contribution to business outcomes.

Optimizely Opal agents automate specific marketing tasks across the full Optimizely suite, from generating and optimising content in CMS, to running experiments in Web Experimentation, to building personalised campaigns. MSQ DX configures these agents to match each organisation's brand guidelines, approval workflows and compliance requirements.

Opal includes over 15 pre-built agents covering SEO metadata analysis, content refresh recommendations, experiment review, heatmap analysis and email subject line generation, alongside a no-code Agent Builder for creating custom agents. The platform operates on a credit-based model with a current offer of 200 complimentary monthly credits per instance. MSQ DX's implementation approach prioritises identifying the three to five highest-impact workflows for each client before building out broader automation, ensuring measurable ROI from day one rather than broad but shallow adoption.

Migrating from CMS 12 to CMS 13 is a significant but well-defined undertaking. The runtime moves to .NET 10, Visual Builder becomes the default editing surface, Opti ID replaces legacy authentication for editorial and admin users, and Search & Navigation is no longer supported, replaced by Optimizely Graph. Planning should start six to nine months before your target go-live.

The largest workstream for most organisations is the Search & Navigation to Graph migration. If your current implementation relies heavily on Search & Navigation for content delivery, filtering, or site search, this is where the bulk of development effort sits. Graph is architecturally different. It is a federated content delivery API rather than a local search index — so it is not a like-for-like swap. Optimizely has released a dedicated CMS 13 Graph SDK to support the transition.

The good news: CMS 12 to 13 is considerably lighter than the CMS 11 to 12 migration, which required a full .NET Framework to .NET Core transition. If your codebase is already on CMS 12 with .NET 8, the framework upgrade is incremental. The areas that require the most attention beyond Graph are: custom property types (which may need updating for Visual Builder compatibility), third-party integrations that depend on deprecated APIs, and any custom extensions tied to the old authentication model. Note that visitor-facing authentication can still use ASP.NET Identity — Opti ID is mandatory for CMS editorial access, not necessarily for your public-facing site.

MSQ DX has published a blog on what CMS 13 means for marketing teams, and our technical team can run a migration readiness assessment to scope the work specific to your implementation.

Optimizely now treats AI agents as a third audience for content, alongside the marketer and the customer, and has launched an AEO platform with Conductor to track visibility across AI search. MSQ DX builds Optimizely content and structured data so it is readable and citable by those agents, the same generative engine optimisation work we run across our partnerships. On Optimizely's GEO-ready CMS, that means content modelled and marked up to surface in AI answers, not only traditional search.