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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Commerce Layer

    Score10 out of 10
    N/ACommerce Layer is a headless commerce platform and order management system that enables users to add global shopping capabilities to any website, mobile app, chatbot, or IoT device. It is a CMS that can be used to create shoppable content through its API on a global scale.

    $0

    Magnolia

    Score9.9 out of 10
    Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
    Founded in Switzerland in 1997, Magnolia is a CMS used to build composable digital experiences. Magnolia helps create fully integrated customer experiences and speeds up digital delivery of content. Magnolia boasts 480 enterprise customers, thousands of Community Edition deployments, and more than 200 certified Magnolia Partners around the world. They further state that their enterprise customers include Sanofi, Generali, the Atlassian, The New York Times, Harley Davidson, and Union…

    $3,500

    per month

    Pricing
    Commerce LayerMagnolia
    Editions & Modules
    Growth
    $649
    per month (annual commitment)
    Enterprise
    Custom
    Startup
    Free
    100 orders/month included, then $0.90 for any extra order
    DX Core
    $3500
    per month
    DX Cloud
    $6000
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Commerce LayerMagnolia
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Commerce LayerMagnolia
    Considered Both Products
    Commerce Layer
    No answer on this topic
    Magnolia
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Would buy again
    58 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    49 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    58 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    98%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    39 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    53 Answers
    Features
    Commerce LayerMagnolia
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Commerce Layer and Magnolia
    Feature
    Commerce Layer
    -
    Ratings
    Magnolia
    8.1
    69 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.169 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Commerce Layer and Magnolia
    Feature
    Commerce Layer
    -
    Ratings
    Magnolia
    8.1
    68 Ratings
    4% above category average
    API00 Ratings8.561 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language00 Ratings7.761 Ratings
    Web Content Creation
    Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Commerce Layer and Magnolia
    Feature
    Commerce Layer
    -
    Ratings
    Magnolia
    8.0
    74 Ratings
    2% above category average
    WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings8.565 Ratings
    Code quality / cleanliness00 Ratings8.465 Ratings
    Admin section00 Ratings8.070 Ratings
    Page templates00 Ratings8.972 Ratings
    Library of website themes00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Mobile optimization / responsive design00 Ratings8.563 Ratings
    Publishing workflow00 Ratings7.573 Ratings
    Form generator00 Ratings6.958 Ratings
    Web Content Management
    Comparison of Web Content Management features of Commerce Layer and Magnolia
    Feature
    Commerce Layer
    -
    Ratings
    Magnolia
    7.5
    69 Ratings
    0% below category average
    Content taxonomy00 Ratings7.663 Ratings
    SEO support00 Ratings7.263 Ratings
    Bulk management00 Ratings7.657 Ratings
    Availability / breadth of extensions00 Ratings7.962 Ratings
    Community / comment management00 Ratings6.951 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Commerce LayerMagnolia
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Umbraco CMS
    Score7 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    Square Online
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    RWS Tridion Sites
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Commerce LayerMagnolia
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.1
    (78 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.1
    (9 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (68 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.5
    (67 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Commerce LayerMagnolia
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Commerce Layer
    Commerce Layer is a great choice, if you want to build a tailored system. The flexible API allows to build all kinds of applications around commerce, but you also need to deep dive a bit into the structure. If you want to set up a simple store and sell a few SKUs, you're probably rather a Shopify customer, but if you want to build great customer experiences and tailer the software to your business, Commerce Layer is a very good choice.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Magnolia
    Magnolia is a very capable DXP, that provides client with lots of flexibility in composing its own stack. While the core of the platform is a content management system, the open architecture of Magnolia DXP allows it to connect to any platform, allowing client to extend the capabilities. One scenario would be a centralized content hub - where through a single platform, content authors can choose which channel to distribute what content. For example, long form content for consumers viewing on a laptop, short form content for those using a mobile browser. This allow the client to personalized the experience based on channels. Another scenarios would be leveraging on GenAI - using Magnolia's built-in connector to ChatGPT. If that is not the service that one desire, you can always connect to another AI service such as Google Gemini. With GenAI, connected, content author can use AI as co-pilot to help them scale up their content production.
    Read full review
    Pros
    Commerce Layer
    • Flexibility
    • True headless (based on MACH principles)
    • Integrated sales/shipments solution
    • Seamless integration (extensive API, webhooks, etc.)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Magnolia
    • Speed of development - time to delivery from zero to MVP was excellent
    • Ease of use - the authoring experience is very easy to build and train
    • PAAS/SAAS - the managed service platform removed the traditional overhead of running in-house technologies, meaning we could focus on value add, with less time spent keeping the lights on.
    Read full review
    Cons
    Commerce Layer
    • Specific POS features are on the roadmap (we're using now a market per store, which works but creates some issues with it)
    • Payment flexibility (as we're using it fully as a POS solution)
    • Flexibility in order editing after approval of order
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Magnolia
    • The documentation provides samples that are often out of context, and difficult to know where the provided example code should be implemented. More tutorials providing the full project or step-by-step instructions on how to implement subject material would help greatly. Baeldung is a resource I would consider the gold standard in how this is done in other spaces.
    • The use of JCR and Nodes makes object serialization/deserialization painful. Jackson compatibility or similar would be a welcome enhancement to the developer experience. Maybe leveraging code-gen from light modules to build model classes when possible could help accomplish this.
    • Modifying the home layout from light modules is frustrating. It seems that any configuration overrides made merge with the default rather than overwriting, which makes for a difficult combination of guess-and-check while referencing the documentation to see what should be in each row/column when making changes.
    • Including "mark all as read" or "delete all" in the notifications app would be a great quality of life improvement. It seems that by default, users have to individually select messages and operate them.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Commerce Layer
    Commerce Layer is at the core of our operations
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Magnolia
    We have invested a lot of time and energy into tailoring a solution that works for the company.
    We think the new features in v6.2 will help us get to the next level
    We also don't have the resources to rebuild a website platform from scratch even if we wanted to
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Commerce Layer
    The new apps are great, but in our case, we built so specific functionalities around it that we built our own admin tool. Based on the complexity (especially for after sales processes), no off the shelf tool would have been able to do this.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Magnolia
    We've shown it to a number of users both clients and our own team and despite initial apprehensions, they "get it" very quickly. It's intuitive and friendly and quick to perform daily tasks. We once had a client tell us "Using Magnolia makes me smile" which says it all for us.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Commerce Layer
    No answers on this topic
    Magnolia
    I gave [it] 7/10 only because of the loading time of pages. Otherwise, I think it deserves an 8. Normally this is not an issue per [se] but considering the rating matrix and as I have been asked to honestly write about it. Yes, the page loading times could be improved.
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Commerce Layer
    We're in regular contact with Commerce Layer and regularly also discuss issues directly with the tech team
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Magnolia
    You always get an answer based on your SLA. But you always get a solution. That's the successfactor in this case. To often i was frustrated about people in a company without even a clue what there product is about or how to solve a problem. Magnolia's Support Team does a very good job and try to help you in most of the cases
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Commerce Layer
    The Commerce Layer data model is very flexible, which also creates a certain complexity. It's important to understand how the data model works and how relationships between them are built.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Magnolia
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Commerce Layer
    Real headless solution, fully SaaS. In comparison to all other solutions, Commerce Layer has an integrated order management which is lean, but very flexible. With all other solutions, we would have needed a separate OMS which would have increased both the complexity and the cost of the solution.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Magnolia
    I've used several CMSs like AEM and EpiServer, and comparatively, they all excel at different things. Magnolia is the best to develop for/against. Episerver has the best/most fluid UI in terms of content editing, and the overall admin experience AEM is just all around sucks.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Commerce Layer
    • Reduction of support staff by 2/3 as we could implement a full self-service solution
    • 1-2 days faster delivery of glasses to customers due to automated lens ordering (built into Commerce Layer)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Magnolia
    • Magnolia has brought about positive impacts. For instance, we need not outsource web design and marketing services because thanks to this software, we can handle most work inhouse
    • The software is affordable with no compromises on capabilities and therefore it is gives us value for money.
    • The templates makes the whole process easy
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Magnolia Screenshots

    Screenshot of the Magnolia App Launcher, used to switch between workspaces and manage pagesScreenshot of the customer experience. This brings together content and audiovisual digital assets to form more compelling digital experiences.Screenshot of global search that brings relevant content, no matter where it resides.Screenshot of customizing the ecommerce experience.Screenshot of Magnolia Orchestratem where users can manage and track campaignsScreenshot of the WYSIWYG page editor