Concrete CMS vs. Magnolia

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Concrete CMS
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Concrete CMS (formerly Concrete5) is a free and open source, PHP built content management system for content on the web and also for intranets. It is optimized to support the creation of online magazines and newspapers.N/A
Magnolia
Score 8.3 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Founded in 1997 with a vision to create the first truly open content management system, Magnolia is presented as a fast way to launch digital experiences. With a mission to help clients move fast and stay flexible and boasting users among brands like Atlassian and The New York Times, Magnolia DXP supports industries ranging from automotive to telecommunications, offering enterprise features and headless agility to help them stay ahead. From humble beginnings in Basel, Magnolia's…N/A
Pricing
Concrete CMSMagnolia
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Concrete CMSMagnolia
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
Concrete CMSMagnolia
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Concrete CMS
9.4
38 Ratings
16% above category average
Magnolia
8.1
66 Ratings
1% above category average
Role-based user permissions9.438 Ratings8.166 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Concrete CMS
9.7
33 Ratings
23% above category average
Magnolia
8.0
64 Ratings
4% above category average
API9.731 Ratings8.457 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language9.730 Ratings7.557 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Concrete CMS
8.4
42 Ratings
10% above category average
Magnolia
8.0
70 Ratings
5% above category average
WYSIWYG editor9.242 Ratings8.561 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness10.037 Ratings8.461 Ratings
Admin section10.040 Ratings7.966 Ratings
Page templates10.040 Ratings8.968 Ratings
Library of website themes4.438 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design9.739 Ratings8.559 Ratings
Publishing workflow7.837 Ratings7.569 Ratings
Form generator6.539 Ratings7.056 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Concrete CMS
7.1
40 Ratings
3% below category average
Magnolia
7.5
65 Ratings
2% above category average
Content taxonomy8.839 Ratings7.560 Ratings
SEO support9.039 Ratings7.159 Ratings
Bulk management6.139 Ratings7.954 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions5.739 Ratings8.058 Ratings
Community / comment management5.739 Ratings7.148 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Concrete CMSMagnolia
Small Businesses
Divi
Divi
Score 9.8 out of 10
Divi
Divi
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Concrete CMSMagnolia
Likelihood to Recommend
9.2
(59 ratings)
8.0
(74 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(22 ratings)
8.1
(9 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(12 ratings)
8.0
(69 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.5
(68 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(3 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.8
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Concrete CMSMagnolia
Likelihood to Recommend
Portland Labs
Suitable if you are part of small to large scale companies or web-houses which have PHP developers and frontend engineers with some budgets. [Also suitable if] you or your client want to build a website that requires some features or uniqueness [and needs] some customization and freedom. Additionally suitable if you want this project to be DevOps based project or if the project requires very tight security and is inside of a closed network.
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Magnolia
Magnolia is very well suited to scenarios where there are multiple end points for content eg. apps, remote devices, websites etc. and with multiple users. Magnolia is very good at working with different "shapes" of content so it's not necessarily all about HTML content for the web which tends to be the default for a number of other products of this nature. This means that it's more logical for people to work with structured data and easier for the applications to sort and manage that content when they receive it.
This works really well when you have multiple team members (often in multiple locations). We've had clients who've had people in twelve European locations with sixteen languages and they can share skills and resources between them but still manage their own content.
Magnolia is less appropriate for SMEs who have fewer digital assets and content. It's not to say that it can't be done but it's more that the budget would not necessarily fit.
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Pros
Portland Labs
  • As a dev, the Page object (coupled with page attributes, nav menus and page lists) makes structuring a website or web app a dream. The separation of page templates from page types also helps, the former being about layout while the latter is more conceptual.
  • As an admin, you pretty much have as much control as the developers of the site decide to give you.
  • The versioning system allows admins to roll changes back and work on changes before publishing them.
  • The permissions system is exceptionally powerful, allowing roles and/or individual users to be included or excluded from each permission.
  • The attributes system allows pages, files and users to be given custom properties of various types (e.g. text, image, colour).
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Magnolia
  • Use of YAML to define content models with code.
  • Versatility of defining actions for custom handlers.
  • Reloading classes when code is modified in a local dev environment is nice. While it doesn't seem to work when changes extend beyond the method body (i.e., adding methods), it remediates the pain of long startup times.
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Cons
Portland Labs
  • Allow end users to clear cache when updating pages.
  • Needs a few more built in forms.
  • The CMS is not multilingual by default. Even though I managed to 'hack' it so, it would be nice to have it included.
  • It'd be nice to make use of custom PHP modules through shortcodes more straight forward. It seems the hooks are a bit contrived.
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Magnolia
  • As a developer the learning curve is long, you can start developing relatively quickly but getting to know the platform in depth takes time.
  • Having a history of modifications not only at the page level but also at the Content Apps level would be very useful.
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Likelihood to Renew
Portland Labs
Its a very solid, very consistent package that never lets you down or leaves you frustrated. It gets a 10/10 because its so much better than anything else currently available. It also gets a 10/10 because, even if not compared to others, it does not leave you wanting for features or functionality. It is an excellent piece of software that will answer almost every CMS need.
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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
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Usability
Portland Labs
I have used it on over 30 projects in the past 3 years and it's still a pleasure to work in. Doesn't always have all the answers, no CMS does, but I still find it very easy to use from prototyping to working to final project. Also there is no problem working on a localhost then moving to a live site, like there is with WordPress. It's my go to app in my CMS quiver.
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Magnolia
There are a ton of small things that could make this CMS great Off the top of my head... 1) Better navigation between a component and its corresponding node in the jcr ( devs often have to flip between a page and a spot in the jcr even though there could be a button to take you from a page/component in the pages app to its location in the JCR) 2) Why does a content editor need to open the page to edit the page properties? They could just as easily edit the dialog from the tree view if they have many pages to touch, and it would save them time by not having to render the page.
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Reliability and Availability
Portland Labs
Since it's not tied to a central server (other than for authorizing updates and assigning licenses to specific sites), it's available pretty much 100% of the time.
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Magnolia
No answers on this topic
Performance
Portland Labs
The site works extremely well, the front end flies, searches and form submissions are very fast indeed. The reason its a 9 not a ten? the back end can be a little slow at times, and this is unfair, because for the backend to be so amazing, it has to do a huge amount of work!
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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.
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Support Rating
Portland Labs
Concrete5 is open-source and has an incredibly strong, polite, and supportive community. You can get an answer to nearly anything you want to do with Concrete5 by googling for it, searching the Concrete5 discussion forums or stack overflow, or posting your question to the forum. Members are very courteous and do not look down on those with less knowledge. And answers are always quick, informative, and supportive.
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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
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Implementation Rating
Portland Labs
Build off of an existing theme to speed up the creation of custom designed themed. Bootstrap is a good one but there are many others that are probably much simpler to build from than the Bootstrap one was. Make sure you host on a Unix/Linux server so you don't have to install PHP or MySQL separately. It's just smoother on those platforms.
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Magnolia
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Portland Labs
WordPress at the time was riddled with security breaches in the news and while Concrete5 was smaller (and therefore a smaller attack vector), after eleven years of use, Concrete5 has only had one published incident with an add-on that resolved within hours and with excellent communication. You can talk to the CEO and the CTO (or the rest of the team). They are very engaged and you're working with a small company of people who care, not a call-center with people just waiting to go home.
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Magnolia
Prior to using Magnolia as an enterprise CMS solution, different teams leveraged different website platforms including WordPress, Weebly, and others. While these other platforms may be slightly more user friendly to the content editor, they don't offer nearly the same amount of customization and digital best practices out of the box that are customizable by web development teams like Magnolia does. The other solutions may work better for a quicker/simpler web implementation without technical resources but don't have the depth and breadth of capability and functionality that Magnolia has and fall flat.
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Return on Investment
Portland Labs
  • Concrete5 is the customer-facing side of our business. It's where we host the site that potential customers see before they choose to purchase and create an account with us. We are able to keep that site clean, user-friendly, and with a lot of available options for customers to interact with thanks to Concrete5
  • The ability to have multiple users and admins for the site means that we all members of our team can go in and create new content, fix or troubleshoot issues, and edit the site easily.
  • Our CRM isn't directly integrated with Concrete5, so when customers go to make a purchase with us, they have to leave our Concrete5 site.
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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
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ScreenShots

Concrete CMS Screenshots

Screenshot of In-context editing is simple to understandScreenshot of Change text just like a word processorScreenshot of Versioning and workflow built on top of powerful permissionsScreenshot of Flexible backend to power complex communities and intranets.

Magnolia Screenshots

Screenshot of the customer experience: Brings together content and audiovisual digital assets to form more compelling digital experiences.Screenshot of the Magnolia App Launcher, used to switch between workspaces and manage pagesScreenshot of Magnolia's native analytics integration framework, used to take advantage of data directly in the authoring UI, coupled to content.Screenshot of global search that brings relevant content, no matter where it resides.Screenshot of customizing the ecommerce experience.