Directus vs. Magnolia

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Directus
Score 9.0 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
Directus is an Open Data Platform for managing the content of any SQL database. It provides an API layer (REST & GraphQL) for developers and a no-code App for non-technical users. Written entirely in JavaScript, Directus is open-source, modular, and extensible, allowing it to be fully tailored to a project's needs. Directus dynamically generates custom API endpoints based on an SQL database's schema in real-time — something the vendor states they call "
$0
per Project
Magnolia
Score 8.2 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
DirectusMagnolia
Editions & Modules
Directus Open-Source
$0
per Project
Directus On-Demand Cloud
$49
per Project
Directus Enterprise Cloud
$499
per Project
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DirectusMagnolia
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
DirectusMagnolia
Top Pros
Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Features
DirectusMagnolia
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Directus
-
Ratings
Magnolia
8.1
70 Ratings
1% above category average
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.170 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Directus
-
Ratings
Magnolia
8.0
69 Ratings
4% above category average
API00 Ratings8.462 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language00 Ratings7.662 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Directus
-
Ratings
Magnolia
8.0
75 Ratings
5% above category average
WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings8.566 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness00 Ratings8.466 Ratings
Admin section00 Ratings8.071 Ratings
Page templates00 Ratings8.973 Ratings
Library of website themes00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design00 Ratings8.564 Ratings
Publishing workflow00 Ratings7.574 Ratings
Form generator00 Ratings7.059 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Directus
-
Ratings
Magnolia
7.5
70 Ratings
2% above category average
Content taxonomy00 Ratings7.564 Ratings
SEO support00 Ratings7.164 Ratings
Bulk management00 Ratings7.858 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions00 Ratings8.063 Ratings
Community / comment management00 Ratings7.152 Ratings
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DirectusMagnolia
Small Businesses
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Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
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Score 9.0 out of 10
Image Relay
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Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
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User Ratings
DirectusMagnolia
Likelihood to Recommend
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(79 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(9 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(69 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.5
(68 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
DirectusMagnolia
Likelihood to Recommend
Monospace Inc
No answers on this topic
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.
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Pros
Monospace Inc
No answers on this topic
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.
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Cons
Monospace Inc
No answers on this topic
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.
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Likelihood to Renew
Monospace Inc
No answers on this topic
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
Monospace Inc
No answers on this topic
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.
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Performance
Monospace Inc
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.
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Support Rating
Monospace Inc
No answers on this topic
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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Alternatives Considered
Monospace Inc
No answers on this topic
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.
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Return on Investment
Monospace Inc
No answers on this topic
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

Directus Screenshots

Screenshot of Collection Page — This is the main gateway to your content items, providing a highly configurable Layout for browsing and visualizing the items within a collection. The header of this page includes key action buttons for creating, deleting, and batch editing items.Screenshot of Item Detail Page — Most Collection Detail Layouts support navigating to individual item detail pages where you a presented with a customizable form for viewing/editing the item's content.Screenshot of File Library — This module aggregates all files within the project into one consolidated library. This page has the same features and configuration as Collection Detail.Screenshot of Settings > Role Permissions — Directus includes an extremely granular, filter-based permissions system for controlling access.Screenshot of In-App Docs — This module is an internal set of guides, concepts, and reference docs for your project's specific version of Directus. It also includes a dynamic API Reference that is dynamically tailored to your custom schema.

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.