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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    HCL Digital Experience

    Score9.9 out of 10
    N/AHCL Digital Experience is based on the former IBM Web Content Manager and IBM WebSphere Portal products, acquired by HCL Technologies from IBM in late 2018. The product allows the user to create, manage and deliver engaging omnichannel digital experiences to audiences with responsive content, targeted offers, seamlessly integrated applications and consistent branding across channels (web, mobile, and hybrid mobile/web applications and more).N/A

    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
    HCL Digital ExperienceMagnolia
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    DX Core
    $3500
    per month
    DX Cloud
    $6000
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    HCL Digital ExperienceMagnolia
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    HCL Digital ExperienceMagnolia
    Considered Both Products
    HCLSoftware
    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
    HCL Digital ExperienceMagnolia
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of HCL Digital Experience and Magnolia
    Feature
    HCL Digital Experience
    5.0
    5 Ratings
    47% below category average
    Magnolia
    8.1
    69 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Role-based user permissions5.05 Ratings8.169 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of HCL Digital Experience and Magnolia
    Feature
    HCL Digital Experience
    4.1
    5 Ratings
    64% below category average
    Magnolia
    8.1
    68 Ratings
    4% above category average
    API4.14 Ratings8.561 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language4.15 Ratings7.761 Ratings
    Web Content Creation
    Comparison of Web Content Creation features of HCL Digital Experience and Magnolia
    Feature
    HCL Digital Experience
    2.9
    5 Ratings
    84% below category average
    Magnolia
    8.0
    74 Ratings
    2% above category average
    WYSIWYG editor7.04 Ratings8.565 Ratings
    Code quality / cleanliness3.15 Ratings8.465 Ratings
    Admin section3.15 Ratings8.070 Ratings
    Page templates1.15 Ratings8.972 Ratings
    Library of website themes1.15 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Mobile optimization / responsive design4.04 Ratings8.563 Ratings
    Publishing workflow1.14 Ratings7.573 Ratings
    Form generator3.02 Ratings6.958 Ratings
    Web Content Management
    Comparison of Web Content Management features of HCL Digital Experience and Magnolia
    Feature
    HCL Digital Experience
    1.9
    5 Ratings
    111% below category average
    Magnolia
    7.5
    69 Ratings
    0% below category average
    Content taxonomy1.15 Ratings7.663 Ratings
    SEO support2.15 Ratings7.263 Ratings
    Bulk management2.13 Ratings7.657 Ratings
    Availability / breadth of extensions2.14 Ratings7.962 Ratings
    Community / comment management2.13 Ratings6.951 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    HCL Digital ExperienceMagnolia
    Small Businesses
    Yext
    Score6.9 out of 10
    Umbraco CMS
    Score6.9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Square Online
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Progress Sitefinity
    Score7.8 out of 10
    RWS Tridion Sites
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    HCL Digital ExperienceMagnolia
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (11 ratings)
    8.1
    (78 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    5.7
    (6 ratings)
    8.1
    (9 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.0
    (68 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.5
    (67 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    HCL Digital ExperienceMagnolia
    Likelihood to Recommend
    HCLSoftware
    HCL DX does really well at managing and maintaining the site. It allows the business to basically maintain the site while IT spent time developing new and enhanced functions. The main issue I currently have with HCL DX is not directly with the product but it does play a role. It is difficult finding skilled resources to support HCL DX in my experience.
    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
    HCLSoftware
    • With Version 8.5, IBM Web Content Manager introduced in place editing capabilities which allow authors to make content edits on sections of the page instead of going to the content itself. This feature allows authors to make changes in context of the page and preview changes within the actual look and feel of a live page.
    • Projects provide a collaborative atmosphere for the author community so that authors can interact and work as a team to manage inter-dependent content changes under one project and publish all changes at once, instead of working separately on individual content changes. This brings awareness across authors in an organization and easy knowledge share.
    • IBM Digital Data Connector is a cool feature that allows [users] to integrate external content sources onto the portal using IBM Web Content Manager presentation components. This allows UI/UX designers to present integrated external data in any manner they want, manage UI changes with an underlying approval process and leverage syndication to push changes live immediately.
    • IBM Web Content Manager offers a targeted content feature that allows business users to deliver personalized content to customers based on customer demographic information, browsing history and other transaction related information. Any rules created follow the publishing process thereby making it just a configurable item resulting in less turn around to turn on the feature on a website.
    • IBM Web Content Manager offers 'multi lingual solution' out of the box which allows content creation for almost all popular languages.
    • Syndication feature has improved a lot and it now provides a detailed views comprising of 'failed items', 'items that have syndicated successfully, 'items in queue'. Failed items view provides detailed and clear cut information of what resulted in failure helping IT to troubleshoot problems easily.
    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
    HCLSoftware
    • IBM Web Content Manager should provide some easily usable connectors through a GUI to connect to bring content from custom data sources including connecting to Salesforce and custom databases.
    • Should further optimize and enhance creation of rich and responsive content driven UIs on various digital channels.
    • Should further optimize and enhance content personalization features.
    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
    HCLSoftware
    IBM products always moves forward to adapt to new requirements and technologies. I have used versions 6, 6.1, 7 and 8 of IBM WCM, and I know IBM is ready to revamp the tool based on emerging needs, and still provide the capabilities to migrate your old system to the newer versions.
    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
    HCLSoftware
    New versions has increased user experience facilitating usability.
    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
    HCLSoftware
    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
    HCLSoftware
    We had some issues related with performing and the support was suitable and sucessful.
    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
    HCLSoftware
    Implementation was successful due to Websphere application server used.
    Read full review
    Magnolia
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    HCLSoftware
    Magento and Prestashop are E-commerce CMS platforms. They are used in a different scale of application than WCM.
    Concerning Joomla, it's a useful CMS forsmaller website. Once again this is an other scale of application than WCM Liveray can compete WCM 7 concerning the : ¤ specific development ¤ security ¤ responsive
    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
    HCLSoftware
    • Negative: Very complex architecture for on-premise deployments (too many servers to installed)
    • Positive: Easy customization
    • Negative: Architecture limited to cloud solutions
    • WCM is an old product and needs an update
    • Blog, and community are not integrated in Digital Manager for discussion
    • Templates are not available to integrate basic services (FileNet, more complex BPM , e-commerce)
    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