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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Heroku Platform

    Score7.6 out of 10
    N/AThe Heroku Platform, now from Salesforce, is a platform-as-a-service based on a managed container system, with integrated data services and ecosystem for deploying modern apps. It takes an app-centric approach for software delivery, integrated with developer tools and workflows. It’s three main tool are: Heroku Developer Experience (DX), Heroku Operational Experience (OpEx), and Heroku Runtime. Heroku Developer Experience (DX) Developers deploy directly from tools like…

    $85

    per month

    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
    Heroku PlatformMagnolia
    Editions & Modules
    Production
    $25.00
    per month
    Advanced
    $250.00
    per month
    DX Core
    $3500
    per month
    DX Cloud
    $6000
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Heroku PlatformMagnolia
    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
    Heroku PlatformMagnolia
    Considered Both Products
    Salesforce
    No answer on this topic
    Magnolia
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    89%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    58 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    7 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    49 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    89%
    Happy with the feature set
    8 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    58 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    89%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    8 Answers
    98%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    39 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    8 Answers
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    53 Answers
    Features
    Heroku PlatformMagnolia
    Platform-as-a-Service
    Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Heroku Platform and Magnolia
    Feature
    Heroku Platform
    7.2
    44 Ratings
    7% below category average
    Magnolia
    -
    Ratings
    Ease of building user interfaces6.027 Ratings00 Ratings
    Scalability7.044 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform management overhead7.043 Ratings00 Ratings
    Workflow engine capability6.030 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform access control7.043 Ratings00 Ratings
    Services-enabled integration6.042 Ratings00 Ratings
    Development environment creation9.039 Ratings00 Ratings
    Development environment replication9.038 Ratings00 Ratings
    Issue monitoring and notification8.042 Ratings00 Ratings
    Issue recovery7.039 Ratings00 Ratings
    Upgrades and platform fixes7.044 Ratings00 Ratings
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Heroku Platform and Magnolia
    Feature
    Heroku Platform
    -
    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 Heroku Platform and Magnolia
    Feature
    Heroku Platform
    -
    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 Heroku Platform and Magnolia
    Feature
    Heroku Platform
    -
    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 Heroku Platform and Magnolia
    Feature
    Heroku Platform
    -
    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
    Heroku PlatformMagnolia
    Small Businesses
    IBM Cloud Foundry
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Umbraco CMS
    Score7 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Cloud Private
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Square Online
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    AWS Elastic Beanstalk
    Score8.6 out of 10
    RWS Tridion Sites
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Heroku PlatformMagnolia
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.0
    (47 ratings)
    8.1
    (78 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.5
    (6 ratings)
    8.1
    (9 ratings)
    Usability
    9.2
    (17 ratings)
    8.0
    (68 ratings)
    Availability
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.5
    (67 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.7
    (19 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Online Training
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Heroku PlatformMagnolia
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Salesforce
    Heroku is very well suited for startups looking to get a server stack up and running quickly. There is little to no overhead when managing your instances. However, you'll need a background in basic DevOps or system management to make sure everything is set up correctly. In addition, it's easy to accidentally go crazy on pricing. Make sure you're only creating the server instances you need to run the base application and set up an auto-scaler plugin to handle peaks.
    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
    Salesforce
    • Heroku has a very simple deployment model, making it easy to get your application up-and-running with minimal effort. We can focus on our efforts the unique aspects of our application.
    • The robust add-on marketplace makes it easy to try out new approaches with minimal effort and investment -- and when we settle on a solution, we can easily scale it.
    • Heroku's support is quite good -- their staff is quite technical and willing to get into the weeds to diagnose even complicated problems.
    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
    Salesforce
    • Large price jumps between certain resource tiers (2x Dyno for $50 per month versus Performance Dyno for $250). Free Postgres next jumps to $50 per month.
    • Marketing/Branding to non-technical stakeholders. As the years pass, I've had to fight more to convince stakeholders on the value of Heroku over AWS.
    • Improve Buildpack documentation. This is one area where Heroku's documentation is fairly confusing.
    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
    Salesforce
    Heroku is easy to use, services a ton of functions for you out of the box, and provides a means to get a software product off the ground and managed quickly and easily. The tools provide allows a small to medium size org to move very quickly. The CLI tools provided make managing an entire technical infrastructure simple.
    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
    Salesforce
    Easy to use web based console and easy to use command line tools; deployment is done directly from a GIT repository. What more could you ask for? The one thing that keeps me from giving it a 10 is that custom build packs are almost incomprehensible. We used one for a while because we needed cairo graphics processing. Fortunately, I was able to figure out a different way to do what we needed so that we could get off the custom build pack.
    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
    Reliability and Availability
    Salesforce
    Heroku availability correlates pretty strongly to AWS US EAST availability. We had a couple of times where there was a Heroku-specific issue but not for the last 7-8 months.
    Read full review
    Magnolia
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Salesforce
    The only issue that I ever have is that about 1 out of 20 deployments (git push) will hang and need to be cancelled and done again.
    Read full review
    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
    Salesforce
    I've used it for many years without facing any major problem. It's not hard at all to get used to it, it's documentation is outstanding and simple. We are close to 2020 and I don't think most of the existing companies or startups should still face old problems such as wasting time deploying code and calculate computing resources.
    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
    Salesforce
    Be ready to pay a bit more than expected in the beginning if you're migrating from a big server. The application is probably not ready for the change and you have to keep improving it with time.
    It's also important to consider that you can't save anything to the disc as it will be lost when your application restarts, so you have to think about using something like S3.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Magnolia
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Salesforce
    Heroku is the more expensive option for hosting compared to some of the cloud platforms we investigated, but it's worth it for us because of the plug-and-play nature of Heroku deployment. We can be up and running in a few minutes and know with precision how much it will cost us each month to run the application, unlike Amazon Web Services where you have to go to great pains to configure it correctly or else you might end up with a shocking monthly bill. Overall, spending the time to configure Amazon Web Services or one of its competitors is likely the more affordable and powerful choice, because you have control over so many specifics of the configuration. But it also requires the burden of continuing to maintain and update your AWS instance, whereas with Heroku they take care of security fixes and platform upgrades. It's a great service and we are happy to pay the extra cost for the value-adds Heroku provides.
    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
    Salesforce
    • It has been critical in seamlessly operating our platform with runs all of our programs.
    • It has been impressive with its ability to scale quickly which results in the growth of our work.
    • It allows for tracking of different features which allows for quick problem solving which saves us time.
    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