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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Joomla

    Score8.3 out of 10
    N/AJoomla! is a free and open source content management system used to publish web content. Included features are page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, a search function, and support for language internationalization.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
    JoomlaMagnolia
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    DX Core
    $3500
    per month
    DX Cloud
    $6000
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    JoomlaMagnolia
    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
    JoomlaMagnolia
    Considered Both Products
    The Joomla Project
    No answer on this topic
    Magnolia
    Chose Magnolia
    Putting all together: capabilities, support, community and price... Magnolia is the best combination, maybe not the best on each aspect, but for sure in the combination
    Incentivized
    Chose Magnolia
    I evaluated many CMS products and I’m continuing to evaluate them to verify the new functionality introduced.

    I evaluated these products: Alfresco, Apache Lenya, DotCMS, Drupal, Liferay, Hippo, Joomla, OpenCMS. I chose Magnolia because Magnolia offers two licensed community …
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    93%
    Would buy again
    14 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    58 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    93%
    Delivers good value for the price
    13 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    49 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    87%
    Happy with the feature set
    13 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    58 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    98%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    39 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    14 Answers
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    53 Answers
    Features
    JoomlaMagnolia
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Joomla! and Magnolia
    Feature
    Joomla!
    8.3
    51 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Magnolia
    8.1
    69 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Role-based user permissions8.351 Ratings8.169 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Joomla! and Magnolia
    Feature
    Joomla!
    6.6
    48 Ratings
    17% below category average
    Magnolia
    8.1
    68 Ratings
    4% above category average
    API7.246 Ratings8.561 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language6.147 Ratings7.761 Ratings
    Web Content Creation
    Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Joomla! and Magnolia
    Feature
    Joomla!
    7.7
    54 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Magnolia
    8.0
    74 Ratings
    2% above category average
    WYSIWYG editor8.353 Ratings8.565 Ratings
    Code quality / cleanliness8.551 Ratings8.465 Ratings
    Admin section8.249 Ratings8.070 Ratings
    Page templates7.052 Ratings8.972 Ratings
    Library of website themes6.350 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Mobile optimization / responsive design7.550 Ratings8.563 Ratings
    Publishing workflow8.450 Ratings7.573 Ratings
    Form generator7.546 Ratings6.958 Ratings
    Web Content Management
    Comparison of Web Content Management features of Joomla! and Magnolia
    Feature
    Joomla!
    7.6
    52 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Magnolia
    7.5
    69 Ratings
    0% below category average
    Content taxonomy7.951 Ratings7.663 Ratings
    SEO support7.650 Ratings7.263 Ratings
    Bulk management8.049 Ratings7.657 Ratings
    Availability / breadth of extensions7.052 Ratings7.962 Ratings
    Community / comment management7.150 Ratings6.951 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    JoomlaMagnolia
    Small Businesses
    Umbraco CMS
    Score6.9 out of 10
    Umbraco CMS
    Score6.9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Square Online
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Square Online
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    RWS Tridion Sites
    Score9 out of 10
    RWS Tridion Sites
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    JoomlaMagnolia
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.2
    (75 ratings)
    8.1
    (78 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (28 ratings)
    8.1
    (9 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (14 ratings)
    8.0
    (68 ratings)
    Availability
    9.9
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    7.8
    (2 ratings)
    8.5
    (67 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (4 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.7
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.9
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    JoomlaMagnolia
    Likelihood to Recommend
    The Joomla Project
    If your developers want to have some fun, Joomla offers the stability and friendliness to do custom coding. Certain marketing initiatives require us to get "cute" with the interface, and Joomla allows for that a bit easier than WordPress (and definitely easier than sites like Squarespace). The security of Joomla is also always a plus.
    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
    The Joomla Project
    • Security. Its got many new features in the new Joomla! 4 which make the already good security even better. I like the ability to use my Yubi keys to log in with the new webauth standard, I don't think any other CMS has that built in
    • W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 (with AA compliance)
    • Really good SEO that gets our sites to the top of the search engines again without the need for any extra things
    • Speed, it gets a really good score (100%) in the google lighthouse on our server, can't beat that
    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
    The Joomla Project
    • Because Joomla's user community is smaller than WP, it lacks as many choices from 3rd party developers, meaning it can be a little more difficult to find the right extension for what you need to accomplish
    • Along the same vein, most of the best 3rd-party software for Joomla! is paid
    • Simple features such as Add to Menu and Cache cleaners should be adopted as part of the Joomla! core, though they are available as extensions
    • Joomla! could use a simpler and easier URL rewriting process
    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
    The Joomla Project
    I gave it a rating of 10 because I just love how Joomla! works, how it is set up and how it handles many users. Also it is very fast, and there is no overload on the MySQL database or servers ever.
    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
    The Joomla Project
    Joomla! 3.x is easily installed either manually or via a script provided by your host. It contains most of the tools needed to begin creating websites right from the start. Those features that it doesn't have are easily installed via links and buttons from the thousands of extensions available in the community
    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
    The Joomla Project
    Today's Modern Joomla performs very well and is robust and durable. The pages load faster than they ever did in the past and Modern Joomla's integration into other software or systems has become seamless. Modern Joomla sites will last long and will stay running forever.
    Incentivized
    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
    The Joomla Project
    Between the core Joomla developers who are excellent at answering questions and providing support, you have a whole community of developers who work with Joomla and are happy to help fellow developers out answering questions and supporting the Joomla project. Out of the many communities I am involved in for open-source software, Joomla's community is by far the best.
    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
    Online Training
    The Joomla Project
    It is good if you know Joomla! if not it can get a bit confusing
    Read full review
    Magnolia
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    The Joomla Project
    Joomla has gone through tremendous growing pains. It is now better than ever. But before, when it was going from 1.5-2.5, the templates and plugins would break over and over again. If you don't understand what Joomla was trying to do back then, you might have a bad attitude toward it. Today, those pains are over and things don't break like they used to during that time period.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Magnolia
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    The Joomla Project
    We tested other platforms like WordPress, Magento and some local CMS. 
    But Joomla offered us better resources for generating content.
    Joomla is a CMS suitable for many types of projects, especially if you have several people editing content at the same time.
    It allows you to maintain visual standardization and offers many options for working with images.
    With its ability to control access to different articles, categories or even different components, it is a great tool, even if they are managed by different people.
    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
    The Joomla Project
    • Joomla has reduced our costs of rolling out a new website because it uses less developer time and can be rolled out by individual users as needed.
    • Joomla has a lot of extensions and add-ons that make it easy to create and implement advanced solutions quickly.
    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