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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Lightspeed Retail

    Score9.2 out of 10
    N/ALightspeed Retail is a retail PoS system from Lightspeed headquartered in Quebec. Core retail POS features are expanded on higher service tiers with ecommerce option and payments gateway, an accounting system, and a customer loyalty program.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
    Lightspeed RetailMagnolia
    Editions & Modules
    Basic
    $79.00 ($69.00)
    per month (when billed annually)
    Starter
    $119.00 ($99.00)
    per month (when billed annually)
    Standard
    $139.00 ($119.00)
    per month (when billed annually)
    Advanced
    $189.00 ($169.00)
    per month (when billed annually)
    Pro
    $259.00 ($229.00)
    per month (when billed annually)
    Enterprise
    Contact Sales
    DX Core
    $3500
    per month
    DX Cloud
    $6000
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Lightspeed RetailMagnolia
    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
    Lightspeed RetailMagnolia
    Considered Both Products
    Lightspeed
    No answer on this topic
    Magnolia
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    60%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    58 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    70%
    Delivers good value for the price
    7 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    49 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    70%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    58 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    70%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    7 Answers
    98%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    39 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    80%
    Implementation went as expected
    8 Answers
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    53 Answers
    Features
    Lightspeed RetailMagnolia
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Lightspeed Retail and Magnolia
    Feature
    Lightspeed Retail
    -
    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 Lightspeed Retail and Magnolia
    Feature
    Lightspeed Retail
    -
    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 Lightspeed Retail and Magnolia
    Feature
    Lightspeed Retail
    -
    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 Lightspeed Retail and Magnolia
    Feature
    Lightspeed Retail
    -
    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
    Lightspeed RetailMagnolia
    Small Businesses
    Square POS
    Score9 out of 10
    Umbraco CMS
    Score7 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    Square Online
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    RWS Tridion Sites
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Lightspeed RetailMagnolia
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.5
    (15 ratings)
    8.1
    (78 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.1
    (9 ratings)
    Usability
    9.5
    (3 ratings)
    8.0
    (68 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.5
    (67 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.8
    (4 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Lightspeed RetailMagnolia
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Lightspeed
    It is perfect for any small business looking for inventory control, Tracking purchase history, and just an all round easy to use software for retail and beyond. I would not use it if I have only a few hundred items or was a larger company that can afford to build my own POS software.
    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
    Lightspeed
    • Lightspeed Retail has great reports that are very easy to read and understand.
    • Lightspeed Retail is great to train new employees on because of its ease of use. There are not lots of different things that you have to learn just basics.
    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
    Lightspeed
    • With a larger SKU assortment size, the software really starts to struggle with doing physical inventory after scanning in a few hundred items.
    • Several times throughout each year Lightspeed went down on us (not our internet connection but actually Lightspeed verified).
    • Special order system could use a lot of modern improvements (ability to schedule ahead of time, etc.)
    • Reports are very basic, and will likely require there Lightspeed Analytics to actually get reports useful for day to day operations.
    • Weak system for receiving purchase orders.
    • Does not handle items and cases for reordering very well. Have used multiple Point of Sale systems in the past 10 years that allow to set reorder points based on single items, but reorder the case automatically, Lightspeed has no support for this.
    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
    Lightspeed
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Lightspeed
    Simply well designed with obvious icons per component, making it easy to interface with.
    Incentivized
    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
    Lightspeed
    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
    Lightspeed
    I gave the rating of a 9 because ninety percent of the time when I talk to their support they're very helpful. One of the only real issues I have is there are times where the queue will be 7-9 people deep. When you have an error you don't know how to fix, sometimes this is very troubling. But overall their support is usually quick and friendly.
    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
    Alternatives Considered
    Lightspeed
    Lightspeed is faster, sleeker and more modern than our previous POS system. I can’t express enough how easy the online store portion of Lightspeed is - it just intuitive and sometimes, is TOO easy, I feel like I have to be forgetting something. Lightspeed is staying modern and current where our previous POS was not
    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
    Lightspeed
    • Certainly has saved money on cash-outs/ accounting due to QuickBooks integration.
    • Faster processing through tills means happier customers and more sales per hour.
    • Expensive product at $5K a year has taken away some profitability for this small business. It's way, way over priced.
    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