Magento Open Source vs. Magnolia

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Magento Open Source
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Magento Open Source is an ecommerce content management solution originally developed by Varien Inc and presently supported by Adobe. The Open Source product is for developers and merchants that is available as a free download, and supported with free upgrades from the Magento Community.N/A
Magnolia
Score 8.7 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…
$3,500
per month
Pricing
Magento Open SourceMagnolia
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
DX Core
$3500
per month
DX Cloud
$6000
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Magento Open SourceMagnolia
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing for Magento will vary greatly depending on outsourcing support and maintenance services.
More Pricing Information
Features
Magento Open SourceMagnolia
Online Storefront
Comparison of Online Storefront features of Product A and Product B
Magento Open Source
7.7
28 Ratings
2% below category average
Magnolia
-
Ratings
Product catalog & listings9.628 Ratings00 Ratings
Product management9.028 Ratings00 Ratings
Bulk product upload9.026 Ratings00 Ratings
Branding7.626 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile storefront4.028 Ratings00 Ratings
Product variations9.626 Ratings00 Ratings
Website integration7.425 Ratings00 Ratings
Visual customization6.227 Ratings00 Ratings
CMS7.026 Ratings00 Ratings
Online Shopping Cart
Comparison of Online Shopping Cart features of Product A and Product B
Magento Open Source
8.6
28 Ratings
11% above category average
Magnolia
-
Ratings
Abandoned cart recovery7.623 Ratings00 Ratings
Checkout user experience9.628 Ratings00 Ratings
Online Payment System
Comparison of Online Payment System features of Product A and Product B
Magento Open Source
7.2
26 Ratings
14% below category average
Magnolia
-
Ratings
eCommerce security7.226 Ratings00 Ratings
eCommerce Marketing
Comparison of eCommerce Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Magento Open Source
3.6
28 Ratings
72% below category average
Magnolia
-
Ratings
Promotions & discounts6.828 Ratings00 Ratings
Personalized recommendations2.022 Ratings00 Ratings
SEO2.024 Ratings00 Ratings
eCommerce Business Management
Comparison of eCommerce Business Management features of Product A and Product B
Magento Open Source
9.3
28 Ratings
15% above category average
Magnolia
-
Ratings
Multi-site management9.625 Ratings00 Ratings
Order processing9.627 Ratings00 Ratings
Inventory management9.625 Ratings00 Ratings
Shipping8.824 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom functionality8.826 Ratings00 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Magento Open Source
-
Ratings
Magnolia
8.0
69 Ratings
1% below category average
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.069 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Magento Open Source
-
Ratings
Magnolia
8.0
68 Ratings
4% above category average
API00 Ratings8.561 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language00 Ratings7.661 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Magento Open Source
-
Ratings
Magnolia
8.0
74 Ratings
4% above category average
WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings8.565 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness00 Ratings8.565 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 Ratings7.058 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Magento Open Source
-
Ratings
Magnolia
7.5
69 Ratings
2% above category average
Content taxonomy00 Ratings7.563 Ratings
SEO support00 Ratings7.163 Ratings
Bulk management00 Ratings7.857 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions00 Ratings8.062 Ratings
Community / comment management00 Ratings7.051 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Magento Open SourceMagnolia
Small Businesses
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus
Score 9.1 out of 10
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus
Score 9.1 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Digital Commerce
IBM Digital Commerce
Score 9.0 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Magento Open SourceMagnolia
Likelihood to Recommend
8.4
(29 ratings)
8.0
(78 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.1
(9 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(68 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.5
(67 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Magento Open SourceMagnolia
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
It's well suited for large eCommerce stores as it requires much effort to set up and the development cost for setting it up is high. It's less appropriate to use Magento where you are looking for quick development and launch of the store. Also, it is required to have a developer or sometimes the entire tech team to manage an e-commerce store, so you may need to hire a few PHP developers.
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
Adobe
  • Magento is perfect if our web design client likes a specific pre-made template and wants a fast solution.
  • Magento allows us to customize its open-source code to create additional features and functionality.
  • Magento saves small businesses time and money if they only need a simple solution.
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
Adobe
  • Not the simplest of solutions to use or maintain from an end-user perspective
  • Other platforms are better with regards to SEO in our experience
  • Fairly sluggish and slow compared to other platforms without the correct server specification and performance optimization work.
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.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Adobe
It's the dominant force in the SMB open source market. With the continued support of eBay/PayPal, Magento will continue to evolve and should be a market leader for some time.
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
Read full review
Usability
Adobe
Magento has a relly step learning curve. This means that you need to find experienced developers who can lead junior ones, otherwise the overall development process can be a disaster. However, once you are comfortable in developing on the platform, the customization capability are basically limitless and you can adapt the platform to any use case you can imagine. Also, there are many alredy developed marketplace modules that can solve, out of the box, many problems you may face.
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.
Read full review
Performance
Adobe
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
Adobe
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
Adobe
In looking at a different platform to migrate to from Magento 1, we looked primarily at Big Commerce, Shopify and Shopify Plus. Our host was very negative about Magento 2, but we determined after a couple years it was due to the fact it had even more complexity (and very different) than Magento 1. Shopify Plus was attractive, but the cost factor for two sites led us back to Magento 2.
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.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Adobe
  • Delays in development leads to missed timelines and opportunity loss.
  • High cost of development and maintenance may currently outweigh the growth.
  • Better handling of customer and order information makes for better customer service.
  • Excellent API has been a boon for integration with our ERP
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
Read full review
ScreenShots

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.