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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Adobe Experience Manager

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/AAdobe Experience Manager is a combined web content management system and digital asset management system. The combined applications of Adobe Experience Manager Sites and Adobe Experience Manager Assets is offered by the vendor as an end-to-end solution for managing and delivering marketing content.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
    Adobe Experience ManagerMagnolia
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    DX Core
    $3500
    per month
    DX Cloud
    $6000
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Adobe Experience ManagerMagnolia
    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
    Adobe Experience ManagerMagnolia
    Considered Both Products
    Adobe
    Chose Adobe Experience Manager
    Because it is sponsored by Gartner
    Incentivized
    Magnolia
    Chose Magnolia
    Magnolia DXP offers similar or more capability compared to the other platform, while much easier to implement. For example, Adobe Experience Manager tend to be more monolithic in nature, heavier footprint compared to Magnolia. Hence when implementing a DXP, it is much faster to …
    Incentivized
    Chose Magnolia
    I need to specific and say I've had experiences of these platform from previous roles, they were not considered by Good Things Foundation.

    My experience is that Magnolia delivers the power of these high end platforms but is generally more accessible to get going and develop …
    Incentivized
    Chose Magnolia
    Of all the ones we looked at that met our requirements Magnolia was clearly the best value for money and had a solid background that you could trust and that could take care of you in case of problems.
    Incentivized
    Chose Magnolia
    One of the most important points that magnolia has over other products is the possibility of extending its functionalities. Being open-source, it is possible to inspect how everything is done and replicate it to change functionalities. In this way, many features that customers …
    Incentivized
    Chose Magnolia
    Good documentation and examples Online demos to mess with and test functionalities Easier to install Better knowledge about the product Ability to centralize content of the same type in apps Better performance in some scenarios Better usability: In the newest versions, …
    Incentivized
    Chose Magnolia
    Magnolia is a good competitor in the DXP scenario: Reduced costs License costs are contained, what brings customers the ability to develop their business with a minor impact Open source platform It helps customers to adapt the platform to some special needs DXP …
    Incentivized
    Chose Magnolia
    Magnolia is amazing and compared to the alternatives available, it is affordable and I find it more resourceful and a performer and hence the reason we have it our primary CMS solution.
    Incentivized
    Chose Magnolia
    It does not nearly do what AEM does, but the again, it is much easier to use.
    Incentivized
    Chose Magnolia
    Magnolia is a java based CMS system and the features it comes with satisfied the needs of the project.
    Incentivized
    Chose Magnolia
    Magnolia is the most flexible, with the best ease of use in all cases. It just has the best of both worlds. It is significantly more than just a CMS. And you have a good foundation for building up your platform without losing possibilities to change parts in the future.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    95%
    Would buy again
    180 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    58 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    145 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    49 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    184 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    58 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    90%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    113 Answers
    98%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    39 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    87%
    Implementation went as expected
    125 Answers
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    53 Answers
    Features
    Adobe Experience ManagerMagnolia
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Adobe Experience Manager and Magnolia
    Feature
    Adobe Experience Manager
    8.4
    38 Ratings
    4% above category average
    Magnolia
    8.1
    69 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Role-based user permissions8.438 Ratings8.169 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Adobe Experience Manager and Magnolia
    Feature
    Adobe Experience Manager
    8.0
    33 Ratings
    0% above category average
    Magnolia
    8.1
    68 Ratings
    4% above category average
    API7.829 Ratings8.561 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language8.129 Ratings7.761 Ratings
    Web Content Creation
    Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Adobe Experience Manager and Magnolia
    Feature
    Adobe Experience Manager
    7.5
    38 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Magnolia
    8.0
    74 Ratings
    2% above category average
    WYSIWYG editor7.433 Ratings8.565 Ratings
    Code quality / cleanliness6.734 Ratings8.465 Ratings
    Admin section7.034 Ratings8.070 Ratings
    Page templates7.637 Ratings8.972 Ratings
    Library of website themes7.326 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Mobile optimization / responsive design7.835 Ratings8.563 Ratings
    Publishing workflow8.135 Ratings7.573 Ratings
    Form generator7.629 Ratings6.958 Ratings
    Web Content Management
    Comparison of Web Content Management features of Adobe Experience Manager and Magnolia
    Feature
    Adobe Experience Manager
    7.3
    37 Ratings
    10% above category average
    Magnolia
    7.5
    69 Ratings
    0% below category average
    Content taxonomy7.731 Ratings7.663 Ratings
    SEO support7.133 Ratings7.263 Ratings
    Bulk management7.236 Ratings7.657 Ratings
    Availability / breadth of extensions7.534 Ratings7.962 Ratings
    Community / comment management7.130 Ratings6.951 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Adobe Experience ManagerMagnolia
    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
    Adobe Experience ManagerMagnolia
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.6
    (220 ratings)
    8.1
    (78 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.0
    (7 ratings)
    8.1
    (9 ratings)
    Usability
    8.1
    (181 ratings)
    8.0
    (68 ratings)
    Availability
    8.6
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    8.0
    (5 ratings)
    8.5
    (67 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.2
    (11 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    5.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Professional Services
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Adobe Experience ManagerMagnolia
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Adobe
    I'll answer the second one because I mean, the first one I don't have an issue with. The second scenario is we oftentimes have the need to spin off very small campaign style sites or sites that generate leads but are unbranded and that sort of thing. So that's hard to do in AEM because you have to then create another organization within AEM to do that. And we're talking about sites that are maybe five to 10 pages in size. So we've been investigating Edge, but then that's a different workflow, so we'd have to train people on that. So it would be nice if there was something within the AEM structure that could allow you to do something very similar to Edge, where you make some small micro sites that are not necessarily branded, that you could still host within the platform and not have to retrain everybody on a completely different platform.
    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
    Adobe
    • It allows us to scale so that we can make a change on a global footer. And it applies to all of the different property websites. It allows us to set up components and compartmentalize things in a way. The big thing is that it's scalable. And then it also ties into Adobe Analytics and other Adobe products. So we are a complete Adobe shop. Every Adobe product that we can use, we use. I don't think we do it for marketing so much, but for doing target testing and analytics, data scientists are using the same product and so it all speaks.
    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
    Adobe
    • There are some glitches in permissions inheritance that require us to toggle a save on permissions in groups that inherit from a group that was recently updated.
    • Large packages require stopping the workflow launcher OSGi components or many workflows will slow down the server.
    • Locked pages are hard to find unless I use /siteadmin... I often hear that the CQ tools will go away, but if we lose that, some small things might be harder to do, like finding locked pages.
    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
    Adobe
    We had and still have a fantastic experience using Adobe CQ. Lots of flexibility, great integration with other Adobe products we already use and a powerful technology make it a great fit for our corporate environment. Also as the community grows, it makes it easier to network with other developers and users to get new ideas on how to continue to get the best out of the software.
    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
    Adobe
    Adobe Experience Manager overall is fairly easy to use and caters to a wide range of users when it comes to their technical abilities. It has the flexibility to enable UI/UX designers to pop in and easily design new content with drop in components. It also has sufficient capabilities for those who are more technically inclined and want to dig more into custom code or solutions
    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
    Reliability and Availability
    Adobe
    Being part of Adobe Suite means you are already notified when the tool has any outages. However, I have never faced unplanned outages. Whenever you face any issue with the site, it is clearly stated if there were any planned outages and how quickly you will be back to normal. So, I will say that even the outages are planned and managed in a great way like their other services.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Magnolia
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Adobe
    With respect to performance, Adobe experience manager is one of the best in the CMS space. We didn't observe frequent slowness on platform, however the systems which are accessing experience manager should be of good specifications without which slowness would be observed. Adobe experience manager works well in integration with other solutions, unless the destination application is designed to trigger frequent calls to AEM.
    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
    Adobe
    Adobe Experience Manager, in all its capacity, is a great alternative to any other CMS you are using. It helps in rapid development and makes life easier for maintaining the website for multi-language sites. Technical know-how is eliminated at content authoring. Better documentation in terms of live examples with videos would be appreciated.
    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
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    Implementation Rating
    Adobe
    Depending on your individual needs, It is really quite simple to create an authoring experience for a website that looks really good. I have been part of many implementations and many teams and have seen many projects that were super successful and others that were not implemented well. AEM has room for a lot of flexibility in the implementation process compared to other CMS like SharePoint
    Read full review
    Magnolia
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Adobe
    SSO is one fits all, so we don't have to have a separate SSO for each application of Adobe The integration with Analytics works perfectly and bring directly value really quickly Target remains more complicated to set up, but can also bring a lot of value once integrated with the rest of the Adobe platform The fact that the solution is Cloud services is also a big advantage for maintenance
    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
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Adobe
    Instead of being directly involved in the tool purchase, I am involved in analysis or what we can use to maximize the tool. Small organizations may find it expensive. However, if the team or organization focuses more on your ROI or the features you will get, then it will definitely be worth it. Pricing is based on a number of factors, including team size or the use of the tool. The user can select the pricing option that best fits their needs based on the number of form submissions they make or the number of pages they wish to publish on their global/multisite sites.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Magnolia
    No answers on this topic
    Professional Services
    Adobe
    The professional services team within adobe is one of the best in terms of technical and solutioning knowledge. However, considering the billing charges of adobe professional services team, it is always recommended to involve them during platform initial setup or when a complex solution is to be built with platform customizations.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Magnolia
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Adobe
    • too soon to tell on increased conversion rates based on external marketing factors in play but having increased visibility into customer engagement trends will most likely lead to improvement of our conversion rates.
    • There have been productivity gains from the perspective of actually migrating all of our externally managed sites to the same in-house Adobe Experience Manager platform and then being able to utilize those universal components.
    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

    Adobe Experience Manager Screenshots

    Screenshot of AEM Forms - Creates an adaptive formScreenshot of AEM Forms - themes libraryScreenshot of AEM Forms - where to create a templateScreenshot of AEM Forms - the interactive communications editorScreenshot of Adobe Experience Manager Sites - document-based authoring enables marketers to create and publish content with familiar tools.Screenshot of Adobe Experience Manager Sites - Universal Editor, an advanced visual editor, empowers marketers to edit and publish content.

    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