Magnolia vs. Optimizely Web Experimentation

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Magnolia
Score 8.1 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…N/A
Optimizely Web Experimentation
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Optimizely Web Experimentation empowers teams to conduct experiments (without having to rely on developer resources) in order to test various user interactions, make website changes backed by data, and personalize customer experiences.N/A
Pricing
MagnoliaOptimizely Web Experimentation
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
MagnoliaOptimizely Web Experimentation
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
MagnoliaOptimizely Web Experimentation
Considered Both Products
Magnolia
Chose Magnolia
Magnolia is in a league of it's own vs the other platforms I have previously used. Rather than being a turnkey solution Magnolia puts the power into the hands of your company and developers allowing you to build anything you can imagine. Being a DXP rather than a CMS Magnolia …
Optimizely Web Experimentation

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
MagnoliaOptimizely Web Experimentation
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
8.0
70 Ratings
1% below category average
Optimizely Web Experimentation
-
Ratings
Role-based user permissions8.070 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
8.0
69 Ratings
5% above category average
Optimizely Web Experimentation
-
Ratings
API8.562 Ratings00 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language7.562 Ratings00 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
8.0
75 Ratings
3% above category average
Optimizely Web Experimentation
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG editor8.566 Ratings00 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness8.566 Ratings00 Ratings
Admin section8.071 Ratings00 Ratings
Page templates9.073 Ratings00 Ratings
Library of website themes7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design8.564 Ratings00 Ratings
Publishing workflow7.574 Ratings00 Ratings
Form generator7.059 Ratings00 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
7.5
70 Ratings
2% above category average
Optimizely Web Experimentation
-
Ratings
Content taxonomy7.564 Ratings00 Ratings
SEO support7.064 Ratings00 Ratings
Bulk management7.958 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions8.063 Ratings00 Ratings
Community / comment management7.052 Ratings00 Ratings
Testing and Experimentation
Comparison of Testing and Experimentation features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
-
Ratings
Optimizely Web Experimentation
7.9
150 Ratings
5% below category average
a/b experiment testing00 Ratings9.0150 Ratings
Split URL testing00 Ratings8.5122 Ratings
Multivariate testing00 Ratings8.5127 Ratings
Multi-page/funnel testing00 Ratings7.9116 Ratings
Cross-browser testing00 Ratings7.986 Ratings
Mobile app testing00 Ratings7.966 Ratings
Test significance00 Ratings8.4136 Ratings
Visual / WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings7.9121 Ratings
Advanced code editor00 Ratings7.9114 Ratings
Page surveys00 Ratings6.317 Ratings
Visitor recordings00 Ratings8.418 Ratings
Preview mode00 Ratings7.7133 Ratings
Test duration calculator00 Ratings7.4101 Ratings
Experiment scheduler00 Ratings8.1101 Ratings
Experiment workflow and approval00 Ratings7.781 Ratings
Dynamic experiment activation00 Ratings7.565 Ratings
Client-side tests00 Ratings8.188 Ratings
Server-side tests00 Ratings7.344 Ratings
Mutually exclusive tests00 Ratings8.074 Ratings
Audience Segmentation & Targeting
Comparison of Audience Segmentation & Targeting features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
-
Ratings
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.3
142 Ratings
4% below category average
Standard visitor segmentation00 Ratings8.4137 Ratings
Behavioral visitor segmentation00 Ratings7.9113 Ratings
Traffic allocation control00 Ratings9.1135 Ratings
Website personalization00 Ratings7.9103 Ratings
Results and Analysis
Comparison of Results and Analysis features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
-
Ratings
Optimizely Web Experimentation
8.3
138 Ratings
2% below category average
Heatmap tool00 Ratings9.313 Ratings
Click analytics00 Ratings8.833 Ratings
Scroll maps00 Ratings8.517 Ratings
Form fill analysis00 Ratings8.065 Ratings
Conversion tracking00 Ratings8.744 Ratings
Goal tracking00 Ratings8.2117 Ratings
Test reporting00 Ratings7.9126 Ratings
Results segmentation00 Ratings7.693 Ratings
CSV export00 Ratings7.892 Ratings
Experiments results dashboard00 Ratings8.049 Ratings
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MagnoliaOptimizely Web Experimentation
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Image Relay
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Score 9.5 out of 10
Dynamic Yield
Dynamic Yield
Score 8.7 out of 10
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Score 9.0 out of 10
Dynamic Yield
Dynamic Yield
Score 8.7 out of 10
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User Ratings
MagnoliaOptimizely Web Experimentation
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(79 ratings)
8.7
(238 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.1
(9 ratings)
9.4
(51 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(69 ratings)
9.9
(58 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(7 ratings)
Performance
8.5
(68 ratings)
7.3
(6 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(3 ratings)
10.0
(16 ratings)
Online Training
8.2
(1 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(11 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
7.9
(148 ratings)
User Testimonials
MagnoliaOptimizely Web Experimentation
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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Optimizely
Best for CRO initiatives, including testing variations of landing pages,
user flows, and product pages. Optimizely may not be suitable for more complex machine
learning models. To analyze the effect of the feature usage the way we will do in our solution. Using the audience to measure the success of the features Also, to the best of my knowledge, Optimizely is the only tool that can do all this.
Read full review
Pros
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
Optimizely
  • Powerful Stats Engine that drives conclusivity of outcomes and helps generate trust in results when shared to leadership and stakeholders.
  • Customizable metrics with various tags, properties, and attributes that allow users flexibility in what and how they architect their Optimizely analytics.
  • Flexibility for different levels of tech expertise, I live in the tool as an expert JavaScript and front-end developer, someone else might use solely the visual editor to click and make changes without knowledge of how to code.
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Cons
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.
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Optimizely
  • Google Tag Manager. Our challenge, it's a strange use case, but our challenge is that we don't have Google Tag Manager, so we can't integrate with GA4. And that's been a bit of a bummer. So I would like to be able to integrate with GA4 even without Google Tag Manager.
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Likelihood to Renew
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
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Optimizely
I rated this question because at this stage, Optimizely does most everything we need so I don't foresee a need to migrate to a new tool. We have the infrastructure already in place and it is a sizeable lift to pivot to another tool with no guarantee that it will work as good or even better than Optimizely
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Usability
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.
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Optimizely
Optimizely Web Experimentation's visual editor is handy for non-technical or quick iterative testing. When it comes to content changes it's as easy as going into wordpress, clicking around, and then seeing your changes live--what you see is what you get. The preview and approval process for sharing built experiments is also handy for sharing experiments across teams for QA purposes or otherwise.
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Reliability and Availability
Magnolia
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
I would rate Optimizely Web Experimentation's availability as a 10 out of 10. The software is reliable and does not experience any application errors or unplanned outages. Additionally, the customer service and technical support teams are always available to help with any issues or questions.
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Performance
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.
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Optimizely
I would rate Optimizely Web Experimentation's performance as a 9 out of 10. Pages load quickly, reports are complete in a reasonable time frame, and the software does not slow down any other software or systems that it integrates with. Additionally, the customer service and technical support teams are always available to help with any issues or questions.
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Support Rating
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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Optimizely
They always are quick to respond, and are so friendly and helpful. They always answer the phone right away. And [they are] always willing to not only help you with your problem, but if you need ideas they have suggestions as well.
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Online Training
Magnolia
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
The tool itself is not very difficult to use so training was not very useful in my opinion. It did not also account for success events more complex than a click (which my company being ecommerce is looking to examine more than a mere click).
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Implementation Rating
Magnolia
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
In retrospect: - I think I should have stressed more demo's / workshopping with the Optimizely team at the start. I felt too confident during demo stages, and when came time to actually start, I was a bit lost. (The answer is likely I should have had them on-hand for our first install.. they offered but I thought I was OK.) - Really getting an understanding / asking them prior to install of how to make it really work for checkout pages / one that uses dynamic content or user interaction to determine what the UI does. Could have saved some time by addressing this at the beginning, as some things we needed to create on our site for Optimizely to "use" as a trigger for the variation test. - Having a number of planned/hoped-for tests already in-hand before working with Optimizely team. Sharing those thoughts with them would likely have started conversations on additional things we needed to do to make them work (rather than figuring that out during the actual builds). Since I had development time available, I could have added more things to the baseline installation since my developers were already "looking under the hood" of the site.
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Alternatives Considered
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.
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Optimizely
Optimizely Web Experimentation was more robust and able to handle the broad array of sites we run than VWO. It has been a great platform to easily add additional sites onto, but still providing a universal overview of all of them, making management a simple task.
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Scalability
Magnolia
No answers on this topic
Optimizely
It's incredibly flexible and adapts well to organizations of all sizes, whether you’re running a single site or managing multiple departments and platforms. The ability to deploy experiments seamlessly across different environments is a huge plus, especially for growing businesses. While it’s highly scalable, the last point would depend on the right team leveraging its full potential.
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Return on Investment
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
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Optimizely
  • increased conversions/revenue from implementing successful experiments
  • time saved by not guessing and going back and forth with stakeholder
  • Used to collect click data while our GTM is down. Giving my team eyes on click data as a work around
  • able to push a winning test to 100% of users until devs can get to project, so fast implementation of a win
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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.

Optimizely Web Experimentation Screenshots

Screenshot of the visual editor, used to make changes to the appearance and layout of a website.Screenshot of the results dashboard that displays experiment results.Screenshot of the integrations page, where integrations can be enabled.Screenshot of Advanced Audience Targeting: Custom Real-Time Segments provide customers with the ability to create rapidly-updating segments which can be used as audiences for testing or personalization. These segments can be based on profile data, omni-channel behaviors, and AI-based observations.Screenshot of AI Content Suggestions: AI-powered suggestions in the Visual Editor accelerate ideation.Screenshot of Extensions for Edge: reusable elements minimize developer dependency when launching multiple tests with the same element.