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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    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

    Pantheon

    Score10 out of 10
    N/APantheon is a WebOps platform for operating WordPress, Drupal, and Next.js websites. The platform supports the deployment, scaling, maintenance, security, and performance management of web applications. Key Capabilities Website operations: Pantheon manages operational requirements associated with uptime, performance, security, and scaling for supported websites. Framework support: The platform supports WordPress, Drupal, and Next.js…

    $29

    per month

    Pricing
    MagnoliaPantheon
    Editions & Modules
    DX Core
    $3500
    per month
    DX Cloud
    $6000
    per month
    Basic
    $29
    per month
    Performance
    $114
    per month
    Elite
    Contact for quote
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    MagnoliaPantheon
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    MagnoliaPantheon
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Magnolia and Pantheon
    Feature
    Magnolia
    8.1
    69 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Pantheon
    -
    Ratings
    Role-based user permissions8.169 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Magnolia and Pantheon
    Feature
    Magnolia
    8.1
    68 Ratings
    4% above category average
    Pantheon
    -
    Ratings
    API8.561 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language7.761 Ratings00 Ratings
    Web Content Creation
    Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Magnolia and Pantheon
    Feature
    Magnolia
    8.0
    74 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Pantheon
    -
    Ratings
    WYSIWYG editor8.565 Ratings00 Ratings
    Code quality / cleanliness8.465 Ratings00 Ratings
    Admin section8.070 Ratings00 Ratings
    Page templates8.972 Ratings00 Ratings
    Library of website themes7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile optimization / responsive design8.563 Ratings00 Ratings
    Publishing workflow7.573 Ratings00 Ratings
    Form generator6.958 Ratings00 Ratings
    Web Content Management
    Comparison of Web Content Management features of Magnolia and Pantheon
    Feature
    Magnolia
    7.5
    69 Ratings
    0% below category average
    Pantheon
    -
    Ratings
    Content taxonomy7.663 Ratings00 Ratings
    SEO support7.263 Ratings00 Ratings
    Bulk management7.657 Ratings00 Ratings
    Availability / breadth of extensions7.962 Ratings00 Ratings
    Community / comment management6.951 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    MagnoliaPantheon
    Small Businesses
    Umbraco CMS
    Score7 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Square Online
    Score7.7 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    RWS Tridion Sites
    Score9 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    MagnoliaPantheon
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.1
    (78 ratings)
    8.0
    (68 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.1
    (9 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (68 ratings)
    9.8
    (29 ratings)
    Performance
    8.5
    (67 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    MagnoliaPantheon
    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.
    Read full review
    Pantheon
    Pantheon is excellent for medium-large websites that require high availability and a managed workflow. It would be inappropriate for small websites because of the cost or for situations where more control of the environment is appropriate. We find it useful because we rarely do anything outside of the Drupal application.
    Incentivized
    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
    Pantheon
    • Effective use of our codebase deployment and implementation.
    • The dashboard functionality and general stability and security are excellent.
    • The server is quite consistent, and if you need assistance from the support team, they are very quick to respond.
    • Automatic updates let me ensure that my customers have safe websites without increasing my own expense.
    • The team offers excellent assistance and help for chat.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pantheon
    • Pricing structure has too large of a jump between Basic and Performance plans
    • Have run into issues with prescribed WP updates not working through dashboard and having to do manually.
    • Pantheon site dashboard occasionally is unavailable (the site is never affected though)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pantheon
    The environment is stable and we have not had any issues/downtime. The annual cost is reasonable.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pantheon
    Pantheon is an easy system, especially to the users with previous experience with other similar platform and the interface is clear enough to easily understand how things operates. On the Cloud deployment everything also works effectively and the technical team from Pantheon community are very helpful on providing the necessary assistant to their customers.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Read full review
    Pantheon
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Read full review
    Pantheon
    Even tier 1 Pantheon chat and ticket support are knowledgeable, competent, and useful. They routinely understand and promptly resolve urgent, complex, and/or unusual issues that other hosts need to escalate to tier 2 or tier 3 support personnel. I honestly can't think of a truly negative or disappointing support experience in the years I've used Pantheon hosting for client websites.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Magnolia
    No answers on this topic
    Pantheon
    Once the environments were up and running, the implementation was easy to synchronize with latest data prior to switchover.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pantheon
    Although it may seem a good fit for a company that needs extra control over the deployment process and development process, for a firm that is mainly concentrating on SEO, it would be an overkill. Pantheon provides that sweet automation that allows us to shed some weight on development and focus on our business activities.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pantheon
    • Pantheon allows ordinary sites to excel esp if there is consistent development going on behind the scenes.
    • Website management is super easy and the hosting fee gets paid off as you save on developer hours.
    • Expensive for those who are not consistently developing on the platform, there are other options out there at better price points.
    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

    Pantheon Screenshots

    Screenshot of where to find out in seconds if a site is ready to launch. Launch Check can be used to get recommendations and discover site issues fast with reports based on over 50 automated checks.Screenshot of the Developer Dashboard, used to build, launch, and run Drupal and WordPress sites. Interface via SFTP or Git, deploy and scale sites, and access tools like backups and one-click core updates. Add team members and control access.