Magnolia vs. Vasion

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.

The best case we've found for Vasion is the one that explains why we moved to Vasion in the first place. Our Windows print servers were extremely temperamental for our Azure devices and, in many cases, would take 20 minutes or more to just set up correctly. We would then have issues with printers not printing for long periods or with print jobs not showing up in the printer queue. It was also hard for the staff to install their own printers when the one they normally used went down. It was also very hard for staff to figure out how to navigate the printer list to install printers. Vasion made all of this very easy and gave the staff one easy web page to find the printer they want and install it.

Incentivized

• 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.

• MaxxVault is a full-featured product at a cost significantly less than its competition.
• MaxxVault is end-user maintainable. I do not have to carry an IT staff to support this critical system.
• MaxxVault has the best customer service support of any vendor I've done business with in my 20 year career.

• 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

• Learning curve is particularly steep.
• Some advanced features can be difficult to implement and test.
• Driver management is time consuming and could be streamlined.

Incentivized

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

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

I would say its around 7. For us it was easy to do deploy, to use the centralised control, and not too complex compared to other printing services. However, some workflows became complicated depending on configuration. In our case, it was a bit complicated after a while. But its still user friendly.

Incentivized

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.

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

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

Vasion had a much better interface for installing printers for staff. It was very easy for staff to manage their own printers and install what they want or need. Vasion also seemed to be better equipped for reporting and use by our non-technical staff. We were also impressed with the support of Vasion and how easily they answered all of our questions.

Incentivized

• 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

• Having seen similar organizations implement software solutions costing upwards of $1 million, I can safely say the ROI on our MaxxVault implementation has paid off massively for our customers and staff. We could not do what we're doing without MaxxVault.