Magnolia vs. Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Magnolia
Score 8.4 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
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) is a marketing automation platform. Its key features include lead management, lead generation, social selling, and email marketing.
$1,250
per month
Pricing
MagnoliaSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Growth
$1,250
/month/up to 10,000 contacts billed annually
Plus
$2,500
/month/up to 10,000 contacts billed annually
Advanced
$4,000
/month/up to 10,000 contacts billed annually
Premium
$15,000
/month/up to 10,000 contacts billed annually
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
MagnoliaSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsSalesforce Engage, an additional offering for sales and marketing alignment, is priced at $50 per month per user.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
MagnoliaSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
MagnoliaSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
8.1
66 Ratings
1% above category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
-
Ratings
Role-based user permissions8.166 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
8.0
64 Ratings
4% above category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.2
93 Ratings
5% below category average
API8.457 Ratings7.065 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language7.657 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-based workflow & approvals00 Ratings7.062 Ratings
Customizability00 Ratings6.182 Ratings
Integration with Salesforce.com00 Ratings9.283 Ratings
Integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM00 Ratings8.33 Ratings
Integration with SugarCRM00 Ratings5.44 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
8.0
70 Ratings
4% above category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG editor8.561 Ratings00 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness8.561 Ratings00 Ratings
Admin section7.966 Ratings00 Ratings
Page templates8.968 Ratings00 Ratings
Library of website themes7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design8.559 Ratings00 Ratings
Publishing workflow7.669 Ratings00 Ratings
Form generator7.356 Ratings00 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
7.6
65 Ratings
3% above category average
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
-
Ratings
Content taxonomy7.660 Ratings00 Ratings
SEO support7.259 Ratings00 Ratings
Bulk management7.954 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions8.158 Ratings00 Ratings
Community / comment management7.448 Ratings00 Ratings
Email & Online Marketing
Comparison of Email & Online Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
6.4
137 Ratings
19% below category average
WYSIWYG email editor00 Ratings3.391 Ratings
Dynamic content00 Ratings5.5119 Ratings
Ability to test dynamic content00 Ratings4.979 Ratings
Landing pages00 Ratings5.890 Ratings
A/B testing00 Ratings8.5120 Ratings
Mobile optimization00 Ratings3.279 Ratings
Email deliverability reporting00 Ratings8.098 Ratings
List management00 Ratings9.395 Ratings
Triggered drip sequences00 Ratings9.366 Ratings
Lead Management
Comparison of Lead Management features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
8.6
93 Ratings
10% above category average
Lead nurturing00 Ratings9.285 Ratings
Lead scoring and grading00 Ratings8.586 Ratings
Data quality management00 Ratings7.686 Ratings
Automated sales alerts and tasks00 Ratings9.181 Ratings
Campaign Management
Comparison of Campaign Management features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
6.9
85 Ratings
9% below category average
Calendaring00 Ratings6.976 Ratings
Event/webinar marketing00 Ratings7.073 Ratings
Social Media Marketing
Comparison of Social Media Marketing features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
6.9
68 Ratings
9% below category average
Social sharing and campaigns00 Ratings6.264 Ratings
Social profile integration00 Ratings7.521 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
-
Ratings
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7.0
94 Ratings
7% below category average
Dashboards00 Ratings7.789 Ratings
Standard reports00 Ratings6.793 Ratings
Custom reports00 Ratings6.570 Ratings
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MagnoliaSalesforce Marketing Cloud
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User Ratings
MagnoliaSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(74 ratings)
8.1
(295 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(9 ratings)
9.8
(111 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(69 ratings)
8.8
(34 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(11 ratings)
Performance
8.5
(68 ratings)
9.6
(9 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(3 ratings)
4.0
(35 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(4 ratings)
Online Training
8.2
(1 ratings)
8.1
(7 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
3.0
(17 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.8
(3 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
MagnoliaSalesforce Marketing Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
Magnolia
Magnolia is very well suited to scenarios where there are multiple end points for content eg. apps, remote devices, websites etc. and with multiple users. Magnolia is very good at working with different "shapes" of content so it's not necessarily all about HTML content for the web which tends to be the default for a number of other products of this nature. This means that it's more logical for people to work with structured data and easier for the applications to sort and manage that content when they receive it.
This works really well when you have multiple team members (often in multiple locations). We've had clients who've had people in twelve European locations with sixteen languages and they can share skills and resources between them but still manage their own content.
Magnolia is less appropriate for SMEs who have fewer digital assets and content. It's not to say that it can't be done but it's more that the budget would not necessarily fit.
Read full review
Salesforce
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Social Studio is a very good option for publishing administration, following digital marketing campaings performance and results, social listening an monitoring your brand image in social media and other digital media. It has good features for engagement, but falls a little short for customer service. I'm surre it would work much better integrated with Salesforce as a CRM, but we use another CRM platform and it was not possible to integrate.
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Pros
Magnolia
  • Use of YAML to define content models with code.
  • Versatility of defining actions for custom handlers.
  • Reloading classes when code is modified in a local dev environment is nice. While it doesn't seem to work when changes extend beyond the method body (i.e., adding methods), it remediates the pain of long startup times.
Read full review
Salesforce
  • Pardot enables you to set up different environments via the Pardot Business Unit feature, this is helpful for when decentralization is still needed, but you want all business units working with the same tool.
  • Pardot enables you to quickly and easily create automation rules that can clean the database retro-actively.
  • Pardot has the ability to have multiple lead scoring models run at the same time.
Read full review
Cons
Magnolia
  • As a developer the learning curve is long, you can start developing relatively quickly but getting to know the platform in depth takes time.
  • Having a history of modifications not only at the page level but also at the Content Apps level would be very useful.
Read full review
Salesforce
  • Email templates and drafts are really confusing. I trained various people to create their own templates, but they consistently got confused between publishing a template or just saving a draft, and where they needed to go back to find it.
  • Their help process is broken, at least for our particular use case. Because we have an enterprise license for Salesforce (even though we had a separate license for Pardot) whenever I needed help with something, I'd get stuck down a rabbit hole and couldn't submit a ticket.
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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
Read full review
Salesforce
As of right now we have not seen any other program that integrates as seamlessly into our Salesforce platform. We have barely scratched the surface of all the features and use cases. It would be irresponsible to make a move to another platform in the near future. We have not come up against any limitations that would prompt a need to switch
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Usability
Magnolia
There are a ton of small things that could make this CMS great Off the top of my head... 1) Better navigation between a component and its corresponding node in the jcr ( devs often have to flip between a page and a spot in the jcr even though there could be a button to take you from a page/component in the pages app to its location in the JCR) 2) Why does a content editor need to open the page to edit the page properties? They could just as easily edit the dialog from the tree view if they have many pages to touch, and it would save them time by not having to render the page.
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Salesforce
You won't find another solution that has as many features as Salesforce Marketing Cloud Interaction Studio. We all know Salesforce, we all know how big they are and it's not for nothing... Their tools do most of the things you want, need and even imagine. Using it is complicated, but the usability is infinite.
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Reliability and Availability
Magnolia
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Upgrades and timing of the upgrades were communicated well and planned during off hours for our work. If we did have a campaign scheduled during that time, it would kick-off after the system was back active. There were a few unplanned system down times, but it was a rare occurrence and those times were also short in duration.
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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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Salesforce
Though the make up of MA apps is not built this way today, it would be nice to see them become more real-time. The integration between Salesforce and Pardot is not a true real-time integration. If I modify something in Salesforce, those changes are not automatically reflected in Pardot immediately. There is a delay of about 15 minutes before the systems sync. This delay, although not long, is less than ideal We would love the systems to be integrated real time such that changes are propagated from one system to the other immediately.
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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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Salesforce
They're fast and knowledgeable. You will always know what's the status of your request and they usually follow up with phone calls to ask you questions or provide updates. Sometimes it takes them a couple of days to investigate, especially if you have custom "situations" like my company usually does but at least they are very good at managing time expectations.
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In-Person Training
Magnolia
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
The trainers at the Pardot user conference (Elevate and Connections) were very knowledgeable and presented the material well. Again, the content was targeted to more of a new user audience, and was not really relevant for folks who had been using the product for 2+ years.
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Online Training
Magnolia
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
Pardot's online training touches on all topics briefly and vaguely without much indepth exploration into how a final outcome could look, such as Nurturing Campaigns, Email templates, landing page templates, etc... The only true way to uncover Pardot's full capabilities is to have Front End design and coding experience. Without this key skill set, I would not recommend Pardot to another business.
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Implementation Rating
Magnolia
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
From an IT perspective, once you set up the Javascript beacon and start collecting data there is a waiting game. During this time you can start labeling your site actions which can be labor intensive for a single person, but you don't really have the final end-users on the platform yet. We did a lot of training so users were experienced, but it wasn't until they had their first tasks to accomplish that they started using the system and had questions. I'd recommend setting up some immediate goals for an end-user to start segmenting for the purpose of displaying message campaigns so you can jump start end-user action.
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Alternatives Considered
Magnolia
Prior to using Magnolia as an enterprise CMS solution, different teams leveraged different website platforms including WordPress, Weebly, and others. While these other platforms may be slightly more user friendly to the content editor, they don't offer nearly the same amount of customization and digital best practices out of the box that are customizable by web development teams like Magnolia does. The other solutions may work better for a quicker/simpler web implementation without technical resources but don't have the depth and breadth of capability and functionality that Magnolia has and fall flat.
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Salesforce
We had some scenarios and limitations on Oracle Data Cloud. With help of Salesforce, we were able to overcome most of those limitations. This made the work more efficient and productive as integration and providing Ad data to other parties became much more sophisticated and easy. This is helping the business in saving a lot of time and effort.
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Scalability
Magnolia
No answers on this topic
Salesforce
We had approximately 20,000 recipients of most email campaigns, with some higher amounts and some smaller campaigns. The tools is easy to use and the recipient list size is really not a factor in the complexity or work to create and email campaign. Our campaigns could just have easily been sent to many more people, with virtually no additional work.
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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
Read full review
Salesforce
  • The ability to create sophisticated rules to personalize messages has helped us to create sophisticated rules to personalize messages.
  • The ability to track customer journey performance at every stage helped us to track the performance of customer journeys and make improvements.
  • The ability to quickly build and deploy complex customer journeys without the need for coding allowed us to deploy customer journeys faster and with fewer resources.
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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.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Screenshots

Screenshot of Pardot Analytics - Pardot's reporting and analytics allow you to perform true revenue impact analysis and closed-loop reporting.Screenshot of Pardot Email Analytics - See the reach and impact of your email marketing efforts in real-time with advanced reporting and analytics by device, email client, and more.Screenshot of Pardot Forms and Landing Pages - Pardot's form and landing page builders allow you to turn online traffic to leads with targeted offers and content marketing.Screenshot of Pardot Email Marketing - Define lead nurturing flows via an intuitive interface that enables easy definition of the simplest or most complex segmented and targeted campaigns.