TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    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

    Sitecore Digital Experience Platform

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/AThe Sitecore Experience Platform (Sitecore XP) is a digital experience platform used to build websites and create customer experiences online. The solution boasts fast content authoring, built-in personalization features, testing and other optimizations, as well as analytics and marketing features.N/A
    Pricing
    MagnoliaSitecore Digital Experience Platform
    Editions & Modules
    DX Core
    $3500
    per month
    DX Cloud
    $6000
    per month
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    MagnoliaSitecore Digital Experience Platform
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    MagnoliaSitecore Digital Experience Platform
    Considered Both Products
    Magnolia
    Chose Magnolia
    The Broadleaf CMS was quite basic and was not a full fledged CMS and hence we had to chose Magnolia to address the business requirement for our B2B platform
    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
    Sitecore
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    58 Answers
    90%
    Would buy again
    19 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    49 Answers
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    17 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    58 Answers
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    20 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    98%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    39 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    18 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    53 Answers
    95%
    Implementation went as expected
    19 Answers
    Features
    MagnoliaSitecore Digital Experience Platform
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Magnolia and Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
    Feature
    Magnolia
    8.1
    69 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
    9.9
    37 Ratings
    21% above category average
    Role-based user permissions8.169 Ratings9.938 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Magnolia and Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
    Feature
    Magnolia
    8.1
    68 Ratings
    4% above category average
    Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
    9.8
    34 Ratings
    20% above category average
    API8.561 Ratings9.934 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language7.761 Ratings9.732 Ratings
    Web Content Creation
    Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Magnolia and Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
    Feature
    Magnolia
    8.0
    74 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
    9.2
    37 Ratings
    26% above category average
    WYSIWYG editor8.565 Ratings8.237 Ratings
    Code quality / cleanliness8.465 Ratings9.336 Ratings
    Admin section8.070 Ratings9.537 Ratings
    Page templates8.972 Ratings9.735 Ratings
    Library of website themes7.01 Ratings8.322 Ratings
    Mobile optimization / responsive design8.563 Ratings9.034 Ratings
    Publishing workflow7.573 Ratings9.736 Ratings
    Form generator6.958 Ratings9.735 Ratings
    Web Content Management
    Comparison of Web Content Management features of Magnolia and Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
    Feature
    Magnolia
    7.5
    69 Ratings
    0% below category average
    Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
    9.4
    36 Ratings
    35% above category average
    Content taxonomy7.663 Ratings9.735 Ratings
    SEO support7.263 Ratings9.733 Ratings
    Bulk management7.657 Ratings9.531 Ratings
    Availability / breadth of extensions7.962 Ratings8.534 Ratings
    Community / comment management6.951 Ratings9.632 Ratings
    Results and Analysis
    Comparison of Results and Analysis features of Magnolia and Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
    Feature
    Magnolia
    -
    Ratings
    Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
    7.5
    16 Ratings
    7% below category average
    Conversion tracking00 Ratings7.716 Ratings
    Test reporting00 Ratings7.417 Ratings
    Funnel Analysis00 Ratings7.417 Ratings
    User Segmentation00 Ratings7.717 Ratings
    Digital Experience Platform
    Comparison of Digital Experience Platform features of Magnolia and Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
    Feature
    Magnolia
    -
    Ratings
    Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
    8.2
    19 Ratings
    3% below category average
    Campaign management00 Ratings8.820 Ratings
    Cloud enablement00 Ratings8.119 Ratings
    Content aggregation00 Ratings8.219 Ratings
    Content classification00 Ratings8.619 Ratings
    Multi-channel content personalization00 Ratings7.819 Ratings
    Customer data analytics00 Ratings7.418 Ratings
    DXP Third-Party Integrations00 Ratings7.419 Ratings
    Multi-website management00 Ratings8.918 Ratings
    Digital asset management00 Ratings8.418 Ratings
    Editorial workflows and task management00 Ratings8.018 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    MagnoliaSitecore Digital Experience Platform
    Small Businesses
    Umbraco CMS
    Score6.9 out of 10
    Yext
    Score6.9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Square Online
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Progress Sitefinity
    Score7.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    RWS Tridion Sites
    Score9 out of 10
    Progress Sitefinity
    Score7.9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    MagnoliaSitecore Digital Experience Platform
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.1
    (78 ratings)
    8.7
    (49 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.1
    (9 ratings)
    8.7
    (11 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (68 ratings)
    9.0
    (24 ratings)
    Performance
    8.5
    (67 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    9.1
    (4 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    Professional Services
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    MagnoliaSitecore Digital Experience Platform
    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
    Sitecore
    Sitecore offers Content Hub with Product Content Management and Content Management Platform. The Digital Experience Platform and Content Hub can both host structured content and publish the finalized version to Experience Edge. Both platforms offer different ways to manage content. During a technical and business evaluation, the evaluation panel must understand the difference between a Content Modelling focused approach, or a layout management focused approach. Sitecore Digital Experience Platform is also best not to be used to host many files and images in the Media Library. That responsibility should be offloaded to a digital asset management company like Sitecore Content Hub DAM. The technology evaluation panel must also understand how to work with a Headless CMS, where the HEAD needs to be hosted, and the costs associated with the HEAD. Composable DXP is fantastic, but everyone must understand the various cost components. Marketers and the data team will need to go into the CDP and Personalize the platform with an excellent understanding of how a composable "installation" works. All the Martech vendors have similar challenges that data and development teams need to work through with a full experience. Any CDP/analytics platform will, at some stage, require further data enrichment from other sources. Understanding the Sitecore Search features and limitations is also essential.
    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
    Sitecore
    • Comprehensive Solution: Sitecore offers a fully integrated suite of products that cover the full spectrum of DXP capabilities, including search, personalization experimentation and more, delivering a complete composable DXP solution for customers.
    • Beyond Headless: XM Cloud provides more than just headless capabilities, featuring in-built tools like authoring host, page editor, etc., enabling faster and more powerful implementations.
    • Focus on AI: Sitecore has now got an excellent AI offering called Stream; it looks promising; however, it would be too early to give feedback on the same.
    • Customization: Sitecore's backend is highly customizable, allowing for deep modifications through pipelines and patch configurations.
    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
    Sitecore
    • Experience Editor is a little old fashioned and sometimes slow to use.
    • Bulk operations in the Content Editor
    • Sitecore serialization is should be part of the Content Editor to provide visual reference for items which are serialized and will be overwritten by future deployments similar to what Unicorn does so well
    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
    Sitecore
    Sitecore has proven that it can deliver on its promise of a robust, reliable enterprise CMS solution with plenty of features. Also, they keep updating it with more and better features. Now that we are highly trained on it we have started on getting the most out of it and we plan to keep doing more of that in the future.
    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
    Sitecore
    We use Sitecore extensively because it provides a single platform for managing content, personalization, and digital experiences across multiple web properties and customer journeys. At our scale, the biggest value is consistency, governance, and the ability for marketing teams to manage experiences without needing engineering support for every change. It also integrates well with the broader CRM/marketing stack, so it becomes quite embedded once deployed.
    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
    Sitecore
    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
    Sitecore
    1. Customized software development & maintenance. 2. Technology Consulting - Consulting-based services for technology solutions data engineering or cloud solutions. 3. Used for tapping into multiple data sources such as CRM and marketing automation systems and, creating automated data extracts with a high-end visual representation of data. 4. Implemented for scheduling an existing report to automatically refresh and be delivered to specific users at a specific regular interval.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Magnolia
    No answers on this topic
    Sitecore
    Sitecore captures and remembers every single interaction your customers and prospects have in any part of the system, allowing you to build comprehensive, ever-learning profiles of each individual. From email marketing, to social media, to online shopping, Sitecore remembers where each interaction left off so you can automatically continue the conversation. Sitecore helps you manage your content for each and every experience your customers enjoy. Customize what content you want and the system will take care of how it's displayed.
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Magnolia
    No answers on this topic
    Sitecore
    Make sure you work with a partner that can help you take advantage of the entire platform. Specifically we see a lot of customers not taking advantage of Sitecore DMS and thus missing a huge opportunity. Sitecore is a platform that is meant to be constantly optimized and improved upon.
    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
    Sitecore
    Really the only comparable product to Sitecore DXP is Adobe Experience Manager. Both are very well established and robust content management platforms. Products like Contentful and Contentstack are very lightweight and do not have as many built-in features like DXP, so it is not a fair comparison. For highly complex enterprise type engagements, Sitecore DXP and AEM are always brought to the table together for consideration.
    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
    Sitecore
    • Since moving the site to Sitecore we have had an increase in conversion - that's the ultimate goal of all these things. It's likely to be partly tied in to the re-design that happened at the same time, but the way in which you can personalise and change things really helps give the best customer journey.
    • The negative impact we've seen is mainly due to expectations around how easily things can be shared between separate instances of Sitecore - if you haven't built stuff sharable it won't be sharable, but the business have been sold Sitecore (partly) on the basis that things would be easily sharable.
    • My developers don't all like working in Sitecore - it takes time to learn, takes a long time to build and run as well as requiring a few processes around it, like Unicorn Sync, etc. One of my devs has actually asked to not work on it again! So, a potential recruitment issue.
    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