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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

    Smartlook

    Score8.8 out of 10
    Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
    Smartlook is an analytics solution tool for websites, iOS/Android apps, and various app frameworks, that answers the "whys" behind users' actions. It helps users understand precisely how customers interact with website and app — watch recordings, create heatmaps, use automatic tracked events, and build conversion funnels. Data is seen on one central dashboard, which enables sharing and collaborating with colleagues. This is to support clear, data-driven decision-making for product managers,…

    $55

    per month 5000 sessions

    Pricing
    MagnoliaSmartlook
    Editions & Modules
    DX Core
    $3500
    per month
    DX Cloud
    $6000
    per month
    Pro
    $55
    per month 5000 sessions
    Free
    Free forever
    per month 3000 sessions
    Enterprise
    Custom pricing
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    MagnoliaSmartlook
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details—All Smartlook packages support both web and mobile app platforms.
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    MagnoliaSmartlook
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Magnolia and Smartlook
    Feature
    Magnolia
    8.1
    69 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Smartlook
    -
    Ratings
    Role-based user permissions8.169 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Magnolia and Smartlook
    Feature
    Magnolia
    8.1
    68 Ratings
    4% above category average
    Smartlook
    -
    Ratings
    API8.561 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language7.761 Ratings00 Ratings
    Web Content Creation
    Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Magnolia and Smartlook
    Feature
    Magnolia
    8.0
    74 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Smartlook
    -
    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 Smartlook
    Feature
    Magnolia
    7.5
    69 Ratings
    0% below category average
    Smartlook
    -
    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
    MagnoliaSmartlook
    Small Businesses
    Umbraco CMS
    Score7 out of 10
    Crazy Egg
    Score7.9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Square Online
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Crazy Egg
    Score7.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    RWS Tridion Sites
    Score9 out of 10
    Crazy Egg
    Score7.9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    MagnoliaSmartlook
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.1
    (78 ratings)
    9.0
    (141 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.1
    (9 ratings)
    8.9
    (4 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (68 ratings)
    10.0
    (75 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    8.5
    (67 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    10.0
    (107 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    MagnoliaSmartlook
    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
    Smartlook
    Smartlook is best for screen recordings. Especially when you are running MVPs. However, its pricing is very high. If your daily visitors are too much then either you will have to lose many of your recordings or you will have to pay too much money.
    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
    Smartlook
    • Funnels are both easy to configure yet comprehensive enough to detect complicated customer journeys.
    • Real-time recording provides exceptional insights to our design & engineering teams.
    • Session recording is surprisingly lightweight and seems to cause no substantial performance degradation for our customers.
    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
    Smartlook
    • I feel nickel and dimed with the events and funnels.
    • We came from sessions being 30 mins of inactivity and now it's 5-10 mins. Session count has gone up significantly which we weren't prepared for.
    • Recording playback isn't as clean and maneuverable like FullStory.
    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
    Smartlook
    As my ratings show, I have been absolutely delighted with Smartlook in terms of usability, cost, support, and its benefit to our organization. I have given it such high ratings because I think it has really benefitted our organization and I think it could do the same for other companies too.
    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
    Smartlook
    Every page, the tool setup pages and dashboards are built very well, the site structure is perfectly designed and intuitive to use. All functions are well documented and the help sections are really everywhere, you don't have to search for answers, as they are just popped up or max. a click away for your service.
    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
    Smartlook
    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
    Smartlook
    Sofia P. is being our point of contact with the issues we faced. I was unsure about how to explain to her what was going on with the recording numbers (the recording has stopped before we were expecting to), but she readily understood and came with a solution for us in the same day. The problem was blocking our developer to test the integration, so it was great to have support so fast that he could continue his work.
    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
    Smartlook
    It has been a year between the time when I last used Hotjar and first started using Smartlook. I would say both tools are more or less equal when it comes to features, the only 2 differences I can think of are - price and customer support. Smartlook is cheaper and has superior customer services. You have the feeling when interacting with them that they genuinely care.
    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
    Smartlook
    • Smartlook is used by different individuals from different organizations to have insights into different parts of products. It is used as the sole developer of our website as well as marketing campaigns.
    • Smartlook has an amazing feature which is tracking the activities of return users.
    • It gives reliable and efficient services.
    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

    Smartlook Screenshots

    Screenshot of HeatmapsScreenshot of RecordingsScreenshot of DashboardsScreenshot of EventsScreenshot of FunnelsScreenshot of Analytics for websites & mobile apps