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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

    Microsoft SQL Server

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft SQL Server is a relational database.

    $1,418

    Per License

    Pricing
    MagnoliaMicrosoft SQL Server
    Editions & Modules
    DX Core
    $3500
    per month
    DX Cloud
    $6000
    per month
    Subscription
    $1,418.00
    Per License
    Enterprise
    $13,748.00
    Per License
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    MagnoliaMicrosoft SQL Server
    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
    MagnoliaMicrosoft SQL Server
    Considered Both Products
    Magnolia
    No answer on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    58 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    53 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    49 Answers
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    45 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    58 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    53 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
    39 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    53 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    45 Answers
    Features
    MagnoliaMicrosoft SQL Server
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Magnolia and Microsoft SQL Server
    Feature
    Magnolia
    8.1
    69 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Microsoft SQL Server
    -
    Ratings
    Role-based user permissions8.169 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Magnolia and Microsoft SQL Server
    Feature
    Magnolia
    8.1
    68 Ratings
    4% above category average
    Microsoft SQL Server
    -
    Ratings
    API8.561 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language7.761 Ratings00 Ratings
    Web Content Creation
    Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Magnolia and Microsoft SQL Server
    Feature
    Magnolia
    8.0
    74 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Microsoft SQL Server
    -
    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 Microsoft SQL Server
    Feature
    Magnolia
    7.5
    69 Ratings
    0% below category average
    Microsoft SQL Server
    -
    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
    MagnoliaMicrosoft SQL Server
    Small Businesses
    Umbraco CMS
    Score7 out of 10
    Amazon RDS
    Score8.1 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Square Online
    Score7.7 out of 10
    SingleStore
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    RWS Tridion Sites
    Score9 out of 10
    SAP IQ
    Score5.4 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    MagnoliaMicrosoft SQL Server
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.1
    (78 ratings)
    7.9
    (107 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.1
    (9 ratings)
    9.0
    (8 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (68 ratings)
    7.6
    (17 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    8.5
    (67 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.1
    (3 ratings)
    7.9
    (26 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (6 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Data Sharing and Collaboration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    Data Sources
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (5 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    MagnoliaMicrosoft SQL Server
    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
    Microsoft
    Microsoft SQL is ubiquitous, while MySQL runs under the hood all over the place. Microsoft SQL is the platform taught in colleges and certification courses and is the one most likely to be used by businesses because it is backed by Microsoft. Its interface is friendly (well, as pleasant as SQL can be) and has been used by so many for so long that resources are freely available if you encounter any issues.
    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
    Microsoft
    • Easy to configure and use with Visual Studio and Dot Net
    • Easy integration with MSBI to perform data analysis
    • Data Security
    • Easy to understand and use
    • Very easy to export database and tables in the form of SQL query or a script
    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
    Microsoft
    • Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise edition has a high cost but is the only edition which supports SQL Always On Availability Groups. It would be nice to include this feature in the Standard version.
    • Licensing of Microsoft SQL Server is a quite complex matter, it would be good to simplify licensing in the future. For example, per core vs per user CAL licensing, as well as complex licensing scenarios in the Cloud and on Edge locations.
    • It would be good to include native tools for converting Oracle, DB2, Postgresql and MySQL/MariaDB databases (schema and data) for import into Microsoft SQL Server.
    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
    Microsoft
    We understand that the Microsoft SQL Server will continue to advance, offering the same robust and reliable platform while adding new features that enable us, as a software center, to create a superior product. That provides excellent performance while reducing the hardware requirements and the total cost of ownership of our solution.
    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
    Microsoft
    SQL Server mostly 'just works' or generates error messages to help you sort out the trouble. You can usually count on the product to get the job done and keep an eye on your potential mistakes. Interaction with other Microsoft products makes operating as a Windows user pretty straight forward. Digging through the multitude of dialogs and wizards can be a pain, but the answer is usually there somewhere.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Magnolia
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Its does not have outages.
    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
    Microsoft
    SSAS data cubes may some time slow down your Excel reports.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Microsoft
    We managed to handle most of our problems by looking into Microsoft's official documentation that has everything explained and almost every function has an example that illustrates in detail how a particular functionality works. Just like PowerShell has the ability to show you an example of how some cmdlet works, that is the case also here, and in my opinion, it is a very good practice and I like it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Magnolia
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    It was good
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Magnolia
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    very hands on and detailed training
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Magnolia
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    Other than SQL taking quite a bit of time to actually install there are no problems with installation. Even on hardware that has good performance SQL can still take close to an hour to install a typical server with management and reporting services.
    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
    Microsoft
    [Microsoft] SQL Server has a much better community and professional support and is overall just a more reliable system with Microsoft behind it. I've used MySQL in the past and SQL Server has just become more comfortable for me and is my go to RDBMS.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Magnolia
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    SQL server does handle growing demands of a mid sized company.
    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
    Microsoft
    • Increased accuracy - We went from multiple users having different versions of an Excel spreadsheet to a single source of truth for our reporting.
    • Increased Efficiency - We can now generate reports at any time from a single source rather than multiple users spending their time collating data and generating reports.
    • Improved Security - Enterprise level security on a dedicated server rather than financial files on multiple laptop hard drives.
    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