Magnolia vs. Square Online

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Magnolia
Score 8.2 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
Square Online
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Square Online (formerly Weebly) is a basic content management system with blogging and eCommerce features. It can be utilized for building standard websites or specialized webpages for online stores.
$6
per month
Pricing
MagnoliaSquare Online
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Personal
$9.00
per month
Professional
$16.00
per month
Performance
$29.00
per month
Free
Free
Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
MagnoliaSquare Online
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing decreases when paid annually: Personal - $6/Month Professional$12/Month Performance - $26/Month
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
MagnoliaSquare Online
Considered Both Products
Magnolia
Chose Magnolia
There is much to desire about Magnolia over the alternatives. First I would say is the cost which is relatively lower. In addition, no one can despite the capabilities of Magnolia thanks to the many features.
Chose 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 …
Square Online

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
MagnoliaSquare Online
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
8.1
70 Ratings
1% above category average
Square Online
7.0
28 Ratings
14% below category average
Role-based user permissions8.170 Ratings7.028 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
8.0
69 Ratings
4% above category average
Square Online
7.9
19 Ratings
3% above category average
API8.462 Ratings6.014 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language7.662 Ratings9.915 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
8.0
75 Ratings
5% above category average
Square Online
7.1
40 Ratings
7% below category average
WYSIWYG editor8.566 Ratings9.033 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness8.466 Ratings9.036 Ratings
Admin section8.071 Ratings9.736 Ratings
Page templates8.973 Ratings2.040 Ratings
Library of website themes7.01 Ratings2.040 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design8.564 Ratings9.039 Ratings
Publishing workflow7.574 Ratings7.032 Ratings
Form generator7.059 Ratings9.033 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
7.5
70 Ratings
2% above category average
Square Online
6.6
37 Ratings
10% below category average
Content taxonomy7.564 Ratings7.123 Ratings
SEO support7.164 Ratings4.033 Ratings
Bulk management7.858 Ratings4.018 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions8.063 Ratings9.030 Ratings
Community / comment management7.152 Ratings9.027 Ratings
Best Alternatives
MagnoliaSquare Online
Small Businesses
Divi
Divi
Score 9.8 out of 10
Divi
Divi
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
MagnoliaSquare Online
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(79 ratings)
9.0
(41 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.1
(9 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(69 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
8.5
(68 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
MagnoliaSquare Online
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.
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Block, Inc (Square)
If you are having students create websites or information pages about something they are studying in class, this is a great option. The fact that students can spend less time getting situated and learning the app and get right to work researching and creating their pages is great. For middle to high school, this is a fantastic app to use. However, if you want more nuanced analytics or want students to focus on blogging more than webpage building, this is limited.
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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.
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Block, Inc (Square)
  • Drag and drop interface makes it very easy to add all types of content, including images, text, video (and YouTube videos), embeddable applications and more.
  • It's very easy to set up navigation features like cascading menus and sticky navigation (where the menu stays put - may depend on the template chosen though).
  • A technical backend is fairly straight-forward for setting up a fav icon, 301 redirects, SEO, Google Analytics, etc.
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.
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Block, Inc (Square)
  • Weebly doesn't have a lot of templates to choose from, so if you don't have any experience with CSS or HTML, it's hard to customize your site to an extent.
  • Weebly isn't fully SEO friendly. They don't allow you to add H1 tags to pages out of the box.
  • You can't create folder structures when it comes to web page URLs. You can put web pages under a main menu dropdown, but they don't allow you to put all sub-menu items in a structured folder (like site.com/folder/page-1 and site.com/folder/page-2).
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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
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Block, Inc (Square)
Weebly is consistently adding features that line up with our needs. The ease of use makes it the perfect program for us since we have users of multiple age brackets and knowledge of web design. We love that we can give users access to only the pages they are affiliated with
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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.
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Block, Inc (Square)
It is simple to use and offers enough customization to make a website that is personalized. Templates are pretty standard and the help section is laid out well by topic with frequently asked questions. Some design knowledge is helpful, but through trial and error anyone can get a hold of the reins fairly quickly.
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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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Block, Inc (Square)
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
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Block, Inc (Square)
No answers on this topic
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.
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Block, Inc (Square)
Weebly's designs, plugins, and customization options are a little more advanced in some cases than other similar programs. WordPress requires a different level of expertise and knowledge of code, keywording, and plugins, so I wouldn't even compare them. Wix is a little more user-friendly because you can drag and drop your design, which was very convenient for customizing your site. I didn't personally select Weebly, but it is user-friendly and nearly anyone comfortable with a computer could figure it out. Weebly support is also pretty good.
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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
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Block, Inc (Square)
  • Weebly has allowed our business to create a connection with our customers by offering home decor, cooking and styling tips.
  • Weebly gives us the chance to relay information to customers regarding merchandise, current sales and promotions, store hours and locations etc. Which has helped increase business.
  • Weebly has given our not very tech savvy business the opportunity to have a website and stay relevant with our competitors.
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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.