Magnolia vs. WordPress

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
WordPress
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Wordpress is an open-source publishing platform popular with bloggers, and a content management system, known for its simplicity and modifiability. Websites may host their own blogging communities, controlling and moderating content from a single dashboard.N/A
Pricing
MagnoliaWordPress
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
MagnoliaWordPress
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
MagnoliaWordPress
Considered Both Products
Magnolia
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 …
Chose Magnolia
For us, Magnolia is the best option for our needs. FirstSpirit by eSpirit is missing on the list. We are moving away from FirstSpirit as it feels outdated. Wix has better usability, but is not suitable for enterprise. WordPress I would only recommend for private projects. …
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
Chose Magnolia
Magnolia is not as costly as other enterprise grade platforms and is easier to deploy, more reliable and less resource hungry. It's often also easier to use and certainly easier to use than it's Open Source counterparts. It also manages content in a much more structured manner …
Chose Magnolia
Similar to how one might choose a specific programming language to solve a specific problem, Magnolia has its place among the rest, depending on the use case. While it does not have the most pleasant user experience compared to others, its customization options are streets …
Chose Magnolia
Of all the ones we looked at that met our requirements Magnolia was clearly the best value for money and had a solid background that you could trust and that could take care of you in case of problems.
Chose Magnolia
Putting all together: capabilities, support, community and price... Magnolia is the best combination, maybe not the best on each aspect, but for sure in the combination
Chose Magnolia
I choose Magnolia in front of everyone since it is one of the content managers that best adapts to all the modifications that are required by businesses
Chose Magnolia
One of the most important points that magnolia has over other products is the possibility of extending its functionalities. Being open-source, it is possible to inspect how everything is done and replicate it to change functionalities. In this way, many features that customers …
Chose Magnolia
I use magnolia because my client asked for it in the beginning because he had a long history of using magnolia for years. I think magnolia is middle-hight rated in the stack of similar products. Maybe it's not very well-publicized and it needs better marketing techniques or …
Chose Magnolia
Good documentation and examples Online demos to mess with and test functionalities Easier to install Better knowledge about the product Ability to centralize content of the same type in apps Better performance in some scenarios Better usability: In the newest versions, …
Chose Magnolia
Magnolia is affordable and better for small scale projects. Also, the features are easy to understand and use. Magnolia offers just what we need. We couldn't have chosen a better tool.
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
While Magnolia cost a little bit more, I find it more capable in that it offers more features and functionality wise, it is easy to use and understand thanks to the clean UI.
Chose Magnolia
Our enterprise selected Magnolia.
Chose Magnolia
Magnolia is a good solution where you have a very simple buying and checkout process and don't require the additional flexibility or additional functionality built on top of the framework.
Chose Magnolia
I've used a number of Content Management Systems in the past that have similar features to Magnolia including custom ones that aren't widely used or can be listed, but Drupal is probably the most comparable. I would say that Drupal is more kind to custom code and overall …
Chose Magnolia
Magnolia is the most flexible, with the best ease of use in all cases. It just has the best of both worlds. It is significantly more than just a CMS. And you have a good foundation for building up your platform without losing possibilities to change parts in the future.
WordPress

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
MagnoliaWordPress
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
8.1
70 Ratings
1% above category average
WordPress
8.2
127 Ratings
2% above category average
Role-based user permissions8.170 Ratings8.2127 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Magnolia
8.0
69 Ratings
4% above category average
WordPress
6.4
104 Ratings
18% below category average
API8.462 Ratings6.394 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language7.662 Ratings6.579 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
WordPress
8.0
133 Ratings
5% above category average
WYSIWYG editor8.566 Ratings8.3120 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness8.466 Ratings7.3121 Ratings
Admin section8.071 Ratings8.6131 Ratings
Page templates8.973 Ratings8.2128 Ratings
Library of website themes7.01 Ratings8.4130 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design8.564 Ratings8.5129 Ratings
Publishing workflow7.574 Ratings8.5125 Ratings
Form generator7.059 Ratings6.3104 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
WordPress
7.9
131 Ratings
8% above category average
Content taxonomy7.564 Ratings6.8113 Ratings
SEO support7.164 Ratings8.2118 Ratings
Bulk management7.858 Ratings7.5100 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions8.063 Ratings8.5121 Ratings
Community / comment management7.152 Ratings8.5120 Ratings
Best Alternatives
MagnoliaWordPress
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
MagnoliaWordPress
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(79 ratings)
8.9
(169 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.1
(9 ratings)
9.4
(36 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(69 ratings)
9.7
(16 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(3 ratings)
Performance
8.5
(68 ratings)
8.6
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(3 ratings)
10.0
(10 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
8.2
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
MagnoliaWordPress
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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Automattic
If your business relies heavily on content creation, and particularly on blog posts, then WordPress is really the best option you have. But if you don't have a blog, you only need static pages, or you want to build an eCommerce site, then you might want to explore other alternatives.
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.
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Automattic
  • WordPress is incredibly easy to set up and get running with little to no technical knowledge. Most web hosts will do it for you, since it's so easy.
  • With thousands of themes available for free and for low cost, WordPress can accommodate any design you can imagine.
  • The community behind WordPress is generous, and there are loads of educational opportunities both online and in person to learn and connect with other users.
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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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Automattic
  • WordPress breaks often so you need to have someone who understands how to troubleshoot, which can take time and money.
  • Some plugins are easier to customize than others, for example, some don't require any coding knowledge while others do. This can limit your project if you are not a coder.
  • WordPress can be easily hacked, so you also need someone who can ensure your sites are secure.
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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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Automattic
My rating is based on the knowledge I have of the community that WordPress has had built around it for years now. It's as solid as it comes when you talk about community involvement and expansion. There's no other CMS out there that can match-up with it, hands down.
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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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Automattic
It's a sophisticated but easy to use piece of software. Many of the content addition pieces are familiar from other pieces of software so there isn't a huge learning curve. And for new areas, there is a lot of info on WordPress.org as well as other WordPress help sites.
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Reliability and Availability
Magnolia
No answers on this topic
Automattic
Anyone can visit WordPress.org and download a fully functional copy of WordPress free of charge. Additionally, WordPress is offered to users as open-source software, which means that anyone can customize the code to create new applications and make these available to other WordPress users.
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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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Automattic
Mostly, any performance issues have to do with using too many plugins and these can sometimes slow down the overall performance of your site. It is very tempting to start adding lots of plugins to your WordPress site, however, as there are thousands of great plugins to choose from and so many of them help you do amazing things on your site. If you begin to notice performance issues with your WordPress site (e.g. pages being slow to load), there are ways to optimize the performance of your site, but this requires learning the process. WordPress users can learn how to optimize their WordPress sites by downloading the WPTrainMe WordPress training plugin (WPTrainMe.com) and going through the detailed step-by-step WordPress optimization tutorials.
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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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Automattic
WordPress itself only has community service so your experience will depend on where you turn. Online, through forums and community boards, support is rudimentary but effective. You can easily turn to your local community and find exceptional individuals who know and use WordPress regularly for more advanced, inexpensive, support. I'm rating this less than 10 because of the lack of any formal support provided by a company.
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In-Person Training
Magnolia
No answers on this topic
Automattic
Varies by the person providing training. High marks as it's incredibly easy to find experienced individuals in your community to provide training on any aspect of WordPress from content marketing, SEO, plugin development, theme design, etc. Less than 10 though as the training is community based and expectations for a session you find may fall short.
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Online Training
Magnolia
No answers on this topic
Automattic
It is very easy to find online resources to learn how to do just about anything with WordPress.
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Implementation Rating
Magnolia
No answers on this topic
Automattic
WordPress is not a great solution if you have: 1) A larger site with performance / availability requirements. 2) Multiple types of content you want to share - each with its own underlying data structure. 3) Multiple sites you need to manage. For very small sites where these needs are not paramount, WordPress is a decent solution
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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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Automattic
We have considered and operated within Shopify and Squarespace. Both serve their purpose for niche clients, but we do recommend WordPress as being the superior option. We find that WordPress is easier to use and offers maximum scalability while the others are more challenging to design, code, configure and launch.
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Scalability
Magnolia
No answers on this topic
Automattic
WordPress is completely scalable. You can get started immediately with a very simple "out-of-the box" WordPress installation and then add whatever functionality you need as and when you need it, and continue expanding. Often we will create various WordPress sites on the same domain to handle different aspects of our strategy (e.g. one site for the sales pages, product information and/or a marketing blog, another for delivering products securely through a private membership site, and another for running an affiliate program or other application), and then ties all of these sites together using a common theme and links on each of the site's menus. Additionally, WordPress offers a multisite function that allows organizations and institutions to manage networks of sites managed by separate individual site owners, but centrally administered by the parent organization. You can also expand WordPress into a social networking or community site, forums, etc. The same scalability applies to web design. You can start with a simple design and then scale things up to display sites with amazing visual features, including animations and video effects, sliding images and animated product image galleries, elements that appear and fade from visitor browsers, etc. The scaling possibilities of WordPress are truly endless.
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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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Automattic
  • WordPress helps us reduce website management costs because we can oversee updates in-house.
  • WordPress is easy to use, reducing the amount of time we spend on website management.
  • The ease of use enables us to offer website management for clients, helping us grow our capabilities/business.
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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.