Item: Magnolia
Rating: 9
Author: Tom Duffey

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Crescendo is a Magnolia partner based in the US but with a global footprint. We implement Magnolia for larger enterprises across the world.

When Crescendo is asked to implement Magnolia, it is usually because the overall project gets done faster, cheaper, and at a higher level of quality than what has been experienced in the past. Magnolia itself is a good fit for us and our clients because it allows everyone to move faster on both the implementation and then the ongoing content operations, digital marketing, and platform efforts.

Pros and Cons

Fast
Flexible
Good for integrations
Cost effective

Scaling to very large implementations
Author instance redundancy

Return on Investment

Faster time to market
Fast page delivery speed
Relatively simple technology footprint

Usability

Version six revamped the whole authoring experience. Not bad but still some room for improvement.

Performance

Magnolia rarely slows things down and it plays well with other systems like Fastly and CloudFront. Magnolia almost never gets in the way of performance or important integrations that need speed.

Favorite Features of Magnolia

Content authoring interface
Development system that gets out of the way and allows for familiar modern web development
Personalization capabilities

Alternatives Considered

AEM, epiServer, SiteCore, etc.

I don't think any of them are perfect, but Magnolia has competitive advantages against all of them. Magnolia offers a nice balance of features, price, and speed along with extreme flexibility.

Key Insights

Do you think Magnolia delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Magnolia's feature set?

Yes

Did Magnolia live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Magnolia go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Magnolia again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

Magnolia is good for all medium to large size enterprise content management implementations, especially where speed and time to market are important. It's also one of the best for flexibility and integrations with other systems.

I cannot recommend Magnolia for smaller scale content management projects where other tools like WordPress or HubSpot could make more sense.

Magnolia is among the best!

Overall Satisfaction with Magnolia