Adobe Experience Manager vs. Magnolia

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Experience Manager
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Adobe Experience Manager is a combined web content management system and digital asset management system. The combined applications of Adobe Experience Manager Sites and Adobe Experience Manager Assets is offered by the vendor as an end-to-end solution for managing and delivering marketing content.N/A
Magnolia
Score 8.1 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
Pricing
Adobe Experience ManagerMagnolia
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
DX Core
$3500
per month
DX Cloud
$6000
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe Experience ManagerMagnolia
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe Experience ManagerMagnolia
Features
Adobe Experience ManagerMagnolia
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
8.4
Ratings
2% above category average
Magnolia
8.0
Ratings
1% below category average
Role-based user permissions8.40 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
8.0
Ratings
4% below category average
Magnolia
8.1
Ratings
7% above category average
API7.80 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language8.10 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
7.5
Ratings
2% below category average
Magnolia
8.0
Ratings
4% above category average
WYSIWYG editor7.40 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness6.70 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Admin section7.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Page templates7.60 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Library of website themes7.30 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design7.80 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.10 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Form generator7.60 Ratings6.90 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Experience Manager
7.3
Ratings
1% above category average
Magnolia
7.5
Ratings
2% above category average
Content taxonomy7.70 Ratings7.60 Ratings
SEO support7.10 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Bulk management7.20 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions7.50 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Community / comment management7.10 Ratings6.90 Ratings
User Ratings
Adobe Experience ManagerMagnolia
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(0 ratings)
8.1
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(0 ratings)
8.1
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
8.6
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.2
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.7
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe Experience ManagerMagnolia
Likelihood to Recommend
I'll answer the second one because I mean, the first one I don't have an issue with. The second scenario is we oftentimes have the need to spin off very small campaign style sites or sites that generate leads but are unbranded and that sort of thing. So that's hard to do in AEM because you have to then create another organization within AEM to do that. And we're talking about sites that are maybe five to 10 pages in size. So we've been investigating Edge, but then that's a different workflow, so we'd have to train people on that. So it would be nice if there was something within the AEM structure that could allow you to do something very similar to Edge, where you make some small micro sites that are not necessarily branded, that you could still host within the platform and not have to retrain everybody on a completely different platform.
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If you need a business CMS that brings along a good amount of features and also give you the chance to develop features on your own, Magnolia would be a good choice. Even if you have not the fitting infrastructure around, Magnolia provides you different ways like SAAS oder PAAS. If you have to review your code our have any problems the team behind will helps in a short time. Without using the connectors it is not so easy to connect special functionalities like Marketing tools or optimization tools. The DAM is very slow if you have an huge amount of documents and pictures to store for your website - you have to add an external DAM.
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Pros
  • It allows us to scale so that we can make a change on a global footer. And it applies to all of the different property websites. It allows us to set up components and compartmentalize things in a way. The big thing is that it's scalable. And then it also ties into Adobe Analytics and other Adobe products. So we are a complete Adobe shop. Every Adobe product that we can use, we use. I don't think we do it for marketing so much, but for doing target testing and analytics, data scientists are using the same product and so it all speaks.
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  • Use of YAML to define content models with code.
  • Versatility of defining actions for custom handlers.
  • Reloading classes when code is modified in a local dev environment is nice. While it doesn't seem to work when changes extend beyond the method body (i.e., adding methods), it remediates the pain of long startup times.
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Cons
  • easier way to make universal changes for multiple websites at a time (ie pushing out a new experience fragment to all as opposed to having to individually add to each site)
  • easier way to get site images to look and be sized exactly as I want directly from the site page editor
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  • As a developer the learning curve is long, you can start developing relatively quickly but getting to know the platform in depth takes time.
  • Having a history of modifications not only at the page level but also at the Content Apps level would be very useful.
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Likelihood to Renew
We had and still have a fantastic experience using Adobe CQ. Lots of flexibility, great integration with other Adobe products we already use and a powerful technology make it a great fit for our corporate environment. Also as the community grows, it makes it easier to network with other developers and users to get new ideas on how to continue to get the best out of the software.
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Magnolia is an innovative CMS, for example it is possible to use the ipad to manage the contents. Magnolia’s team works hard to improve the product; the community is small but active and the support for the enterprise version is good. Magnolia’s team asks the users what they think and what they need, and the new functionalities planned for Magnolia 5.3 are very exciting for example the content personalization.
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Usability
Sure there are a few quirks in the interface, but once you learn them, building and editing pages is fast and efficient. Once you have the content and the planned design decided (how the pages will look and which components you will use), page builds and publishing are quick. I was able to build a 10-page specialized site with cards built using the list component in an afternoon
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There are a ton of small things that could make this CMS great Off the top of my head... 1) Better navigation between a component and its corresponding node in the jcr ( devs often have to flip between a page and a spot in the jcr even though there could be a button to take you from a page/component in the pages app to its location in the JCR) 2) Why does a content editor need to open the page to edit the page properties? They could just as easily edit the dialog from the tree view if they have many pages to touch, and it would save them time by not having to render the page.
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Reliability and Availability
Being part of Adobe Suite means you are already notified when the tool has any outages. However, I have never faced unplanned outages. Whenever you face any issue with the site, it is clearly stated if there were any planned outages and how quickly you will be back to normal. So, I will say that even the outages are planned and managed in a great way like their other services.
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No answers on this topic
Performance
With respect to performance, Adobe experience manager is one of the best in the CMS space. We didn't observe frequent slowness on platform, however the systems which are accessing experience manager should be of good specifications without which slowness would be observed. Adobe experience manager works well in integration with other solutions, unless the destination application is designed to trigger frequent calls to AEM.
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It's a lean and performant platform. You don't need to put reverse proxy servers in front of it to speed it up (although that does make it go even quicker) as there are various layers of caching built in to the application. While it's a little cryptic, the internal caching system is actually quite configurable and can be tuned to the right sort of content.
Often what tends to surprise many an IT manager is that you can run it on relatively modest hardware. We've often been met with "are you sure ?" but the reality is that it doesn't need a whole lot of horsepower.
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Support Rating
Adobe Experience Manager, in all its capacity, is a great alternative to any other CMS you are using. It helps in rapid development and makes life easier for maintaining the website for multi-language sites. Technical know-how is eliminated at content authoring. Better documentation in terms of live examples with videos would be appreciated.
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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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Implementation Rating
Depending on your individual needs, It is really quite simple to create an authoring experience for a website that looks really good. I have been part of many implementations and many teams and have seen many projects that were super successful and others that were not implemented well. AEM has room for a lot of flexibility in the implementation process compared to other CMS like SharePoint
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
SSO is one fits all, so we don't have to have a separate SSO for each application of Adobe The integration with Analytics works perfectly and bring directly value really quickly Target remains more complicated to set up, but can also bring a lot of value once integrated with the rest of the Adobe platform The fact that the solution is Cloud services is also a big advantage for maintenance
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Magnolia DXP offers similar or more capability compared to the other platform, while much easier to implement. For example, Adobe Experience Manager tend to be more monolithic in nature, heavier footprint compared to Magnolia. Hence when implementing a DXP, it is much faster to build using Magnolia, at a much lower TCO. The other platform like Kontent.ai and Strapi are pure headless platform and offer lesser features. What really make Magnolia different is the APAC team, who are all out to support their client in the implementation, ensuring their client maximize their platform and the project implementation is successful. This is some thing that is not experienced when using other platform(s)
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Return on Investment
  • Makes it easy to reuse components across multiple pages and site, which reduces the overhead needed to create all the individual components.
  • Improves business process agility by allowing users to easily create entirely new pages or content by using existing templates
  • Increases conversion rates across our sites by enabling a more consistent experience for users
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  • We have placed web content management in the hands of the organisation than retained it within the technology team.
  • We were able to quickly move to MVP and release and we are now focussed on moving the platform forward at some pace whilst not being burdened with BAU work inside the technology team as so much as self-service to trained organisational users
  • The use of the SAAS/PASS has inbuilt business resiliency as specialist work and aspects such as underlying security is done by Magnolia and we are able to focus internal effort on building out the platform.
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ScreenShots

Adobe Experience Manager Screenshots

Screenshot of AEM Forms - Creates an adaptive formScreenshot of AEM Forms - themes libraryScreenshot of AEM Forms - where to create a templateScreenshot of AEM Forms - the interactive communications editorScreenshot of Adobe Experience Manager Sites - document-based authoring enables marketers to create and publish content with familiar tools.Screenshot of Adobe Experience Manager Sites - Universal Editor, an advanced visual editor, empowers marketers to edit and publish content.

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