Amaxus CMS (discontinued) vs. Magnolia

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amaxus CMS (discontinued)
Score 3.0 out of 10
N/A
Amaxus was a commercial PHP-based content management system from Box UK, an agile software developer and consulting company. It provided an enterprise-level web content management system used by large brand and agencies. It is known for a focus on usability. The product has been discontinued.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
Amaxus CMS (discontinued)Magnolia
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
DX Core
$3500
per month
DX Cloud
$6000
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amaxus CMS (discontinued)Magnolia
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
Amaxus CMS (discontinued)Magnolia
Features
Amaxus CMS (discontinued)Magnolia
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Amaxus CMS (discontinued)
9.0
Ratings
11% above category average
Magnolia
8.0
Ratings
1% below category average
Role-based user permissions9.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Amaxus CMS (discontinued)
7.4
Ratings
4% below category average
Magnolia
8.0
Ratings
4% above category average
WYSIWYG editor5.00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness6.00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Admin section6.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Page templates10.00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Library of website themes8.00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design10.00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Form generator6.00 Ratings6.90 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Amaxus CMS (discontinued)
7.3
Ratings
1% below category average
Magnolia
7.5
Ratings
2% above category average
Content taxonomy7.00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions10.00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Community / comment management5.00 Ratings6.90 Ratings
SEO support00 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Bulk management00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Amaxus CMS (discontinued)
6.0
Ratings
23% below category average
Magnolia
8.1
Ratings
7% above category average
Internationalization / multi-language6.00 Ratings7.70 Ratings
API00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
User Ratings
Amaxus CMS (discontinued)Magnolia
Likelihood to Recommend
3.0
(0 ratings)
8.1
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amaxus CMS (discontinued)Magnolia
Likelihood to Recommend
Amaxus is well suited as a development platform and content management system for companies who have a dedicated, experienced development team because it has such complex functionality. It is not well suited for companies whose main content updater will be a person with limited development experience, because it is so hard to learn and understand how to use.
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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
  • There is a lot of flexibility and power with what you can do.
  • The client has a lot of power to make changes on their own without needing a development team.
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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
  • There is a huge learning curve for developers. All our new website builds were going beyond the timeline because of the learning curve.
  • It is very complex and teaching our clients how to use it required several training sessions.
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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
No answers on this topic
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
No answers on this topic
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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Performance
No answers on this topic
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
No answers on this topic
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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Alternatives Considered
I have used an in-house CMS which was very simple and only allowed the user to update very basic templated content, and I have used Sitecore, which is sort of like a middle-of-the-road. Sitecore is great because it allows for the user to have a lot of control over templates and updating content, but it's not so complex that it is very difficult and time-consuming to learn how to use, like Amaxus.
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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
  • It has a negative impact because it put us back on our timelines.
  • It had a negative impact because our customers didn't like the learning curve to use it.
  • It had a negative impact because it caused so much stress among our team to learn it.
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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

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