Contentful vs. Magnolia

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Contentful
Score 6.2 out of 10
N/A
Contentful is a cloud based CMS solution that provides the ability to manage content across multiple platforms.The editing interface allows for managing content interactively and provides developers the ability to deliver the content with the programming language and template framework of their choice.
$300
per month
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
ContentfulMagnolia
Editions & Modules
Lite
$300
per month
Community
Free
Enterprise
Custom
DX Core
$3500
per month
DX Cloud
$6000
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ContentfulMagnolia
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ContentfulMagnolia
Features
ContentfulMagnolia
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Contentful
7.3
Ratings
10% below category average
Magnolia
8.0
Ratings
1% below category average
Role-based user permissions7.30 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Contentful
8.0
Ratings
5% above category average
Magnolia
8.1
Ratings
7% above category average
API8.30 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language7.70 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Contentful
7.7
Ratings
0% below category average
Magnolia
8.0
Ratings
4% above category average
WYSIWYG editor7.30 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness8.50 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Admin section8.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Page templates7.60 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Library of website themes7.50 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design7.70 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Form generator7.00 Ratings6.90 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Contentful
8.0
Ratings
8% above category average
Magnolia
7.5
Ratings
2% above category average
Content taxonomy8.00 Ratings7.60 Ratings
SEO support7.00 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Bulk management7.70 Ratings7.60 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions8.50 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Community / comment management9.00 Ratings6.90 Ratings
User Ratings
ContentfulMagnolia
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(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
ContentfulMagnolia
Likelihood to Recommend
Coming from WordPress, Contentful feels like content management as it should be. There's no clutter to get rid of, you can simply start building from scratch, and the end product is perfectly tailored to your or your clients needs.
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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
  • Contentful provides organized, flexible data models with support for a variety of data types and content editors (e.g. WYSIWYGs, form fields, raw text areas).
  • Contentful has great built-in versioning features with history and draft states so it's easy to make updates and revert when needed.
  • Contentful has an intuitive user interface and good support for multiple spaces (which can be helpful for companies that need separate projects for dev/staging/production).
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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
  • Preview of changes prior to publishing
  • The ability to use a spell check plug-in when working on content (it doesn't work well with Grammarly)
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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
Contentful was affordable and much simpler than the Java based systems and preferred over a PHP solution
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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
  • There was no negative impact as such.
  • Positive impact is increase in sales.
  • More work is delivered due to reusability and other features within a time and less manual effort.
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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

Contentful Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of

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