Magnolia vs. Adobe Experience Manager

Consolidate content from multiple sources, allowing reuse across channels.

Connect any data source, application, or channel – today and in the future

Create experiences in one seamless workflow, regardless of content source

Made for the real

Unlock the power of real composability

Break free from rigid toolkits

Escape Adobe Experience Cloud’s complexity with a modular platform for seamless integration
Enable direct connections with every tool regardless of vendor: commerce, marketing, analytics, DAM, CDP, and more
Build an open, composable martech stack - without vender lock in or rebuilding from scratch
Deliver content to any touchpoint and build frontends with any framework, including React, Angular, and Vue

Enable hassle-free collaboration

Empower marketers to publish content in a unified authoring interface with visual editing
Allow developers to start building components within an hour - unlike AEM Headless, which requires complete rebuilding and use of a complex data migration tool for headless migration
Accelerate development with user-friendly design and code-first approach

Commit to customer centricity

Don’t feel invisible - Magnolia builds on a robust, reliable technical foundation with a personalized touch to customer relationships
Get bespoke support and service from real architects that understand your business needs without costly certifications acting as a gatekeeper
Count on fair, transparent pricing that doesn’t balloon whenever you renew, expand into a new region or need to make an update

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Plan your migration from Adobe Experience Manager to Magnolia

In this comprehensive guide, you’ll learn the advantages of migrating to the Magnolia DXP. And we’ll walk you through key steps within each phase of your migration, including:

Discovery and scoping
Implementation
Roll-out
Expansion

Get the guide

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No more trade-offs

Adobe Experience Manager

Adobe AEM is bundled with the Adobe Experience Cloud DXP suite, limiting flexibility and making it difficult to leverage tools outside the Adobe ecosystem.

Page based editing only. For less tech savvy editors, the excessive drag and drop features on a page editor can be error prone.

Originally an acquisition, Adobe Target can suffer compatibility issues and cannot deliver personalized content in headless projects.

Adobe’s packaged solution is complex, inflexible, and difficult to integrate with third-party technologies. Built through acquisition, it can be difficult to integrate Adobe Experience Cloud products with each other. This has resulted in an inconsistent user experience and different integration requirements depending on the product.

AEM relies on a Dispatcher in front of AEM Publish (public) server as a cache tier and load balancer, which is complex to configure and deploy.

In some instances, manual AEM Dispatcher flushing is required to ensure content is updated following a publish operation.

Adobe requires specialised knowledge in proprietary technology such as Coral/Granite UI and HTL. Adobe only provides example headless code for React/Next.js.

Adobe AEM is bundled with Adobe Analytics as the only option for site analytics.

Complex commercial pricing model makes it difficult to scale and anticipate costs as business needs change. The cost of Adobe services for the duration of customer contracts further increases total cost of ownership.

Due to the size and reach of Adobe's operations and customer base, providing tailored customer care is challenging.

Magnolia

Magnolia allows its customers to choose and change any component of their tech stack, allowing them to create a future-proof, best-of-breed DX architecture.

Magnolia's intuitive unified authoring experience and WYSIWYG features allow both technical and non-technical teams to use the platform seamlessly. Magnolia Content App allows users to use dedicated form-based apps to maintain specific content. This simplifies the editing experience of high volume content with similar display layouts.

Magnolia has personalization features that allow authors to deliver individualized content in an effective and scalable way in a headless or hybrid headless scenario via REST API. A/B/n Testing, a Magnolia-developed feature, fully integrates into the core CMS. It allows editors to test out multiple content optimization hypotheses and generate performance reports automatically.

Magnolia provides the core capabilities of a composable DXP and enables users to integrate with other technologies through Connector Packs, Marketplace extensions, REST Clients, and webhooks.This allows customers to add functionality without any additional development.

Magnolia has a simple Author and Public instance set up without the complexity of a non-standard caching layer. A CDN takes care of the features normally offered by an AEM Dispatcher, with a Web Application Firewall offering additional security and peace of mind.

Magnolia supports multiple, non-proprietary development approaches including Java, low/no-code using Light Development with YAML and Freemarker and Headless with many popular front-end frameworks supported. Customers can choose the technology that best suits their requirements and team’s skill set.

Magnolia provides example code for React, Next.js, Angular and Vue.

Magnolia provides built-in integration with analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics and Matomo. Magnolia can also be easily integrated with any new tools as they emerge.

Magnolia is committed to real, transparent and predictable pricing and offers lower total cost of ownership vs. Adobe AEM and associated services.

Magnolia is capable of delivering bespoke and tailored customer support, providing a personalized experience that meets the unique needs and expectations of its clients.