From Kentico to Magnolia

We are the Kentico to Magnolia migration experts

Challenges with Kentico

Key pain points

Here’s the reality check about Kentico. It isn’t cheap. Licensing, implementation, and support can feel like a CFO jump-scare. And while the interface is friendly at first glance, once you get into migrations, upgrades, or deeper customisation, things get… heavy.

Major version updates can introduce breaking changes, permissions get messy at scale, and multi-tenant setups mean one bug can take down every project sharing the stack. The docs and community aren’t as deep as the open-source world either, so when something goes wrong, you’ll likely need a developer rather than a forum thread to save you. If you can absorb the overhead and like Corporate Memphis art, go ahead. But before you go ahead, give us a call, and we will try to set up a better solution for you.

Steep learning curve

Kentico’s power comes with complexity. Newcomers and smaller teams often need time (and developers) to actually start working.

High cost for licenses and maintenance

Licensing and maintenance can add up quickly, which makes Kentico a harder sell for startups or smaller organizations.

Upgrades can get messy

Major version jumps, migrations, or deep API changes sometimes introduce breaking changes, which, trust us, is not fun if your site has years of custom logic.

UI feels dated at scale

As projects grow, the dashboard can get cluttered and less intuitive. It works, but it’s not winning design awards, unless you are still competing in 2015.

Limited community support.

Support exists, but the ecosystem isn’t as loud or as active as WordPress (not our first choice), Webflow, or headless-first platforms like Sanity.

Customizations risk impacting all sites

In multitenant setups, a poorly built custom feature can impact every site in the cluster, which means you can't move or change a single line of code, unless you love 404 messages.

Benefits of Magnolia

Key advantages

Magnolia shines if you’re the kind of organisation that genuinely needs the full DXP kitchen sink. It packs personalisation, workflows, multi-site orchestration, multilingual publishing, DAM, marketing automation hooks, and every enterprise acronym you can think of. If your teams run complex global content operations with strict governance, Magnolia’s mature permission system, stability, and long-standing enterprise reputation make it a safe, compliant option.

To be transparent, we don’t actually prefer or build with Magnolia (or any of the DXP-flavoured headless CMSs). They try to do everything, and like most jack-of-all-trades platforms, they don’t excel at the things modern teams actually need that is speed, flexibility, clean workflows, and sane pricing. We’d happily point you toward modern alternatives like Sanity that give you 10× the agility without the enterprise bloat.

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Java-based enterprise integration

Built on Java, Magnolia plugs neatly into large enterprise stacks that already rely on Java systems and legacy infrastructure. If your organisation lives and breathes JVM, Magnolia won’t fight your architecture.

Secure, scalable architecture

Magnolia’s core is engineered for high-security, high-traffic environments, with strong access control, clustering, and enterprise-grade stability. It’s built to survive heavy editorial activity and large content delivery demands.

Grayscale UI wireframe showing a left sidebar with icons and a right content panel with forms and a progress bar.

Real-time page templating

Editors can adjust components and layouts and immediately preview results, making large enterprise content operations faster and less error-prone.

Editable component previews

Magnolia’s component-level previewing gives editors clarity on how complex pages come together, reducing back-and-forth with developers and keeping multi-team workflows sane.

Multi-site management tools

Designed for global brands, Magnolia supports multiple sites, languages, and regional variations under one roof.

Advanced workflow automation

From multi-step approvals to compliance-driven publishing flows, Magnolia handles heavyweight governance. This is the stuff big enterprises actually need when 20 departments want access but only 2 should publish.