From Magnolia to Wordpress

We are the Magnolia to Wordpress migration experts

Challenges with Magnolia

Key pain points

Magnolia is the definition of “enterprise for the sake of enterprise.” The setup is heavy, the learning curve is brutal, and unless you have a Java team lying around, good luck getting anything done without burning through budget. The proprietary modules lock you in fast, integrations feel like a maze, and the admin interface slows to a crawl once you start dealing with real content volume. The pricing is expensive, opaque, and somehow still manages to feel bad value. If you're not a Fortune 500 with a tolerance for pain, it’s a project risk.

And honestly, who even uses Java anymore?

Steep Java learning curve

Magnolia expects your team to be fluent in Java and its ecosystem, which slows onboarding and makes even simple tasks feel heavier than they should.

Resource-intensive setup

It demands serious infrastructure and long setup cycles, which immediately rules it out for teams that expect fast iteration or modern DevOps workflows.

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Vendor lock-in concerns

Once you're in, you're in. Magnolia’s proprietary modules make moving away painful, expensive, and often not worth the engineering time.

Complex third-party integration

Connecting Magnolia with modern tools and APIs isn’t straightforward, usually requiring custom Java work instead of simple plug-and-play integrations.

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Native subscription support

Licensing is firmly enterprise-tier, with opaque pricing and steep annual fees that can balloon quickly, a bad fit unless you're Fortune 500.

Proprietary module reliance

Key features live behind Magnolia’s own tightly controlled modules, limiting flexibility and forcing teams to work the “Magnolia way” instead of choosing best-in-class tools.

Benefits of Wordpress

Key advantages

We're trying our hardest to think of good reasons to move to WordPress, but outside of "I like PHP errors" or trying to build a website for under £500, I honestly can't think of a good reason. If you're trying to do things on the cheap, we would highly recommend using a template from Framer or Webflow. They're better solutions in almost every way.

But if you're hell-bent on building a WordPress website, we can't stop you. For that reason, we'd highly recommend SiteGround for hosting to keep it cheap and optimize the hell out of it with their performance plugin. Avoid installing tons of plugins if you can; keep it lean and simple.

Plugins for everything

You want a form? A store? A booking system? A horoscope generator for cats? WordPress has a plugin for it. Half the internet runs on “someone already built that.”

Strong community support

If something breaks, someone online has already fixed it, documented it, blogged about it, and made a YouTube tutorial with dramatic background music.

Easy to use

You can be a writer, founder, or intern, you can easily build a website using WordPress. It doesn’t demand a CS degree. Click, type, publish. Done.

Vast theme selection

You might need a corporate website, minimal, or even a neon-purple-cyber-punk ecommerce store; just pick a theme and ship. Some even look good straight out of the box.

Ideal for beginners

One of the easiest ways to get a site live without knowing the difference between HTML and “the thing that makes the text bold.”

Flexible configuration options

Layers of configuration, widgets, design settings, and custom plugins will only let you shape WordPress into something that actually fits your use case.