WordPress Theme Development Fall 2025

https://www.magnolia-cms.com

History

Magnolia was founded in 1997 by developers Boris Kraft and Pascal Mangold in Basel, Switzerland. Kraft and Mangold sought to create an open and flexible CMS for enterprise use. In 2003, it was launched as a Java-based open-source CMS, and in 2005 the commercial Enterprise Edition was introduced. Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, Magnolia continued to grow and expand, introducing newer versions, more features, and gaining more recognition as a trusted enterprise CMS platform.

Requirements

Magnolia can run on Linux, Windows, or MacOS 10.15 or higher. A Java Development Kit or Java Runtime Environment are also required. Apache Tomcat server is supported and certified by Magnolia; Wildfly, JBoss EAP, IBM WebSphere Application Server, and IBM WebSphere Liberty are supported, but not certified. PostgreSQL, MySQL 5.5 or higher, Oracle Database, and Microsoft SQL Server are supported for Magnolia, and Magnolia can be deployed on major cloud providers, like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform. At least 4 to 12GB of memory is required for good performance in a production environment, and least 30GB of memory is recommended.

Hosted/Self-Hosted

Magnolia offers offers cloud hosting with Magnolia DX Cloud, or can be self-hosted on a suitable server.

Cost

DX Cloud support begins at $6,000 per month, depending on business needs. Factors like traffic levels, cloud deployment, and uptime guarantee affect the baseline price of a DX Cloud plan.

User Base

Magnolia is used by less than 0.1% of all websites with a known CMS, and holds 0.06% market share of the top 1 million sites, accounting for approximately 3,695 websites using Magnolia CMS.