EU sovereignCMSHeadquarters: CH

Magnolia CMS: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Magnolia is an enterprise digital experience platform (DXP) for multichannel, multilingual and multisite environments, built on Java. It supports integration with single-page applications through an SPA editor and has dedicated headless documentation. The platform comes in two variants: DX Core, which you host yourself on your own infrastructure, and DX Cloud, a Platform-as-a-Service offering that Magnolia provides as a turnkey environment. According to the vendor, the platform runs on any cloud.

Magnolia International Ltd., the developer, is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. Since July 2022, the investment firm GENUI has held a majority stake. The Community Edition is licensed under GPLv3, while DX Core is supplied under a commercial end-user licence agreement (EULA). Where DX Cloud data is located depends on the chosen cloud environment and is not stated on the pages consulted; with DX Core, you decide yourself. For European organisations, Switzerland is an EFTA country outside the EU.

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Sovereignty score

59 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-2100
Headquartered in Switzerland: Swiss law, recognised by the EU as adequate
Data residency SOV-350
Hosting inside and outside Europe (CH, EU, US, OTHER)
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-360
Key management with a European vendor
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-645
Closed source, runtime with the vendor

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 9, 2026

Headquarters	CH (EU)Verified by hand
Ultimate parent company	DEVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	CH, EU, US, OTHERVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Compliance documents	2 published, see belowVendor-stated
Hosting signal	FASTLY - Fastly, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
Category	CMS
Type	Product
Website	magnolia-cms.com ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Magnolia CMS

The European alternatives to Magnolia CMS come from our knowledge base of over 6,800 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

39 European CMS vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with Magnolia CMS

Magnolia CMS is headquartered in Switzerland and falls under Swiss law, including the revised Swiss data protection act. Switzerland is not an EU member, but the European Commission recognises its level of data protection as adequate. Its Swiss headquarters does not by itself bring it under US legislation such as the CLOUD Act. The ultimate owner is based in DE, also within Europe.

Magnolia CMS hosts data in CH, EU, US, OTHER. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.

Magnolia CMS is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Magnolia CMS together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Magnolia CMS?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Magnolia CMS include Ametys, Bolt CMS and caisy. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Magnolia CMS?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Magnolia CMS include Ametys, Bolt CMS, Cockpit CMS, Contao and django CMS. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Magnolia CMS GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Magnolia CMS is headquartered in CH (EFTA) and hosts data in CH, EU, US, OTHER. That makes Magnolia CMS an EU-sovereign choice in its own right; the EU alternatives on this page are comparable European tools.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 9, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

Data Processing Agreement (DPA): trust.magnolia-cms.com/dpa
Subprocessor list: trust.magnolia-cms.com/subprocessors

Provenance of the links above:Vendor-stated

Links checked on September 23, 2026.

Cyber Resilience Act

Public signals that relate to the EU Cyber Resilience Act. They do not count towards the score. A missing line means "not found publicly".

Report a vulnerability: docs.magnolia-cms.com/product-docs/administration/security/responsible-disclosure-policy/
Supported versions: docs.magnolia-cms.com/support/release-support-and-life-cycle/

For products in scope of the CRA, CE marking is required from 11 December 2027; this cannot be checked yet.

Checked on October 9, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in CMS

CMS: Content management systems — websites, headless CMS, digital experience platforms. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

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