When it comes to the content management system, the top three contenders are WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. Three of them are equally popular, and therefore, you might have a hard time deciding which one of them is best for you. Therefore, we are providing a complete comparison among them so that you can understand their strong and weak points and take your decision accordingly.
Benefits –
WordPress – There are endless plugins and templates. Therefore, both the look and the functionality of the website are taken care of irrespective of the niche and requirements. There are various customization options available to design your site as per your need. Besides, WordPress is easy to use and under-friendly even for amateurs.
Joomla – There are various themes and templates available to take care of your designing needs. It is easy to migrate from one server to another effortlessly, and you can design multipurpose applications and websites pretty easily as it is not too deeply technical. However, the customization is limited, and it is slightly heavy than the rest. Moreover, the plugins are also limited in comparison.
Drupal – There are thousands of free modules available, and there are various features provided with it to make the development easy. Not just that, the themes are readymade and highly professional. The coding is neat, and there are various free and paid plugins available to develop the site as per the features and functions you want to hand. It is technically advanced and therefore, developers need to have a technical background, unlike WordPress.
Ease Of Use –
There are is no doubt that WordPress is tailor-made for the ease of use and that is why it has become the 3rd technology that is most used for website development. In most cases, you do not have to know anything about coding when it comes to creating a website in WordPress. However, customization through coding is possible. As a matter of fact, within an hour, you can create basic website design and features. There are plugins available of all types that you can attach to your website instantly and get the desired functionality.
Joomla needs a person who has some knowledge about technical aspects for complete web application development. As for Drupal, you need to have a deep knowledge of technicalities for development. To a greater extent, Joomla is comparable to WordPress. In fact, CMS offers more functionalities than WordPress, but some of them need technical knowledge for implementation.
Community –
For ease of development, it is important for any programming language or system to have a large community support. This helps to get any help at any moment without any issue. WordPress, due to its popularity, has a larger community and you are likely to find solution to any problem instantly. Moreover, there are various documentation and handbooks available at your disposal. In fact, there are so many blogs available providing technical solutions and there are freelancers available to help you out in any situation.
Joomla also has good community support as it is the second largest CMS after WordPress. There is also an official help portal available. You can get technical support. There are also various blogs posts and professional services available. Joomla is also updated more frequently than WordPress. As far as Drupal goes, you have to get technical and professional support. There are various documentation, support forums, and user groups available.
Customization –
WordPress offers various customization features, and almost everything is customizable. In fact, all the design elements are specifically changeable. However, the templates may not be editable if you are opting for paid themes. Joomla is least customizable due to its complexity. However, Drupal is tailor-made for custom websites and therefore, customization is what defines Drupal.
Performance and Others –
WordPress is the weakest in terms of stable performance while Joomla is stronger, but Drupal is the winner. As far as security goes, WordPress is considered to be the least secure as it is a constant target of hackers. Joomla is much safer due to its complexity. On the other hand, Drupal is the safest of them all and therefore, companies always prefer it.
Cost Comparison –
All the three CMS are available free of cost. For any of these CMS, there is a lot of free stuff available. However, you have to buy premium plugins, themes, and extensions as and when necessary. Since WordPress is the most popular of these three, you will give themes and plugins at huge discounts as there are so many sellers available. It is less so in Joomla and least in Drupal. Besides, you will need professional help for Joomla and Drupal as they are more technical.
Conclusion –
If you are looking for something simple to design and develop your CMS, WordPress is the best. It is more popular and therefore, there are lots of resources available. WordPress has over 60% market share in the CMS world. However, for heavy applications and websites, WordPress is not reliable, and you have to move to Joomla and Drupal. They are more technical and has a single digit market share in the CMS world. Drupal is a perfect choice for enterprise-level websites.
