WordPress vs Drupal vs Joomla - Which Suits Best To Your Site?

As we know that content is the core of any website. Search engines like Google always have an eye on your content.

Henceforth, for any website, it becomes necessary to keep their content up-to-date in order to get the traffic. But to update or add new content through codes is a tedious and time-consuming task.

And this is where CMS came into the picture. It helps you seamlessly update your content. CMS made an evolution to the way people develop their websites.

The fact to note here is about 65% of the website has integrated CMS in their websites. Again the thing is,

Which CMS platform suits best to your website?

Is this question worrying you? Relax!

In this article, I’ll take you to the tour of the three most popular content management systems - WordPress, Drupal & Joomla. All these platforms constitute 59.23% of the total market share.

Each of these CMS platforms comes with immense tools and plugins. So, let us go through all and see which comes out as best for your new site.

What are the Common Elements of WordPress, Drupal & Joomla?

Before going to the differences, first will go through the five similarities of WordPress, Drupal & Joomla.

• The first and foremost thing here is all the three CMS platforms are licensed under GPL and opensource. Henceforth, you can download it for free.
• These CMS platforms are developed using PHP and MySQL.
• To add functionalities and features they provide various extensions/modules/plugins and templates/themes for the designs.
• All three have their own team of designers, trainers, marketers, SEOs, and developers. This team works to keep their CMS platform better by sharing knowledge, organizing events, supporting users and much more.
• The easy installation process with a single click for all the three platforms.

Despite similarities, their lies a huge difference between WordPress, Drupal & Joomla.

So, to understand better let us, deep-dive and get the best for your website.

Introduction & Popularity: WordPress vs Drupal vs Joomla

These three platforms were released in the early 21st century. Let us get through them one by one.

Introduction & Popularity: WORDPRESS

Launched in 2003, WordPress is the most popular CMS platform across the globe. Approximately 27% of the total websites are developed using WordPress. It contains a total CMS share of 58.9% across the globe.

The reason for the popularity is its user-friendly approach. Specially for the nontechnical users who can build and run their website on WordPress. Some of the popular websites developed using WordPress are BCC America, New York Post and more. They have communities spread across the globe based on region and country.

Introduction & Popularity: DRUPAL

Drupal was launched in 2001, the oldest CMS from all three. It is one of the most difficult as well as powerful CMS. It required a bit of coding knowledge to use.

Drupal covers a total of 4.7% share globally among all CMS. It is famous for its tight security and you will never hear about Drupal sites being hacked. This CMS platform mainly focuses on providing reliable performance, customization, and security. There are millions of websites developed using Drupal.

Introduction & Popularity: Joomla

Joomla was released in 2005 and it is the second most popular CMS. It constitutes a market share of 7%. Joomla became popular in a short span of time due to the flexibility it provides to build a website.

Almost every type of website like government, health, technology, fitness, business, etc uses Joomla. It has a huge open-source community globally to support their users. They will even help you to keep track of your website. Joomla boasts more than 300 million downloads.

User-Friendly: WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal

With having a good online presence and popularity, it is equally important to have a user-friendly platform. And this is where you can make the difference. Let’s see how this platform works with user-friendliness.

User-Friendly: WordPress

The WordPress dashboard is easiest to navigate to any user. They even highlight the useful options, so that the user can get their work done. A user can clearly see the menu like create a post, edit posts, pages, etc.

The quick installation process makes it fairly easy for users to start within a few minutes. Wordpress wins the race in terms of installation. It is the most comfortable CMS for beginners. Above all, it has a faster development process which keeps on improving every year.

User-Friendly: Joomla

Once you have installed Joomla you will be asked to set up and configure the website. The Joomla dashboard is complicated in comparison to Drupal and Wordpress. It might be confusing for the beginners

Yes, here it takes time to understand the interface, but once you get it things will be easy. Here you need to add modules and fix their positions. It is suitable when you need more content for your website.

User-Friendly: Drupal

The dashboard of Drupal looks simple where they will ask for information like website name, tagline, slogan, etc.

Yes, the dashboard looks simple but there comes an issue when you go for creating a website to go live. To maintain security, Drupal focuses on making a strong platform and that leads to limited features. They have made a module for every feature and it consumes more time to learn modules and add them to the site.

Hence we can conclude here, WordPress wins the race in terms of ease of use.

Functionalities and Plugins - WordPress vs Drupal vs Joomla

Functionality and SEO come first when dealing with the development of the website. To gain traffic is what every business aims at. So let’s see how the three CMS deals with it.

Functionalities and Plugins - WordPress

WordPress comes with a huge collection of themes, plugins, and templates which gives a wider option to develop a website. There are more than 4500 free themes available on WordPress. It functions well and the main benefit you get here is direct access to the theme from the dashboard itself. In addition, they have 9500+ themes for a premium at Theme Forest. It is SEO friendly platform where they keep themselves updated with the latest trends. And they have 50,000+ official free plugins for your website.

Functionalities and Plugins - Joomla

Joomla has a minimal number of designs but yet works well with the functionalities. They don’t have an official theme dictionary, hence you need to go to the third party for the free designs. But at Theme forest, they have more than 950 premium templates available. Joomla has 7500+ paid as well as free extensions available to develop a website. Drupal and Joomla come at the same level for the SEO things.

Functionalities and Plugins - Drupal

Drupal is best when things come to security and flexibility. But for functionalities, you have to install various modules and it is really time-consuming. They have more than 2000 themes and 37,000 + Drupal modules available. Therefore, you can get the module for any feature you wish too. Even they have a good hold on the SEO things.

Who Won It?

Everyone is a winner in one way or other.

How?

In a nutshell, Drupal is a core for the security standards and suits best for the developers rather than beginners. While WordPress is best for beginners and offers unlimited designs and plugins. And Joomla comes with flexibility and is the best choice when you want to add a large amount of content to your site.

Did you Get the Perfect CMS for your Website?

So, are you ready with your CMS development services to cherish your website?

One thing that clear is integrating CMS on your website will lead you to an innovative website look, good traffic, easy updating of the site and innumerable options for themes, modules, plugins, etc.

In short, I can say that CMS comes with a huge bag of benefits. If you are a beginner, I recommended you hire a CMS development company as they are experts and will make your website as per your needs.

Agreed?

Yet, troubled to find your answers?

Let us know in the comment section!!