Drupal Vs WordPress Vs Joomla
One of the most crucial decision you will make while building a website for your business is which Content management system (CMS) Should I choose among Drupal vs WordPress vs Joomla?

As a CMS is responsible for your overall web presence, it is imperative to choose the right one for your need. Before we begin the journey for finding the perfect CMS for your business, let’s check out the current market share of these three CMS for your web development.

Popular CMS by Market Share
Source: Web Technology Surveys

WordPress is the most used platform for building website and starting a blog. Over 34. 5% of the website on the internet belongs to WordPress. The overall market share of WordPress is 61.1%.

The next is Joomla with 2.8% of the web presence with a market share of 5.0%. The other competitor Drupal has a market share of 3.2 % with about 9,65,00 website are built using Drupal.

These were the popularity of the CMS among its user. But is it necessary that because WordPress is used widely so you should go for WordPress??

The answer is No!It is not necessary.

In this article, we will go through the comparison among Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla. At the end you will know which one is best for your requirement.

Jump To Section

An introduction to Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla

What is WordPress?

WordPress is one of the most easy to use content management system. It is used for creating websites using drag and drop widgets and adding plug-ins as needed.

Who created WordPress?

Back in 2003, Matt Mullenweg and Mile little invented WordPress because existing blog software b2/cafelog was terminated by its developers. WordPress is based on it but have gone through significant changes over the years.

When is WordPress Used?

If you think that you won’t be able to build a website because you don’t have coding skill, then forget that.

WordPress is a platform where you can build from a simple website to a business level website. Not only this but by using its easy to use plugin called WooCommerce, you can build your own online store.

WordPress has become the best asset for the bloggers around the world.

What is Joomla?

Joomla is a free and open-source content management system which allows you to easily create and manage a dynamic website.

Who created Joomla?

Joomla is created by Open source Matters Inc and the Joomla development community.

When is Joomla Used?

Joomla helps you to create more complex sites with little to no coding knowledge required. Joomla is in many ways similar to WordPress and allows you to publish your content and expand your site’s functionality with extensions to improve the appearance of your site.

What is Drupal?

Like the other two, Drupal too is free and open-source CMS with a large and supportive community.

Who created Drupal?

Dries Buytaert is the programmer and founder of this content management system.

When is Drupal used?

Drupal is mostly used for building and maintaining highly secured websites. Many governments and school websites that you don’t know are built with Drupal. However, unlike WordPress, and Joomla, Drupal needs a programming background to effectively create and manage the websites.

Now that you have a basic idea and knowledge about what these Content management systems are, without further ado, let’s start comparing these top CMSs.

Drupal vs WordPress vs Joomla: A Quick Comparison

CMS WordPress Drupal Joomla
Software Free & Open Source Free & Open Source Free & Open Source
Market Share 60.5% 4.6 % 6.6%
Ease of Use Easier Hardest Hard
Installation One-Click or Manual Installation Within 5 Minutes One-Click or Manual Installation Within 10 Minutes One-Click or Manual Installation Within 10 Minutes
Plug-ins & extensions 55,000+ plugins 39,000+ modules 7500+ extensions(all)
Themes & templates 5,000+ official Free Themes 2500+ official 950+ templates at Theme forest
Top Websites using Platform Vogue India, TechCrunch, & more U.S department of energy. University of Minnesota Discover Magazine, NCA( National Crime agency
Pros Simple to use, A large number of templates, SEO friendly The most secure, Multi-language functionality Large community, Customizable
Cons More Vulnerable Not user-friendly Steep Learning curve
SEO friendly Great Better Good
Maintenance Cost/month 250$ 1500$ 500$
Total Websites run on platform 75 million 1.1 million 2.8 million
Latest Version Wordpress 5.2 Drupal 8 Joomla 3.9.5

Drupal vs WordPress vs Joomla: A Detailed Comparison

Learning Curve

WordPress:
WordPress is generally easy to pick up, even if you are new to handling CMS. It is user-friendly and intuitive for the non-programmers looking to build a website from scratch.

The What you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) editor and drag and drop functionality has made WordPress the easiest CMS for the blogger and businesses as well.

Besides, the vast community support makes it simple for users to solve any query regarding WordPress.

SEE ALSO: Want to Build Your Website in WORDPRESS?

Drupal:
As I said earlier, Drupal need a programming background and is a bit complicated to learn. Actually, it’s not hard to use, it’s hard to learn. Once you get your hands on coding it will be cake walk.
Joomla:
The installation process of Joomla is somewhat similar to WordPress and offers one-click installation. But the control panel which allows you to manage all the modules is not for the beginners.

Hence, it will take little time to understand Joomla’s control panel. Though in a learning curve, Joomla falls between WordPress and Drupal.

Learning curve: Drupal vs Wordpress vs Joomla

Security

WordPress:
It is undoubtedly the most used platform for blogging and creating websites. But when it comes to security, due to its popularity it is more likely to attack by hackers.

Since users use different 3rd party plugins to extend the functionality of the site, there are high chances of getting a malicious code from 3rd party firm.

However, there are some security plugins which you can install to increase your security measures.

Drupal:
Drupal mostly does not depend on the 3rd party plug-ins offer more secure websites as compared to other platforms.

Highly stable & secure source code and database encryption on various levels make Drupal an impenetrable CMS. Due to its security measures, Drupal is mostly used by the government organization and schools where the protection of important data is a prime focus.

Joomla:
Joomla is somewhat the same as WordPress in security measures. You will have a quick response to patch up if you face a malicious attack.

There are lots of Joomla security extension which are available to back up your site. You can protect Joomla installation with the help of the experienced Joomla professionals.

SEE ALSO: Top Joomla Development Company

Security: Wordpress vs Joomla vs Drupal

Performance

It’s your website’s performance that attracts users. If the performance of your website is sub-par and slow, users are likely to leave your site as they land on the page.
WordPress:
As described above in the article, WordPress is a preferable option for small to the big size of organization. With customization in the theme and plug-ins WordPress gives the best performance and speed..
Drupal:
When it comes to performance, Drupal is smart enough to handle your website whenever it faces gridlock. Which makes Drupal the best option for the large and heavy website.
Joomla:
Joomla, on the other hand, is lightweight and optimized content management system. It competes with Drupal as far as the performance is concerned. The in-built performance-boosting feature allows your site to load quickly.
Performance: Joomla vs wordpress vs Drupal

E-commerce

WordPress
If you are looking forward to building an eCommerce site then there is no other best platform than WordPress. Creating an eCommerce store on WordPress is as simple as selecting an eCommerce theme. You can build your online store specific of your industry with different payment processing system.

WooCommerce is the best plugin of WordPress for eCommerce development.

Drupal:
It would be advisable not to go for the Drupal, if you are building your own eCommerce website. It requires coding skills to add something important. eCommerce websites are dynamic and need an update from time to time. You will waste your hour and hours learning to manipulate modules rather than focusing on your customers.
Joomla
Same as Drupal, Joomla too is less intuitive backend interface. Joomla is best for massive, dynamic websites with lots of content, but it is no simple task to manage the products pages if they need to be updated regularly.

Want to Create Your Successful Ecommerce Portal? Know Here

E-commerce: Joomla vs Drupal vs Wordpress

SEO Perspective

WordPress:
When it comes to SEO, WordPress is the favorite CMS for the Bloggers. Because the easy to use optimization gives newbies and non-technical person to easily optimize their page without much hassle.

The popular plugins like Yoast SEO makes your optimization efforts worthy. WordPress allows to create tags from the posts, optimize permalink structure and set the metadata for the pages and post.

So, even you are new to WordPress, you can optimize your blog or website for higher ranking.

Drupal:
Drupal has readily available SEO capability. It offers its users with several modules available for SEO activity and web statistics. It automatically produces customizable meta tags or creates title based Url Nodes for a website. Which is not present in Joomla and WordPress.
Joomla:
It requires care and attention in the starting but it has great potential to rank very high in case a website or blogs are set up properly.

Joomla has possible to turn on SEF URLs, which takes a step further by enabling URL writing. You can also decide whether to enable URL suffix or not. Besides, you can add global meta description, meta keywords, define meta tags and title tags at a page level.

But, SEO in Joomla is not user-friendly if you want to do proper SEO optimization then you will have to learn coding in Joomla properly.

SEO Perspective: Drupal vs Joomla vs wordpress

Themes, Extensions, and Add-Ons

WordPress:
WordPress provides 5,000+ free themes and 55,000+ free plugins. It offers so much of themes to begin with, and more plugin to add unlimited functionality to your website.
Drupal:
Drupal offers you about 2500+ themes and 39,000 + modules. Almost all of the additional functionality you need is by default built into the main themes. Which eliminates the need to depend on the third-party plug-ins.

Drupal is more efficient in handling a large amount of data and content so consider Drupal as more flexible. But the catch here is; for  custom CMS website development, you need professional web developer.

Joomla:
Joomla has similar numbers of templates and extensions as WordPress. There are extensions available related for creating your eCommerce store to email management. But the template and extension are not as robust as WordPress and Drupal
Themes: Drupal vs Wordpress vs Joomla

Top Websites Made in WordPress

      • Tech Crunch
      • Disney
      • Sony PlayStation
      • Vogue( India)
      • Bloomberg

Top WordPress Website List

Top Websites made In Drupal

      • The Economics
      • Tesla
      • University of Minnesota
      • U.S Department of Energy
      • Australian Government

Top Drupal Website List

Top Websites made in Joomla

      • Linux
      • Guggenheim
      • National crime agency (NCA)
      • Mtv
      • Discover Magazine

Top Joomla Website List

Cost

WordPress:
When you are considering money flowing in the WordPress website then you must consider the cost of adding premium plugins.
Because not all the plugins are free there are some for that you need to pay for.

For example, E-commerce PlugIn WooCommerce is free but the extension like Payment always and other advanced features may cost you somewhere between $29 to $299.

Also, unless you have a server at home you need a cost to host your website which is common in other CMS also. Apart from that, if you need to add complex functionality, you may have to hire WordPress experts and that adds the cost in your total cost of WordPress.

Drupal:
Drupal was made for Security and faster performance. Hence, the hardware needed is less which ultimately saves the server cost. You might need some premium themes that also adds the cost in the overall Drupal website.

As Drupal is not suitable for beginners, you must have to consider the developer’s cost.

SEE ALSO: Choose Drupal For Your Next Web Development Project

Joomla:
The expenses to run Joomla is similar to WordPress. Other than that, you will need to pay for some premium extensions and templates. As we know that Joomla is a little bit tougher than WordPress so you might need a developer for your website. As a result; you must consider developer’s cost as well.
Cost: Wordpress vs Joomla vs Drupal

Concluding: Drupal vs WordPress vs Joomla

WordPress:
For a beginner or someone new to CMS world, WordPress is the best option you should go for. If you are a blogger, prefer to use WordPress for creating and managing your personal blog.

Whether you have a small business or large business you can make WordPress your CMS. SEO friendly, user-friendly and best for building E-commerce makes WordPress popular among other management systems.

SEE ALSO: Best WordPress Development Company for Your Small Business

Drupal:
As explained earlier the security of Drupal is almost invulnerable. So if you are running a big organization, school or creating any government website where the security of data is vital, Drupal is undoubtedly the first choice. In addition, if you want your website to have a world-class performance you can go for Drupal.
Joomla:
Joomla falls somewhere between where both WordPress and Drupal meets. If your goal is to build your business website then Joomla can be your partner as a content management system. Although, It is still used by some popular brands. But it is less SEO friendly, so bloggers should not prefer Joomla.

So, these were the combat among top 3 CMS Systems. If you are still confused about choosing the right one from Drupal vs WordPress vs Joomla, feel free to contact our experts.

Do you want to hire our Drupal developers, Joomla developers or WordPress developers? Let’s connect.

Category: Dev & Design
Tags: 
Mahil Jasani

Author: Mahil Jasani

Meet the web tech lover and COO of Excellent Webworld. Mahil is an expert in drupal web development. He's the complete package skilled in design, development, and deployment of exceptional websites. His blogs are helping lots of start-ups to understand how to improve website performance and how to enhance web designs.