Joomla, Drupal or WordPress – Which Is the Best CMS?

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Let’s get something out of the way from the beginning and say that WordPress is the outright winner based on its stats. It holds over 60% of the market share, whereas current install numbers show that Joomla holds 7% whereas Drupal holds 4.7%.

This may make your choice very obvious, i.e. you should choose WordPress. But, if WordPress is so great, why are some people using Joomla and Drupal? The truth is that WordPress is suitable for most people, but not all people, and if you fall into the second category, then Joomla or Drupal may be the best CMS (content management system) for you.

How Are WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal Similar?

All three CMS platforms (Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla) are open-source software licensed under GPL, which is another way of saying they are free and you can fiddle with their coding if you wish. You may download the software for free, use it for free, and modify it as you like without fear of copyright or licensing repercussions.

All three have a great community. There are people online answering questions, helping other people, creating extensions, and much more. They each have people who volunteer to make their platforms better.

All three platforms are based on MySQL and PHP. All three use themes and templates for the web page design. They all use plugins, extensions, and modules for adding features and functions.

SEE ALSO: How to Start a Blog

Don’t Believe the Online Reviewers

People grow to love the content management systems that they use the most. As a result, most online reviews and websites of this type will edge toward one being better than the other. For most people, this is WordPress because it is the most popular.

The short answer is that WordPress is great, but if you want to work with a bigger team, or with lots of data, then something like Joomla is better. If you are a coder and you really want to carve out your own content management system, then use Drupal, carve it apart, and put it back together again the way you like it.

Comparing the Website Builders

All three are free and open source, and there are hosts who will manage your installation and maintenance if needed. If you wish to do it alone, then it is a one-click install, or you can do it manually, in which case it will take ten minutes.

User Friendly?

WordPress is very beginner friendly, though it has become so powerful that its barrier to entry is rising a little. Joomla is somewhat beginner friendly. It is okay if you start small and use further tools slowly as you learn more through use. Drupal is not user-friendly at all, but if you have the coding skill, then it is a lump of clay that you can mold into a prize-winning creation.

Themes and Templates?

WordPress has around five thousand free themes on its official marketplace, and over ten thousand paid ones. Most are a hybrid of free and then you pay to upgrade. Joomla doesn’t have an official template directory, but there are websites like ThemeForest that have nearly one thousand themes. Drupal has over two thousand themes on its official theme directory, along with five hundred premium Drupal themes.

Plugins and Extensions?

WordPress has over fifty thousand official plugins and thousands of free plugins, and there are plenty of websites that offer unofficial plugins. Joomla has nearly eight thousand extensions (that are free, paid, or a hybrid of the two). On Drupal’s official directory, there are thirty-seven thousand modules, which is pretty impressive.

SEE ALSO: 27 Essential WordPress Plugins You Need To Install

Security Concerns?

This is a tricky one because WordPress is the most vulnerable simply because it is the most popular and so hackers go after that one first. However, WordPress is the most updated and has the most security tools and features.

In Defense of Drupal

Drupal is rarely promoted by articles of this type, so here is a quick defense of Drupal (the underdog). Why does Drupal have 37K plugins, and WordPress, which is far more popular, only has 50K plugins? This is because Drupal is favored by developers and coders, most of whom will create their own additions to Drupal and then release them into the official directory as modules. Drupal may not be as popular as Joomla, WordPress, or even as popular as Shopify, but it is the place for people who are competent coders.

Does Joomla Love Data?

There are some websites where adding tools and data-driven functions is not difficult but puts a strain on things like bandwidth, rendering times, loading times, and so forth. For a website builder like WordPress, you need to make changes and add plugins, which may slow things down unless you get under the hood and do some real coding. Joomla needs its fair share of plugins and such in order to handle data and tools, but you can do it without having to dive deep into Joomla’s code, and you can do it without as much slow down or lag.

Why Is WordPress So Popular?

Part of the reason is that WordPress is pretty flexible, and it has all the tools and advanced features you need to make whatever type of website you like. However, the biggest reason at that moment is simply because it is very popular. It has all the support you would ever want, it is frequently updated, and it has thousands of themes and plugins.

Plus, when you work for people and companies, they often use WordPress, so it is handy knowing how it works. Even if you decide against WordPress and you go for Drupal or Joomla, you should still learn how to use WordPress. Take an online course somewhere like WP-masters.com and learn how WordPress works. It will also introduce you to WordPress on a deeper level and will help you make your choice between WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla.

Conclusion

This article is not going to end on the cliché sentiment that it is all about using the CMS that you enjoy. In most cases, WordPress is going to come out as the outright winner. However, as in the cases shown above, there are certain people, groups, and businesses who would benefit more from Drupal or Joomla than from a WordPress website.