Not just business owners and bloggers, but even web developers and designers often find it difficult to choose a Content Management System (CMS) for a particular project. As an experienced website design company in Sri Lanka, RG Web Design Sri Lanka constantly encourages its team to learn new CMSs and to understand the effectiveness of these in terms of performance, design and user-friendliness.
We believe in creating websites which can easily be managed by business owners. Additionally, they should be able to understand analytics and even identify areas where they may require changes to improve customer experience. In this article, we will approach the question of choosing a CMS from the customer point of view, keeping small and medium businesses and bloggers in mind.
A CMS is a software system which is ideally meant to offer its users the ability of designing, developing and managing their websites with relative ease. Here’s an introduction to the three CMS before we deep dive into their abilities to compare which one is the best.
WordPress is currently rated as the top CMS with big brand like Forbes, Reuters and UPS using it. Popular celebs like Katy Perry and Jay Z have their websites on WordPress too. It currently claims a 60.8% CMS market share, according to W3Tech.
Joomla, with a 5.1% CMS market share, is also an open-source, free software like WordPress based on PHP and MySQL. It is the youngest of the three CMS and has gained a considerable fan-following of its own with a strong online community.
Drupal has a 3.3% CMS market share. It is mostly used for enterprise websites and big organizations who want to ensure scalability. Drupal is also the oldest of the three CMS. It has an organized community and is considered popular among professional web developers.
Let us now look at the various factors that a website owner considers and where WordPress, Joomla and Drupal stand when it comes to catering towards these needs.
- Costs
An important consideration at the time of choosing a CMS is the cost incurred for building the website as well as the cost of running it effectively. Since websites will undergo regular updates and changes, it is important to look at the expenses of managing the website on a particular CMS in the long run. All three are free open source software systems.
WordPress has an expansive list of themes, templates and plugins. Many of these are free and can get you started on a basic website very easily. For better functionality of your website you may have to pay for plugins or buy a theme. On WordPress, even building a website yourself is relatively easy. But if you are looking at a complex web design then professional help will be required.
Joomla also has a lot of free stuff and the expenses of setting up and managing a website on Joomla is somewhat similar to that of WordPress. If you are looking at premium templates and plugins, then you will end up paying for these. Most of the professional web developers in Sri Lanka charge the same prices for WordPress and Joomla.
Drupal is more complex, which means that you would require professional help unless you are a web developer yourself. Most web design packages prices in Sri Lanka will usually show Drupal web development costs slightly higher because of the complexity of its architecture. But Drupal makes concessions on hardware systems allowing you to run the website on relatively low-cost servers.
- Help
As a leading web development agency in Sri Lanka, we often find our clients asking about the ease with which the website could be managed after its launch. It is one of the most important aspects of considering a CMS because you may not want to constantly hire a professional every time you want to make a small change on the website.
WordPress is a beginner-friendly CMS which makes users comfortable to handling the website themselves. There are lots of tutorial, help videos, and online support communities which can help you fix simple problems quickly and effectively.
Joomla has a relatively smaller yet active community. Support is usually available easily and promptly. It also has an official help portal for Joomla users where you can ask questions and get help from other users.
Drupal provides its users with regular updates to ensure the smooth running of the websites. Users can find help on their online community, which is also very small when compared to WordPress but has active users who would promptly help you.
- Security
While your website has several factors to consider in terms of security, the CMS plays an important role in ensuring that you have a hardened security system. As one of the best web design company in Sri Lanka, we always have security in mind when it comes to building websites and choosing a CMS.
WordPress has significantly improved its security systems in order to incorporate its growing ecosystem of users. Given its large customer base, WordPress has received a lot of criticism in the past for its security. It is important to know that users should consider strong passwords and should avoid distributing login details to too many people.
Joomla’s security system is very much like WordPress. A lot of it depends on the website owner. Using difficult passwords, maintaining the confidentiality of login IDs and passwords and ensuring the use of plugins that improve website security falls on the user.
Drupal offers a very robust security system wherein customers are quickly notified of any security breaches and solutions are quickly applied to minimize the impact on its customers.
Instances of websites being hacked have surfaced on almost all the three. So it is important that website owners strengthen the security of their website with the help of plugins and extensions, making safe user experience a priority no matter which CMS they end up using.
- SEO
Your website requires a good ranking to be able to reach out to your customers and improve your online presence. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) happens not just on the content but also on the design and development end.
WordPress offers you a range of tools that help you improve SEO. All the themes on the directory are responsive and the CMS also features plugins to support Google Accelerated Mobile Pages. Even beginners can find it easy to handle SEO on WordPress with the help of plugins like Yoast SEO.
Joomla is less user-friendly when it comes to SEO. It can get confusing for beginners and may not offer as many out-of-box features as WordPress. But extensions and plugins can make it possible for users to handle SEO effectively.
Drupal keeps SEO in mind. There is a built-in-caching system to improve page loading speed. It has several responsive themes and extensions which can boost your website’s SEO rankings.
- Design and Functionality
Web development companies in Sri Lanka usually look at the design and functionalities offered by various CMS before deciding which one to use for a particular project.
WordPress offers more than 4.500 official free themes. Users can easily access these themes directly from the dashboard. This provides WordPress users with an endless pool of design possibilities when combined with the premium and third-party themes. There are over 50,000 official free plugins offered on WordPress too making it a winner in terms of design and functionality.
Joomla does not have an official theme directory. Users have to depend on third-party developers for the themes. It has more than 7,500 extensions on its extension directory which helps you add more functions and features to the website.
Drupal has a smaller theme repository, but it maintains an official theme directory for its users. Additionally, for enhancing the features and functionalities of the website, Drupal has over 37,000 modules on its official module directory. Users would require strong coding skills to effectively use Drupal and its modules.
- Scalability
Since website owners are always concerned about the ability of a website to be easily scaled up or down as per the requirements, our team of website developers in Sri Lanka have scrutinized all the three CMS for scalability.
WordPress is flexible in terms of scalability. It is used by personal bloggers as well as fortune 500 companies for their website. This is proof of its ability to stand its grounds when it comes to handling high traffic.
Joomla is often the choice CMS for small and medium business owners or for bloggers. It is also good for creating social websites like public forums and online communities. While it can be scaled up or down, it is usually not the choice platform for large enterprises.
Drupal features a highly scalable architecture. Websites built on Drupal are likely to find it easy to scale the website up or down. Big enterprises and organizations tend to use Drupal over the other two because of its strong core system, robust security and easy scalability.
- Maintenance
Maintaining the website is as important as building it. Your brand can reach out to more customers and provide better customer experience only if the website is maintained properly.
WordPress makes website maintenance easy. User-friendly reports, easy to use plugins, and a beginner-friendly dashboard makes it possible for users to create and publish new content easily, update plugins and themes or even install new features with a lot of ease. Most of the maintenance of a WordPress website can be done by website owners even if they are beginners or do not have any coding skills.
Joomla also strives to be user-friendly. It has a dashboard that looks very much like the WordPress dashboard. Features and functionalities are very similar too, which means updating and creating content does not require a lot of effort. There is some learning required for Joomla, but overall, it is a friendly CMS.
Drupal does not make it easy for beginners to maintain the website if they do not have any coding skills. Drupal users are required to learn coding and understand web development in order to maintain the website. This makes it less flexible in terms of user-friendliness and more expensive in terms of maintenance costs.
Conclusion
Over the period of years that these three CMS have evolved to suit the new demands of their customers, developers have found themselves getting comfortable with at least one if not all the three CMS that we have discussed. There are a lot of other Content Management Systems which are being used by websites, but these three continue to be at the top of the list.
Having discussed each of the three with respect to several factors that may affect your business, you will find that WordPress has been able to create considerable traction for itself because of its features, user-friendliness and easy maintenance. Having taken up a large CMS market share, it continues to grow every minute, acquiring new customers and attracting new developers.
As one of the best website design company in Sri Lanka, we also agree that WordPress caters to customer requirements more efficiently than any of the other CMS. At the same time, it offers a lot of design possibilities making it possible for designers to create unique content for every customer.
Our team of freelance web designers in Sri Lanka also feel that WordPress packs up more features and functionalities without inhibiting the page loading speed very much. It has a variety of tools used by the web developers in Sri Lanka to maximize the performance of the website and to increase customer experience.
With a large repository of help videos, tutorials and support forums, WordPress has a sizeable community which ensures that you will be able to find support for any problems very quickly and easily. This makes it possible for website owners to easily maintain and manage the website even without professional help. As a result, WordPress is not just user-friendly; it may even help users save money, which is otherwise spent on employing professional help for managing the website.