Global CMS explanation: Drupal vs Joomla

When it comes to choosing a CMS for your website, it's essential to understand the differences between the main platforms available. Whether it's Drupal or Joomla, these two CMS offer powerful functionality and flexibility for creating and managing websites, but they also present significant differences in their approach and operation. But already, who are they aimed at?

The Drupal target

Drupal is a CMS solution favored by businesses and organizations that need a rather robust and above all highly customizable platform, as this one generally meets complex needs. Its flexibility and extensibility make it an ideal choice for corporate websites, site factories or community sites, for example.

Drupal is particularly appreciated by developers and system administrators for its ability to handle large data volumes and support scalable web architectures.

The Joomla target

Joomla, meanwhile, is often preferred by users looking for a CMS solution that's easy to get to grips with. With its intuitive user interface and solid core functionality, Joomla is ideally suited to simpler websites, such as blogs for example. Joomla is also valued for its efficient content management and its available extensions, which enable new features to be added quickly to a website.

In summary, Drupal is generally favored by companies with complex web development and content management needs. However, Joomla is more suited to users looking for a user-friendly, ready-to-use CMS solution for simpler web projects.

Let's go into a bit more detail to differentiate the two CMSs a little further.

Features: Drupal vs Joomla

In this section, we'll take a closer look at the features offered by Drupal and Joomla, highlighting their strengths and differences.

Drupal features

Drupal offers an extensive range of features that make it an attractive choice for the most complex web projects.

We've come a long way from the days when the software was so complicated as to be almost unusable! Its key features include:

• Flexibility and extensibility: Drupal offers a modular architecture that allows developers to create 100% customized sites by combining modules and features according to the specific needs of each project.
• Enhanced security: Drupal is renowned for its enhanced security, with regular updates and virtually non-existent crashes. Indeed, Drupal has an active community working to identify and correct security flaws.
• Content creation made easy : with a few mouse strokes, populate your page with complex content without having to type a single line of code.
• Community and support: Drupal benefits from a large community of developers and users who contribute to its ecosystem, offering solid technical support and detailed documentation.

The latter is very active and will grow even more over time.

Joomla features

Joomla also offers a set of features, less extensive than Drupal. But each of them is perfectly mastered:

• Intuitive user interface: Joomla offers a user interface that makes content creation and management easy for users, even those with no technical experience.
• Extensions and modules: Joomla offers a wide range of extensions and modules to extend the CMS's basic functionality.
• Efficient content management: Joomla offers efficient content management tools, including category creation, media and article management... What's more, Joomla takes care of translating all your content.

🏆 Winner: Drupal

For this category, Drupal demonstrates by virtue of its functionality, all that is possible via this CMS. Joomla remains simpler in terms of ready-to-use functionalities.

Moreover, the Drupal CMS develops over time. Whereas Joomla proposes far fewernew extensions.

Support: Drupal vs Joomla

Technical support and documentation play a crucial role in choosing a CMS, especially for businesses that depend on their website for their operations. What about Drupal and Joomla? 👇

What Drupal offers

Drupal offers solid technical support from its committed community and detailed documentation to help users navigate the system and resolve any issues.

• Community forums: Drupal has active online discussion forums where users can ask questions, share tips and solve problems in collaboration with other community members.

Bonus: Drupal also has a Slack help channel.

• Official documentation: Drupal offers comprehensive official documentation including installation guides, tutorials, code references and user manualsto help users understand and use the CMS. In short, the website is a goldmine for all your questions!

What Joomla offers

Joomla also offers a certain level of technical support and documentation to help users get the most out of the CMS:

• Help forums: Like Drupal, Joomla has online help forums where users can ask questions, find solutions to common problems and interact with other community members.
• Official documentation: Joomla also offers official documentation including installation guides, tutorials and user manuals to help users navigate the system and solve problems.

🏆 Winner: Drupal

For this round, Drupal manages to pull ahead of Joomla thanks to its community Slack (and quite useful).

Handling: Drupal vs Joomla

When you want to use a CMS for your web project, ease of handling is a crucial aspect to consider. In this section, we'll look at getting to grips with Drupal and Joomla, highlighting their respective characteristics.

About Drupal

Drupal is renowned for offering exceptional flexibility and power, but its learning curve can be steeper than Joomla's. Because of its modular structure and ability to handle complex web projects, Drupal may require a little more time to fully master. However, once you're familiar with its interface, Drupal offers total control over the design and management of your website.

To develop a Drupal site, get in touch with experts in the field. At Parker+Parker, we can help you with your Drupal digital project, contact us.

About Joomla

Joomla stands out for its user-friendliness and ease of use, making it an excellent choice for beginners. With its intuitive user interface and simple content management tools, Joomla enables users to create and manage their website without requiring in-depth technical knowledge. It offers a smoother learning curve than Drupal, making it a popular choice for those looking for a quick and easy solution.

🏆 Winner : Joomla

In fact, Joomla has a simpler grasp than Drupal. However, depending on your site requirements, Drupal may prove more suitable. If you're prepared to invest time in learning Drupal, you'll be rewarded with a higher level of control and customization for your website. Hence the importance of surrounding yourself with professionals ;)

Pricing: Drupal vs Joomla

The cost associated with your CMS is an important factor to consider. So let's take a look at Drupal and Joomla pricing, highlighting their respective pricing models.

Drupal pricing

Drupal is an open source CMS, which means the software itself is free to download and use.

However, the costs associated with Drupal can come from hosting, development and website maintenance. Although the software is free, it's important to take these additional costs into account when planning your budget.

Joomla prices

Like Drupal, Joomla is also an open source CMS, which means the basic software is free. Here again, the costs associated with Joomla can come from hosting, development and maintenance of the website.

🏆 Winner: equality

Drupal and Joomla offer similar models since they are both open source CMSs, balls to the center!

Security: Drupal vs Joomla

Security is a critical and more than important aspect for your site, especially when it contains sensitive or confidential data. Nobody wants their data to leak, do they? So, which CMS is the most secure?

Drupal security

Drupal is known and recognized for its commitment to security. Its active community is constantly working to identify and resolve vulnerabilities, and security updates are regularly released to protect Drupal sites from potential threats. This makes this CMS probably one of (if not THE) most secure.

Furthermore, Drupal offers built-in features such as granular access control and form validation to enhance website security.

Joomla security

Joomla also takes security seriously, but its security reputation is often considered less solid than Drupal. Although Joomla offers regular updates to correct security flaws, its modular structure can make some sites more vulnerable to attack if extensions are not properly updated.

However, Joomla offers security features such as user and authorization management to enhance website protection.

🏆 Winner: Drupal

In terms of security, Drupal is often considered the superior choice due to its secure architecture and ongoing commitment to security updates.

So, which CMS is best suited to your project?

Let's count the points:

• Features: Drupal 🥇
• Support: Drupal 🥇
• Getting started: Joomla 🥇
• Tarification: 1-1
• Security: Drupal 🥇

So the winner is...

Drupal. It's clear that Drupal stands out as a first choice CMS solution for many businesses.

In terms of functionality, Drupal lets you create highly personalized and evolving websites. Its community of active and developing contributors ensures strong technical support and abundant documentation, while its enhanced security effectively protects users' sensitive data.

Although Joomla also has its advantages, notably in terms of convenience and ease of handling, Drupal stands out for its ability to meet the specific needs of businesses, even the most complex.

In conclusion, it's important to choose a CMS that's on the cutting edge. If you're looking for a powerful, flexible and secure solution for your business, Drupal is the obvious choice.

Contact us at Parker+Parker to benefit from our Drupal web development expertise and build a bespoke website that meets all your needs.