Drupal vs Joomla Research & Comparison

A while back I had to research CMS options to compliment our work with WordPress. At the time I was looking at the two main competitors to WordPress in the PHP CMS category, Joomla and Drupal. Both of these choices are solid, established and flexible options. There isn’t a clear ‘winner’ between them, however I figured this summary might be helpful for others.

I gathered this info by reading several other articles where the authors compared the 2. The caveat is that I haven’t used either myself and can’t directly verify this information. This is just the general overview of what the internet is saying about these two.

Drupal

  • Major version 10 released early 2023.
  • More secure (very).
  • Better for complex websites.
  • Larger variety of plugins.
  • Faster loading time.
  • Difficult maintenance.
  • Customize user ACL permissions.
  • Strong SEO capabilities.
  • More developer friendly.

Joomla

  • Major version 5 released late 2023.
  • More popular.
  • Better for ecommerce.
  • Easier maintenance.
  • Less plugins, modules and free themes.
  • Better theme flexibility and customization.
  • More user friendly (easy to use).
  • Quality Object Oriented architecture under the hood (clean code).

At the time I had chosen to go with Drupal. I anticipated a more complex learning curve but as an experienced PHP developer I was willing to put in the time to learn what I figured was a more flexible and secure system. I haven’t used either option before so I don’t have first-hand knowledge. I ultimately ended up becoming more familiar with WordPress than I used to be and I compliment that with custom PHP applications using Symfony, so I didn’t end up following through on this research.

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