Drupal vs WordPress – Open Source CMS Comparison

A content management system, often abbreviated to CMS, is an application allows publishing, editing, modifying, organizing, deleting, and maintaining online content from one central user interface.

Most often, popular news websites, blogs, and other popular online destinations that frequently publish new content make use of a CMS. In so doing, content writers with minimal or no exposure to coding and design can regularly publish great content without any roadblocks.

The purpose of this article is to offer an unbiased look at two different platforms – Drupal vs WordPress, the two most popular CMS choices available. When choosing the platform will power your website, you will need to consider the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Drupal vs WordPress

To put it simply, whether you prefer to power your website with Drupal or WordPress will depend largely upon your intentions and objectives for your website.

Each CMS has its own strengths and weaknesses including the availability of its themes, plugins, and updates, as well as the necessary skills you will require for its use.

Before diving into the specifics of Drupal vs WordPress, it is important to mention that both are great choices for creating a website. They are both built on PHP and MySQL, and both are open source CMS solutions.

Understanding Open Source

With the intention to promote universal access to software, the open source development model grants a free license to the design of any product, plus redistribution rights.

As we compare Drupal vs WordPress in this CMS comparison, it is worth noting that both options are open source. In a nutshell, that means both CMS choices have been edited, modified, and improved by developers all over the world.

In other words, both options in this open source CMS comparison could be described as finely tuned products. New plugins, modules and themes – including both free and premium choices – are frequently produced by experienced developers, allowing both Drupal and WordPress to remain relevant and competitive.

What Makes Drupal Great

Drupal is the second most widely used CMS, right behind WordPress. Having first launched just after the turn of the century, its current iteration includes more than 60 billion lines of code.

While this figure is not intended to intimidate you, it does reflect a nearly unlimited capacity for Drupal to handle new content. Drupal can easily manage several hundred thousand pages of unique content, giving this platform a distinct edge for search engine optimization.

Although WordPress can certainly be used for eCommerce and business transactions, Drupal includes strong version controls and access control list capabilities. This means a website powered by Drupal is more secure and stable, and also generates detailed security reports for its users.

Drupal offers far more flexibility in terms of design, although it comes with the trade-off of needing to have a stronger understanding of code.

What Makes WordPress Great

WordPress is the most widely used CMS in the world.

As an additional point in its favor, WordPress boasts thousands of individual plugins that add a variety of features and functions to your website – the majority of which are free to download and install. Drupal, on the other hand, does not offer any free plugins – or modules, as Drupal calls them. WordPress is far more cost-effective in this regard.

WordPress is also far easier to use than Drupal, allowing almost anyone with a limited knowledge of HTML and CSS to quickly create a beautiful and engaging website. WordPress offers a much simpler user interface, as well.

Originally intended mainly as a platform for bloggers, WordPress does a much better job than Drupal at managing multiple authors. It also allows you to create a clean and attractive website in a few clicks, using one of thousands of free or premium theme choices.

Drupal vs WordPress – Which Is Better?

While it isn’t possible to choose a clear winner in this open source CMS comparison, it might be fair to say that WordPress would be a more attractive choice for less experienced developers, or those that require a less feature intense website.

On the other hand, if your website requires more custom features, scalability, security, and complex content organization, Drupal might be the best CMS for you.

Here is a side-by-side graphical CMS comparison of Drupal vs WordPress, plus a third – CMS ex-heavyweight known as ‘Joomla’:

Joomla is often thought of as the perfect option in between Drupal and WordPress, offering complex features like the former and a simple user interface like the latter.

Still not sure which CMS option is right for your website? We would love to share some tips.