The popularity of Content Management Systems is growing at a rapid pace. In fact, some of the best websites on the internet are powered by easy to use and customize CMSs that enables a webmaster to build sites or make changes to them without having to write a single line of code.
If you are planning to build a website and do not have a $3k+ budget, chances are you are recommended to use a CMS.
Well, there are various CMSs available today including Drupal, Joomla, Magento and WordPress, all packed with plenty of features, robust security, ease of use and easy customization.
However, the two Content Management Systems – WordPress and Drupal have gained more popularity than the rest of the CMSs, thanks to their flexible and versatile architectures.
But of course, you cannot use both of them for your next online venture. Then which one to choose?
To answer this question, we have written this article with a thorough comparison between WordPress and Drupal. The comparison is done on the basis of certain common aspects such as ease of use, security, learning curve, cost and customization options.
Let’s get started!
Ease of use
Content Management Systems are developed to make the life of a webmaster easier and convenient. Thus ease of use is one of the most important factors to decide which CMS to choose.
If you are familiar with the basics of CSS, WordPress is an ideal choice for you. It is more user-friendly than Drupal and requires no technical and programming knowledge. Moreover, it comes with a WYSIWYG editor that enables you to build sites within minutes.
On the other hand, Drupal is more of a backend content management system that has a steep learning curve and requires you to have basic technical knowledge.
Customization options
No matter what type of website you are planning to build, you would certainly want to tweak the basic functionality or look of your website to suit your own business requisites. Thus customization options is another important aspect of deciding on the platform to use.
When it comes to customizing the look and feel of the website, the easiest way is to make use of themes and plugins. With WordPress having a huge database of themes and plugins, it is easy to build a customized website and tweak it to any extent. It offers more than 40,000 free and premium themes and plugins.
Even though Drupal also comes with tons of pre-built themes to choose from, the range and number of themes still lack. Moreover, Drupal makes use of modules instead of plugins which work almost the same way. But the most useful modules are often paid.
Security
The online world is full of hackers looking for loopholes to hack into a website for their own benefit. Thus, it becomes imperative for a site to use a platform that offers high security.
While WordPress uses hundreds of different plugins to help the webmaster extend the functionality of the website, it is usually most vulnerable to security threats and breaches. Even though the WordPress’s core software is highly secure, the use of themes and plugins put it at high risk.
On the other hand, Drupal is relatively secure. In fact, it has enterprise-level security and offers comprehensive security reports. Thus it is usually used by a majority of government organizations.
Cost
Well, both the Content Management Systems are available for free of cost. WordPress and Drupal are both open source CMS and thus do not charge a penny to use them.
Final Verdict
Well, I am leaving it to you to decide which one is the winner. Both have their pros and cons. Where one offers tons of themes and plugins, the other provides the utmost security.
If you want to build a highly secure website, Drupal is an ideal choice. However, if you are planning to build a site that can be easily customized as per your needs, WordPress is your answer.