For website development, choosing the right CMS platform is an integral decision for the developers. Statistically, 79% of the B2C consumers and 85% of the B2B consumers want both user experience and product quality to have a high standard. Thus, brands focus on creating dynamic, responsive, and fast-loading websites to improve the user experience.
The right CMS (content management system) platform ensures high loading speed, uptime, security, and robust interface.
They include multiple tools, configurations, and pre-existing features for developers to create high-quality websites. Two of the most notable CMS platforms available are Drupal and WordPress. The market share of Drupal hosting is 2.3% while WordPress has a 64.8% market share.
In this article, you would get a comparative look at the pros and cons of both Drupal Vs WordPress.
What Is Drupal?
Drupal is an open-source free CMS platform that runs on PHP frameworks. It has a flexible and versatile framework with robust features and high-level security.
Also, Drupal is most effective for enterprise website development and it integrates well with multiple devices. Most of the sites that use Drupal development services for their back-end framework include governmental, corporate, and political domains.
It has a hardcore structure that can hold websites and web applications with heavy content and third-party integrations.
Pros
- Multiple starter themes: Statistically, 40% of users use another option if one brand does not provide them a mobile-friendly option. Thus, choose a Drupal CMS platform that is useful for mobile-centric web development. Drupal offers many starter themes for dedicated mobile development to its users. They are available on Drupal.org. The admin of Drupal 8 is very responsive and developers can use multiple strategies for mobile-first websites.
- Top-Notch security: The security feature of Drupal is a major advantage of this CMS platform. The platform is more transparent than WordPress, provides detailed reports on security, and gives PCI compliance support like database encryption.
- Can handle heavy content: Drupal CMS is highly flexible and is a hardcore infrastructure for different types of web services. Brands running enterprise websites can use Drupal CMS efficiently without compromising on website performance and stability.
- Multilingual support: In most CMS platforms including WordPress, developers have to install a plugin to allow multi-language settings. On the other hand, Drupal includes pre-set multilingual functionality.
- Active support: Brands can access the huge online community support of Drupal users and developers for assistance. Resources like support forums, comprehensive documentation, user groups, and chat rooms are available for free. Also, the CMS platform frequently gets new modules and updates from the Drupal users and programmers. Thus, brands can use ungraded and unique modules that are professionally designed for their website development projects.
Cons
- Not easy to use: Ever, most of the projects work best with custom modules and themes. Here, brands need to hire expert Drupal developers to handle the customization tasks to create usable highly designed websites.
- No standard features available: The standard tools and customization features users expect from CMS platforms are not available on Drupal. Thus, brands need to employ skilled developers to complete the entire development project; they need expert help with every step.
- More complex for beginners: Drupal does have multiple available extensions. However, developers have to manually find a usable module and install it externally. This is difficult for beginner-level developers; those with more technical skills can manage the task without issue.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is an open-source CMS platform that is free to use and simple. It has multiple robust features like the WordPress Themes template system and a plugin architecture. Essentially, brands can create small-scale to big-scale blogs and websites with WordPress.
WordPress works well with MariaDB or MySQL databases and has a PHP framework. Statistically, over 40% of all available websites run on WordPress CMS.
Pros
- Easy to use: Developers can easily utilize WordPress tools and configurations while developing a website. There are multiple plugins and themes available in the libraries for a fast website upgrade. For example, if you want to create a quiz on your WordPress website, then you would only need to get a plugin and set it up. Though you can use an online quiz maker also.
- Simple UI design: The interface is simple to navigate which improves user experience.
- Native app development: WordPress contains a native mobile application that is effective for smartphone-based content editing. The WPTouch solution is a usable starter theme as well.
- Multiple plugins/extensions: WordPress users can expect multiple plugins and themes on the CMS. Business owners without high technical skills and low-experienced developers can easily modify and add features to the websites. Also, users get premium-level theme options with advanced features.
- Budget-friendly: WordPress is not very expensive and the installation is free of cost. Also, the one-click hosting plans WordPress offers are priced at affordable rates.
Cons
- Less variety: In terms of modules and mobile starter packs, variety is limited here compared to Drupal.
- Susceptible to hacking attempts: To note, the core WordPress CMS is secure to use. However, it allows the integration of multiple third-party extensions. This increases the vulnerability of the system from hacking attempts, bugs, and malware attacks. Statistically, 74% of the hacked websites in one survey were running on WordPress.
- Cannot handle enterprise-level websites: WordPress is useful for different types of websites and web/mobile applications. However, it is better suited for small-scale blogs and websites. Heavy content can lower the page loading speed to some extent.
Final Words
All in all, both Drupal and WordPress are scalable CMS platforms with multiple tools and efficient features.
Comparatively, WordPress is more popular due to its easy usability and quick support features. Developers, startups, and content creators would find this particular CMS platform more suitable. However, Drupal is more flexible and scalable, and it ensures tight security to the websites. Enterprises can create big-scale websites and applications with Drupal that use a lot of data and contain extensive content.
Overall, both platforms have high-quality benefits for different types of organizations and projects. Clients opting for website development should consider those web design priorities, business requirements, and budgets to make their final choice.
