Joomla vs WordPress – Which CMS is Better for You? (2024)

Technically speaking, both Joomla and WordPress are the leading CMS platforms in today’s world. You can create any website on these CMS platforms, as both offer impressive web development tools. So, making a successful website is relatively easy on both platforms.

In this article, we will compare Joomla vs WordPress to find out the merits and demerits of designing your website on these CMS platforms. These site builder platforms offer different security features and e-commerce tools.

You should read this article from the start till the end to clearly understand WordPress and Joomla’s distinctive features.

Joomla vs WordPress – An Overview

Joomla

Just like WordPress, Joomla is an open-source CMS platform capable of designing any website. Due to its distinctive features, Joomla has gained an excellent reputation among site owners around the globe and hence powering 2.1% of the world’s websites at the time of writing this article. It is the third most popular CMS out there and owns 3.5% of the market so far.

In the beginning, Joomla was considered one of the best Portal-like website builders. Still, with time due to the advancements in its features, Joomla is powering over 4 million websites in different niches.

If you are still wondering about Joomla, let us tell you the prominent site names which are made on this platform, such as Harvard University, theFashionSpot, and MTV Greece. Read Also, Webflow vs WordPress – Detailed Comparison.

WordPress

WordPress was designed to power blogs initially, but with continuous updates and regular advancements, it has successfully emerged as the top site builder CMS platform that is fully equipped to accommodate all types of websites.

At the time of writing this article, WordPress is powering 40.6% of the world’s websites which is quite a remarkable number. Where Joomla owns 3.5% of the market, WordPress owns 64.5%. Like Joomla, WordPress is also an open-source CMS platform that can be installed and used for free.

Some notable sites built on WordPress are PlayStation Blog, Sony Music, and Whitehouse.gov.

Joomla VS WordPress – A Detailed Comparison

Both of these platforms are flexible, secure, and trusted site builders. The critical difference between the two is in the features they offer to their users. Comparatively, Joomla is more flexible, but you must understand the coding to work on this platform.

On the other hand, WordPress requires less technical knowledge and is hence suitable for newbies and beginners. Additionally, the number of plugins and extended functionalities make WordPress a smarter choice. Read this to Find out the best One Blogger vs WordPress

Let’s ponder your thoughts on the following points to find out the better CMS platform for you:

1. Content Management
2. Appearance & Functionality
3. Ease of Use
4. Search Engine Optimization
5. Official Support
6. Security System 
7. E-Commerce & Payment Gateways

We will compare the two CMS platforms based on the points mentioned above to assist you in choosing the right option for you.

Content Management

Content management tools are the first and foremost to consider before selecting a CMS platform to build your website or online store. This section will explore managing your website’s content using Joomla and WordPress.

Content Management Using Joomla

On Joomla, you need to select the category for the content to be published. The platform has three distinctive page types for your site’s data display. The three-page types are:

• Single Format
• Category Blog
• Custom Module

Before publishing any post, the user must select the right category for the content’s display.

Joomla provides its users with a default editor to edit the content on the page. The editor is known as TinyMCE. This default editor is similar in looks to that of WordPress Classic Editor. Joomla has several editing extensions to assist users in managing their site’s data.

Apart from the benefits, a drawback of Joomla is that it does not have a taxonomy content system, so you need to install or make this system yourself. The process is complex, and it requires a lot of time as well.

The best thing about Joomla’s content management system is that it provides its users with advanced access control to monitor all the actions made by different IPs on their sites.

Content management using WordPress

Initially, WordPress aimed to become the world’s best blogging platform by providing users with a robust system that could manage massive data, distinct content types, and media files of all sizes.

Although the Classic editor offers everything you need to create, edit and manage your site’s content at great pace and ease, WordPress has also adopted Gutenberg as its default editor to enhance its capacity.

You will be amazed to find out that Gutenurg is a code-free editor, but it allows you to edit HTML for advanced customization.

Following are the page types that are offered by WordPress:

• Static Pages 
• Dynamic Pages

Using the taxonomy to group the desired posts and pages, you will have to choose the page type.

WordPress CMS provides extended functionality with the help of hundreds of free plugins available. Additionally, six distinctive preset user roles provide an easier way to manage the site’s access and restrictions.

Winner

After comparing and contrasting the content management functionalities and extended plugins of both platforms, our research team has concluded that WordPress wins this round without any doubt due to the availability of a custom taxonomy by which you can easily manage massive data and significant content.

Appearance & Functionality

Your site’s appearance and functionality should be up to the mark to give your website users a remarkable experience. This section primarily focuses on the templates and extensions offered by Joomla and WordPress. We will compare the two site builder platforms based on the following points:

• Availability
• Functionality
• Usability

Let’s now dive into the details.

Joomla’s Appearance & Functionality

When it comes to the appearance and functionality of your site, then Joomla provides you with many impressive built-in features. Joomla’s library has over 8000 extensions to give you additional functions.

When it comes to the installation of the Joomla extension, the process involves more steps in comparison to that of WordPress. One of the drawbacks of Joomla is that you need access to its extension directory directly from the dashboard. First, you need to download the extension and then upload it manually to the installation page.

Joomla does not have its official template directory so users can use third-party templates and theme resources such as JoomShopper and ThemeForest. When it comes to your site’s appearance, Joomla offers the following two types of templates:

• Front-end templates
• Back-end templates

Joomla editor assists users in editing the templates as per their customization options. You can also get drag-and-drop functionality by installing and using Joomlart Page Builder.

Joomla allows users to use more than one template for the same site, where you can assign a unique template to different pages.

WordPress’s Appearance & Functionality

WordPress has thousands of customization options when it comes to the appearance and functionality of your site. It provides 58000 free plugins. There are paid plugins too. These plugins include analytic functionality, security improvements, and extended customization options.

WordPress best suits the needs of web designers with the availability of over 8000 free and paid themes. You can find these themes in the WordPress directory and utilize other third-party resources and marketplaces. WordPress offers a full range for customizing your site’s appearance. You can easily edit the theme’s code on WordPress. You can also install a page builder such as Elementor or Divi Builder. These page builders are made to assist users in advanced-level customization.

Unlike Joomla, WordPress websites can use one theme at a time. 

Winner

The winner of this round is WordPress, as it has more themes, plugins, and customization options compared to Joomla CMS. Additionally, WordPress is faster, smoother, and easier in terms of installation and activation.

Ease of Use

Ease of use refers to the user’s comfort in installation, activation, customization, and navigation around the administration. This section will uncover the overall learning curve of both the CMS platforms: Joomla and WordPress.

Joomla’s Ease of Use

Like WordPress, several CMS hosting providers offer specified web hosting for Joomla. For instance, Hostinger’s Joomla hosting plan contains the following:

• Joomla-optimized servers
• A domain name
• A massive library of extensions and themes

Furthermore, the control panel of Joomla offers complete web development terminology. This thing makes it less beginner-friendly CMS. Joomla’s navigation system is quite complex due to the abundance of admin pages and several settings.

The good thing about Joomla is that it has made it easy to do complex settings and manage the abundance of pages by providing its users with easy-to-use tools like page builder extensions. It also assists beginners with its step-by-step tutorials.

WordPress’s Ease of Use

The ease of using WordPress is unmatchable, as many hosting providers include a single-click WordPress installer in their hosting plans. Finding a trusted hosting service for your WordPress site is not an issue. The hosting service is generally pre-installed with WordPress CMS.

Unlike Joomla’s control panel, WordPress’s control panel is highly beginner friendly. WordPress suits best to site owners with no or less technical knowledge. It’s super easy to learn and operate different settings on this CMS.

Furthermore, the navigation system is simple and easy to use. For instance, if you want to add a new post, you need to navigate to posts and click Add new to initiate a new blog post.

Winner

Hosting-wise, both CMS platforms are equally accessible. But when it comes to ease of use, then WordPress is much easier to understand and operate compared to Joomla’s dashboard. Beginners with limited technical information can easily work on WordPress CMS to build their sites and businesses.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO will help you rank your website higher in search engine result pages (SERPs). This section will compare Joomla and WordPress’s built-in features and the different extensions the CMS platforms offer.

Joomla SEO

The best thing about Joomla is its built-in SEO tools that will assist you in ranking your site higher in search engines. Joomla SEO configuration allows you to add page titles in site names, includes a .html suffix to the site’s URL, and omits index.php, ultimately making your site more SEO-friendly.

Furthermore, Joomla provides its users with several SEO extensions, such as Quix, to give them advanced SEO options. In addition, the platform gives its site owners EFSEO extension to have complete control over their site’s metadata from the front end and back end.

The hard part is that on Joomla, the on-site SEO process is quite technical and requires a technical SEO expert to optimize the site properly. If you are a beginner, make up your mind to learn much more before optimizing your site.

WordPress SEO

WordPress is fully loaded with multiple SEO features, including permalinks, meta tags, and image alt text. Another amazing point is that WordPress themes offer reliable SEO features via page builder plugins and WordPress editor.

WordPress is widely known and regarded as one of the most SEO-friendly CMS platforms due to its many robust SEO plugins, including Yoast SEO, which improves your site’s page ranking performance using a light traffic system.

Apart from the powerful SEO plugins, WordPress provides its users with several monitoring features such as:

• MonsterInsights
• Analytify

Winner

When it comes to comparing the robust SEO features of both CMS platforms, then both have versatile SEO tools. Still, WordPress has impressive additional plugins and SEO features that many other CMS platforms need to improve. Another thing that made WordPress stand out in this round is its beginner-friendly UI, while Joomla SEO techniques are complex and require a lot of technical expertise.

Official Support

Official support is crucial and is very important when considering a CMS platform for site building. This section will compare the two platforms based on the following:

• The types of support provided by the platforms
• Accessibility of their support channels

Joomla Official Support

Joomla has an organized support channel in the form of an active community forum, and there are guidelines and tutorials online available in good numbers.

One major drawback of Joomla is that it will cost you much higher than WordPress if you want to hire a professional developer to assist with your site’s technical issues. For instance, Joomla Development offers a $39-$299 monthly support package.

WordPress Official Support

WordPress is an open-source CMS platform and offers free active community forums containing members of advanced and beginner-level expertise working on WordPress. Additionally, if you require professional assistance, you can hire an expert from online job markets like Upwork, Toptal, and others. WordPress is comparatively less expensive and affordable.

Winner

Although Joomla has an active community forum as an official support channel for its users, Wordpess is slightly better than Joomla in this section. It is because you can find a WordPress professional quickly and at an affordable price. At the same time, a Joomla expert is comparatively expensive and challenging to find and hire for your project.

Security System

Security system serves as the backbone of any CMS platform; this section will explore the security measures provided by the two CMS platforms. We will compare Joomla and WordPress Security based on the following:

• Built-in Security Tools
• Security Extensions

Joomla Security Features

Joomla faces fewer cyber attacks than WordPress or other competitors due to its comparatively fewer popularity. In addition, Joomla provides its users with built-in security tools such as:

• 2FA (Two-Factor authentication)
• Google ReCaptcha

Despite its reliable built-in security tools, Joomla makes its users well-equipped regarding their site’s security with the help of additional security plugins.

WordPress Security Features

WordPress has made it easy to keep your site secure by providing automatic maintenance and security updates for all the sites made on WordPress version 3.7 and above.

In addition to automatic security updates, WordPress offers additional security plugins and tools. WordPress gives you more options and resources to keep your site super secure. You can choose your customized plugin, but sometimes the faulty plugins cause security breaches, as back in 2019, according to Astra, 56% of hacking incidents occurred due to faulty plugins.

Winner

Our research team has tested the security features provided by the two CMS platforms and concluded that WordPress wins this round due to its wide range of security features and plugins. WordPress can make your site more secure than Joomla. Additionally, if you have difficulty setting up the security system, there are several online tutorials available, and you can also get professional assistance at an affordable price.

eCommerce & Payment Gateways

This section is about the payment gateways and eCommerce tools and extensions offered by Joomla and WordPress.

Joomla eCommerce & Payment Gateways

Just like WordPress, Joomla gives its users fully functional eCommerce features by providing them with several free and premium extensions, such as HikaShop, which enable users to build:

• Product Catalogs
• Shopping Cart Page
• Transaction Management
• 60 Payment gateways

eCommerce templates for Joomla are available to download and install on various marketplaces.

Get the Detailed Article on Shopify VS WordPress Updated Guide.

WordPress eCommerce & Payment gateways

WordPress has a wide range of eCommerce plugins that can assist you in building your online site at a great pace and ease. It offers several free and premium eCommerce plugins, such as WooCommerce. WooCommerce plugin supports:

• 100 payment gateways
• Accepts local and international payments
• Creating Product Pages
• Handling Shipping

And hence, catering to all of your eCommerce business needs. You can download this impressive plugin for free, but you must purchase the advanced features. The premium extensions include the following:

• Store Finder by WPExperts
• SkyVerge Membership Solution 
• Smart Coupons

WordPress eCommerce site templates are available online, including WooCommerce Store, WordPress Theme directory, and other Theme marketplaces.

Winner

This section is a tie between Joomla and WordPress, as both provide competitive and rich eCommerce functionalities. You only need to find and add the right plugin and your preferred payment method.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

To summarize the whole discussion, if you are a newbie with less or no technical knowledge, it would be convenient for you to build your site on WordPress. Despite being beginner-friendly, WordPress provides its users with a wide range of tools, themes, and additional plugins to enhance their site’s customization and functionality.

Users with technical expertise can go for Joomla due to its flexible functionality to create any project. The scope of WordPress CMS is comparatively broader than Joomla CMS.