Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Drupal VS Joomla

Compare Drupal VS Joomla and see what are their differences

Drupal logo Drupal

Drupal - the leading open-source CMS for ambitious digital experiences that reach your audience across multiple channels. Because we all have different needs, Drupal allows you to create a unique space in a world of cookie-cutter solutions.

Joomla logo Joomla

Joomla! is the mobile-ready and user-friendly way to build your website. Choose from thousands of features and designs. Joomla! is free and open source.
  • Drupal Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-18
  • Joomla Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-18

Drupal features and specs

  • Flexibility
    Drupal is highly customizable and can be tailored to meet the unique needs of almost any web project. Its modular architecture allows developers to add functionalities and change behaviors without modifying the core system.
  • Scalability
    Drupal can handle large volumes of content and high traffic levels, making it suitable for both small websites and large, complex applications.
  • Security
    Drupal is known for its strong security features and has a dedicated security team that continuously works on identifying and fixing vulnerabilities.
  • Community Support
    Drupal has a large, active community of developers, designers, and users who contribute modules, themes, and support, facilitating problem-solving and innovation.
  • Multilingual Capabilities
    Drupal offers excellent support for multilingual websites, providing built-in translation modules and interfaces for managing content in multiple languages.

Possible disadvantages of Drupal

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Drupal's flexibility and power come at the cost of complexity, which can be daunting for new users and developers.
  • Performance Optimization
    While Drupal can handle high traffic, it requires careful performance tuning and caching strategies to perform optimally, which can add to development and maintenance overhead.
  • Development Time
    Building a site with Drupal can take more time compared to other content management systems due to its complexity, especially if custom features are required.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running a fully-featured Drupal site can be resource-intensive, often requiring more server resources compared to simpler CMS solutions.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing dependencies and updates for the numerous modules that make up a Drupal site can be complex and requires careful attention to compatibility and security.

Joomla features and specs

  • Flexibility
    Joomla offers a high degree of flexibility and customizability. It is suitable for creating a wide range of websites, from small personal blogs to complex corporate websites.
  • User Access Control (UAC)
    Joomla has advanced user access control mechanisms, allowing you to set different permissions and access levels for various types of users, which is particularly useful for large websites with multiple contributors.
  • Multilingual Support
    Joomla comes with built-in support for multilingual content, making it a great choice for websites that need to cater to different language speakers.
  • Extensive Extension Directory
    Joomla has a large extension directory with thousands of free and paid plugins and templates that can be easily integrated to extend the functionality of your website.
  • Strong Community Support
    Joomla has a large and active community of developers and users who contribute to forums, documentation, and third-party resources, providing strong community support.

Possible disadvantages of Joomla

  • Steeper Learning Curve
    Compared to other CMSs, Joomla can be more challenging to learn for beginners due to its extensive features and complex interface.
  • Limited Built-in SEO
    Joomla's out-of-the-box SEO capabilities are not as advanced as those of other CMSs like WordPress. It often requires additional plugins for better SEO performance.
  • Performance Issues
    Joomla can sometimes have performance issues due to its resource-heavy nature, especially if not properly optimized.
  • Compatibility Issues with Extensions
    Not all third-party extensions and templates are always compatible with the latest version of Joomla, which can create challenges during updates.
  • Hosting Requirements
    Joomla has specific hosting requirements that not all web hosts can meet easily. This can limit your choices when it comes to hosting providers.

Drupal videos

Drupal Vs WordPress - Which Is The Best CMS?

More videos:

  • Review - Drupal 8: Comments, Reviews and Content Moderation Workflows
  • Review - Drupal Product Management Review: Out-of-the-Box

Joomla videos

10 Reasons Why You Should Use Joomla in 2018

More videos:

  • Review - [BEFORE You Buy] Joomla Extensions Review
  • Review - Helix Ultimate Joomla Framework [Setup/Demo/Review]

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Drupal and Joomla)
CMS
62 62%
38% 38
Blogging Platform
63 63%
37% 37
Blogging
61 61%
39% 39
Website Builder
54 54%
46% 46

User comments

Share your experience with using Drupal and Joomla. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Drupal and Joomla

Drupal Reviews

Comparing 9 WordPress alternatives & competitors in 2024
Drupal isn’t for beginners, as it lacks in-product tutorials, and you will need to find a separate hosting service to publish sites online. But if you’re an experienced developer looking for a tool that gives you complete design control, Drupal might be the right choice.
Source: webflow.com
19 Best WordPress Alternatives in 2025
Drupal is a content management system known for its flexibility, scalability, and security. It's popular for complex websites, including news outlets, e-commerce platforms, and government portals. While Drupal is free and open-source, customization and development require technical expertise.
Source: www.pixpa.com
Top 10 Web Content Management Systems
Keeping up with the trend of introducing great open-source CMS systems, Drupal is our next entry on the list. Drupal is one of the oldest and most reputable customizable CMS options out there, with its original release dating back to 2001, making it older than WordPress. As a web CMS, Drupal’s principal focus is on security. It is known to have one of the best security...
Source: cloudzy.com
8 Great Drupal Alternatives to Try for your Website (Nov 2021)
Whether you're creating a new website from scratch or looking for a way to upgrade your existing one, you'll need the right content management system. A content management system (CMS), is a tool that helps you to modify and optimize your website however, you choose, without the need for any complex API or PHP work. While some CMS solutions allow you to have some control...
WordPress alternatives: Which CMS platform is the best?
With Drupal, the startup costs are higher than WordPress, since developing with Drupal requires more technical expertise. It’s more complex than WordPress, and you will likely need to pay for a developer. Besides that, you’ll have to invest in the basics like – domain registration, hosting, added security, and so on.
Source: factory.dev

Joomla Reviews

Comparing 9 WordPress alternatives & competitors in 2024
Joomla! is an open-source, free WordPress alternative that combines advanced features with user-friendly interfaces. To customize your sites, check out the software’s massive library of over 5,000 extensions that integrate newsletters, user management, and site search.
Source: webflow.com
19 Best WordPress Alternatives in 2025
Joomla is an open-source content management system (CMS) that allows organizations to create and manage their websites. It offers a wide range of features, including content management, user permissions, SEO tools, and customization options.
Source: www.pixpa.com
Top 10 Web Content Management Systems
If for whatever reason WordPress does not float your boat as a CMS, then Joomla is a great alternative as a customizable CMS. Joomla is one of the best free CMS options in 2024, featuring a wide range of plug-ins, templates, and extensions, Similar to WordPress it is also an open-source CMS, and it focuses on enabling more advanced developers who already have some coding...
Source: cloudzy.com
Joomla vs WordPress: Which CMS Should You Choose?
Joomla’s Joomla Extensions Directory and WordPress’s Plugin Directory differ in their offerings. The Joomla Extensions Directory focuses on providing extensions specifically for Joomla, including plugins, modules, components, and templates. It caters directly to the Joomla community and offers a diverse range of extensions developed and tested specifically for Joomla websites.
8 Great Drupal Alternatives to Try for your Website (Nov 2021)
Joomla is an excellent CMS solution for those who don’t want to work with a lot of HTML and JavaScript. If you want the flexibility and extensibility to adjust your website however you choose, Joomla is the solution for you. This service can power any website, from the smallest solutions to the more complex. As a Drupal alternative, Joomla is usually the go-to choice for...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Drupal seems to be a lot more popular than Joomla. While we know about 28 links to Drupal, we've tracked only 2 mentions of Joomla. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Drupal mentions (28)

  • Is there and easy way of porting a site from d7 to d9?
    I would be interested in some good migration tools, paid ones are also ok. I found a post about this on drupal.org, but it didn't seem like an easy process. It is a multilanguage site with many content types, and a totally custom theme. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Is there any nice group, where I can ask questions, when I get stuck and recieve some guidance instead of crytics?
    You got already good advice, but wanted to point the guide of drupal.org where you can see some tools listed with instructions and channels https://www.drupal.org/community/contributor-guide/reference-information/talk/tools. Source: over 2 years ago
  • MAMP issue after Pro trial ended
    There is a service call GitPod that provides a temporary container Drupal environment. If you are familiar with what is going on around the future of how Drupal modules will eventually be offered up, you will likely have seen the "Project Browser" module as a contrib demo of the approach. It is used for people to give feedback to the developers. So they set up the typical 'SimplyTestMe' but also a GitPod... Source: over 2 years ago
  • Best Modules for Product and Recipe?
    For reviews, it depends entirely on what you mean by "review". I believe core has a simple comment module, although it may have been deprecated for D9? There are likely many review-style modules on drupal.org that might work, or if you just want to link out to third-party reviews then it could just be a repeating-value link field on the Product content type. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Leadership?
    They should also use standards tools like Github. The drupal.org platform was certainly impressive 10 years ago, today it's a pain to use it. They ducktape it with gitlab, but really it sucks to have to read documentation to simply do a pull request. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

Joomla mentions (2)

  • Joomla 3x - How to create a Custom Registration Form (Custom Fields) w/o 3rd Party? [Dev Only Please]
    What resources could someone who has achieved this, point me to. I once came across a development doc link on joomla.org I thought; I cannot seem to find it. I can only recently find this : https://docs.joomla.org/J3.x:Creating_a_Plugin_for_Joomla which is not how I remembered if it's done by plugin. Source: over 3 years ago
  • Helping with the basics
    The forums found on joomla.org are great and there are tons of people there to help. Source: almost 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Drupal and Joomla, you can also consider the following products

WordPress - WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

Ghost - Ghost is a fully open source, adaptable platform for building and running a modern online publication. We power blogs, magazines and journalists from Zappos to Sky News.

SquareSpace - Squarespace is the easiest way for anyone to create an exceptional website. Pages, galleries, blogs, e-commerce, domains, hosting, analytics, 24/7 support - all included.

Progress Sitefinity - Sitefinity's web content management software is a marketing command center to drive growth for your business. Easily manage multi-site experiences deployed your way.

WiX - Create a free website with Wix.com. Customize with Wix' website builder, no coding skills needed. Choose a design, begin customizing and be online today

Webflow - Build dynamic, responsive websites in your browser. Launch with a click. Or export your squeaky-clean code to host wherever you'd like. Discover the professional website builder made for designers.