WordPress vs. Drupal: Head to Head Comparison

Are you looking for a CMS and can’t make up your mind? Don’t know which one will satisfy your needs better? You’re confused about what makes one CMS better than the other?

You are not alone. Many users have similar if not the same questions when they are faced with choosing a CMS. Especially in today’s day and age, when the CMS market is a big one, there are many CMS providers to choose from and compare.

But fear not, as I am here to make things easier! I will do my best to help your decision a bit simpler and try to narrow down your pool of choices by comparing and contrasting two of the most prominent CMS providers available today: WordPress and Drupal!

I will put these two CMS providers to test today by comparing their performance across different categories and form my opinion based on how they do.

But before I dig into WordPress and Drupal, let’s get a little more familiar with our two competitors first.

About WordPress

WordPress was founded on the 27th of May, 2003. Initially, it was intended to be a blog-publishing system but has since expanded to support online stores, media galleries, forums, etc. Now, it is one if not the most widely used CMS on the market.

WordPress is an open-source CMS that is written using PHP. It is paired with either a MySQL or a Maria DB database. WordPress is considered by most as the most prominent CMS out there, and the majority of users praise its easiness and user-friendliness.

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Even though WordPress is the go-to CMS for beginners and users who do not have advanced tech skills, web developers and experts also find it quite appealing because of the limitless freedom to customize and explore their creativity. That is another reason why customers highly covet WordPress because it offers its users countless already-made and customizable themes and plugins.

The Advantages

The Disadvantages

WordPress Hosting

Another great advantage to WordPress is that it offers users hosting directly from its website. WordPress hosting comes with both free and paid plans, and if users host their site directly from the WordPress website, they will not incur any upfront costs and will not have to purchase a different domain name.

However, this option is not the best one for users, as it limits a lot of their activity, and users can quickly find themselves in need of different hosting. Many limitations come with both free and paid WordPress hosting, such as:

• Users cannot have a custom domain name and are limited to a subdomain
• Users cannot install themes and plugins. They can only use the ones that come with WordPress hosting
• There are ads that customers will see on your site, and you as a WordPress user do not make any money by showing those ads and cannot pick which ads to show
• No options for website backups
• SEO tools are limited
• Paid WordPress hosting can cost more than using other hosting providers

Of course, if you do not find these limitations harming you and your business, then WordPress hosting can be a good choice. However, most WordPress users host their websites with traditional and recommended WordPress hosting providers. Due to the popularity of WordPress, almost all providers have WordPress hosting and consider having it as a great advantage.

About Drupal

Drupal is the older sibling in today’s battle, being founded a little earlier than WordPress on the 15th of January, 2001. Drupal is used by various types of businesses, including personal blogs, corporations, government sites, etc. Aside from using it as a CMS, customers use it for knowledge management and business collaboration as well.

Drupal, like WordPress, is a free, open-source CMS that is also written in PHP. Drupal can be installed on any computer with a PHP-capable web server and a database to store content and configuration.

The majority of Drupal users are higher education institutions, NGOs, large enterprises, governments, etc. Larger entities favor Drupal due to its robust and stable framework that can support almost all types of websites.

Drupal is praised for many things, including its SEO integration, security of its websites, reliability, flexibility, etc. And even though it has fewer users than WordPress, it is still backed up by a large community of developers and users who are always available for questions and want to help other users with any issues they might have.

However, one of the significant differences between our competitors today is that Drupal is not relatively as easy to use and understand. To successfully operate your site using Drupal, you will need to have technical knowledge and expertise, which is why Drupal is mainly used by web developers, experts, and businesses who have web developers on their payroll. With all this in mind, it is essential to know that the developers who use Drupal praise it for its wide range of customizable features and its ability to create unique and highly-personalized sites.

The Advantages

The Disadvantages

Drupal Hosting

Unlike WordPress, Drupal does not offer users direct hosting from its website. With Drupal, users have to find a hosting plan that is compatible with it. The best option for Drupal users and most users is to find a web hosting provider specializing in Drupal hosting.

Now, you may ask: “Is it that important to find an experienced Drupal hosting provider? Can’t I just pick any hosting provider?”

The first answer is yes. Finding a good hosting provider that is compatible and experienced in Drupal hosting is essential because the hosting provider is the one responsible for the accessibility of your website to the customers. Without the right hosting, your site will not be readily available. Many customers will not even get the chance to visit it, let alone buy a product or read an article you posted, depending on the type of business you do.

Here are some of the benefits of choosing a hosting provider that specializes in Drupal hosting:

• Drupal hosting makes the installation process easier
• You do not pay any extra fee for adding your Drupal website to your hosting account
• Compatibility between your Drupal website and your hosting provider is guaranteed
• Instead of just one community that offers its support, you can also get help from the community or customer support of your hosting provider that specializes in Drupal hosting

Which CMS is More Secure?

Cyberattacks are widespread and can cause a lot of damage. Organizations and individuals who do business online have to take extra care of their content, sites, and the data with which they work. That is why I will start off this comparison by reviewing how our two CMS providers do in the security category.

Popularity can be an excellent thing, but it also brings some negative attention. This is the case for WordPress because its massive popularity has basically put a target on its back for hackers to attack it.

Most of the security threats for WordPress sites, aside from cyberattacks, come from third-party plugins that WordPress relies on to deliver a quality and superior product. WordPress sites’ plugins are highly susceptible to viruses and can be exploited. Most of the cyberattacks that WordPress encounters are facilitated by exploiting these plugins’ vulnerabilities to the websites.

So, even if WordPress itself is secure, which is because it has a highly secure core, the security of your site depends on the third-party plugins you use and how secure their codes are. The more third-party plugins you use, the more you depend on their security to preserve your own.

Drupal does a significantly better job in this category. One of Drupal’s strongest sides is its air-tight security, which is why government institutions and large enterprises choose Drupal over WordPress. Drupal is not attacked as frequently as WordPress, and this is because of WordPress’s more extensive popularity. Another reason, however, is that Drupal does not rely on third-party plugins as much as WordPress does, which reduces the amount of risk and vulnerability the plugins can cause to Drupal.

Drupal has enterprise-level security, issues in-depth security reports, has a volunteer security team, standardized policies, and procedures for dealing with security issues, etc. Also, security advisories and tips are regularly posted on Drupal’s security site that can help users further secure Drupal’s core.

So, the winner of the first category of today is undoubtedly Drupal. Saying that Drupal goes the extra mile in terms of security is an understatement. Also, government institutions being comfortable with using Drupal makes the decision about the winner in this category even more straightforward.

User-Friendliness

As mentioned earlier, WordPress is straightforward to use and is exceptionally user-friendly. Most users consider this aspect of WordPress as one of its strongest sides. When compared to Drupal, and in general, WordPress is easier to understand and does not require users to have technical knowledge or expertise.

WordPress has an intuitive admin interface on which virtually everything is one click away. Features like adding images, audio, videos, documents, and PDFs to content are simple because of WordPress’s interface. Additionally, the process of installing WordPress is super easy and fast, and the integration of plugins is simple. All of this makes creating a WordPress site an easy and fast process for all users.

However, WordPress’s multilingual functionality for content administration and its multi-domain system is challenging to understand. Of course, all of this can be accomplished using plugins, but they quickly detract from the simple service that made WordPress so popular in the first place.

Overall, WordPress is considered a safe haven for users who are not professionals, tech-savvy, and just begging their web-building experience.

Drupal differs significantly from WordPress in this aspect. At first, Drupal was complicated for non-professionals to understand and use, but it has been since reformed and made easier for beginners. Thanks to the Drupal community and its focus on making Drupal a more accepting place for newbies, many features that once required technical knowledge to operate have been changed or replaced.

One such instance is the replacement of the WYSIWYG editor with the CKEditor, which contains a drag-and-drop interface as well as an editor module that allows users to insert external resources such as movies, photos, tweets, and more.

However, despite the efforts of the Drupal community to make it easier for non-professionals, the interface of Drupal is still tricky for beginners to use and comprehend successfully. But, if a user does a little research and makes an effort, it will find that it using Drupal is actually easier to use than it used to be.

All in all, Drupal is not the go-to choice for new users and beginners as it has quite the learning curve. However, all the new efforts of its community have made it a bit easier for new users to understand. Still, many agree that Drupal is not too difficult to use, but it can be hard to learn.

This category is yet another no-brainer, as WordPress is the clear winner. User-friendliness and the no technical knowledge requirement are what put WordPress on the map for many users.

Customer Support

As mentioned throughout this article, both WordPress and Drupal are backed by large communities that are always eager to help new users and guide them through all the processes. However, there is a difference between the two CMS providers here due to WordPress being more popular and having a more significant number of users.

WordPress’s popularity has gained a massive community that most CMS providers cannot compete against, including Drupal. To be precise, both CMS providers offer help to their users via their extensive knowledge bases and user forums. Still, the enormous number of people in the WordPress community makes getting help for WordPress issues much more accessible and readily available.

And while both CMS providers offer tutorials, video guides, and so on, the ones provided by Drupal are made by experts, so not all beginners will be able to understand and consider them helpful. Also, as mentioned, Drupal experts are more expensive to hire than WordPress experts, which makes getting help for building websites with Drupal even more unreachable for most users.

The CMS provider that is more likely to be your friend is definitely WordPress. It’s welcoming, eager to help, and wants to be extra valuable and understandable.

The Better CMS for eCommerce

Many of the users who need a CMS want to start an eCommerce store, so let’s see how these CMS providers incorporate this feature into their systems.

The eCommerce platform that WordPress supports is WooCommerce, which can to added by installing a free plugin. WooCommerce is one of the most popular eCommerce options that many users prefer to the rest of the options. It is pretty easy to use and has a modern and straightforward interface, which perfectly mirrors what WordPress is all about. WooCommerce is mainly used by small to medium-sized businesses, catering to the majority of WordPress users as well.

Drupal Commerce is the eCommerce version for Drupal. It provides limitless versatility and scalability options, and it is an excellent choice for both small and large businesses. The Drupal Commerce platform supports multiple languages, currencies, and payment options that enable access to clients worldwide. It has a modern and straightforward interface that enables a great user experience.

Additionally, the platform supports social network integration and endless design personalization. Also, it is very secure and takes excellent care of your as well as your customers’ privacy.

I have to declare this category a tie because both CMS providers offer great eCommerce platforms that can readily meet the needs of their users. However, WordPress does have a slight upper hand here as it is easier to use and understand.

SEO Integration

SEO integration is vital for any website that wants to gain more visibility. Before we see how these CMS providers do in this category, it is crucial to know that one CMS does not have any significant advantage over the other. So, let’s see what they do differently with that in mind.

SEO integration with WordPress is available via plugins that boost different aspects of SEO. The plugins help the WordPress user control titles, meta descriptions, sitemaps, etc.

Speed is also crucial for good SEO integration because it boosts the page-loading speed. Plugins are used to achieve this too, and there are many options of these types of plugins for WordPress, including W3 Total Cache, the most popular caching plugin for WordPress.

With Drupal, SEO features are built-in, and users can customize their meta tags their title-based URL nodes, among other things. Also, Drupal has the caching feature already in place. Moreover, it supports RDF, which is the basis for the semantic web.

Also, Drupal provides numerous modules that help further boost SEO integration. One of those modules is Yoast, the same one that WordPress provides as well.

Both CMS providers do a great job at SEO integration and provide similar features. However, I have to declare Drupal as the winner for this category because it has most of its SEO integration capabilities, so users don’t have to install as many plugins like WordPress.

Pricing

Both CMS providers are open-source and are free to install and use. However, with both providers, there are initial fees that have to be paid to be able to start a website. Some features users need to pay for with both providers are:

• Domain registration
• Hosting
• Paid themes and plugins
• Additional security features
• Labor

However, the CMS providers differ because WordPress has cheaper development, hosting, and maintenance costs than Drupal. Also, WordPress offers a broader range of free themes than Drupal. Moreover, hiring WordPress experts is less expensive and easier compared to Drupal.

On the other hand, Drupal is the better option if you want to have a more custom website.

So, even though these two CMS providers do not differ too much when it comes to prices, WordPress is the winner of this category as its maintenance and themes are cheaper than Drupal’s.

Themes and Add-Ons

WordPress can boast over 53 000 free and paid plugins and more than 5 000 free and paid themes. Additionally, WordPress plugins are easily accessible and can be installed quickly with no technical knowledge or expertise needed. They are also easy to manage, and WordPress offers more options for plugins with the same functionality, allowing its users to pick the one they want.

On the other hand, Drupal offers users over 39 000 modules (which are the same as plugins) and over 2 500 themes, both free and paid. However, not all of the modules and themes are compatible with the newest Drupal version.

Apart from the number of modules and themes they offer, there’s a significant difference between the two. With Drupal, you will need a web developer to install and update the modules if you are not a professional. In turn, WordPress is more accessible to beginners. However, something that the Drupal community does that can be considered a great advantage is that they tend to work with one module for all purposes, which often results in that module being included in Drupal’s core later on.

So, I have to win WordPress, as it offers more themes and plugins than Drupal and is also easier to install and manage. WordPress themes and plugins are easier to find and more straightforward to navigate than Drupal.

When to Choose:

Who Uses:

Category Overview

Key Differences