Choosing the right Content Management System (CMS) is no easy decision. In fact, it’s probably one of the more important decisions that you’ll make for your company. A CMS will underpin your entire digital presence — it affects your website’s performance, scalability, security, user experience, and budget.
Select the right one, and it will empower your team to easily create and manage content and improve your SEO. It will adapt to your growth, integrate with other tools, and provide the necessary security and support for your digital presence. Choose wrong and it can lead to delays, frustration, or costly rebuilds.
While there are over 800 CMS out there, we’re going to focus on two of the biggest — WordPress and Drupal — and hopefully help you to understand enough to choose the right one for your company and website.
Overview: What Is WordPress?
WordPress is a free, open-source CMS that allows any company, organization, or individual to easily create or manage websites. This could be anything from a blog to a portfolio, e-commerce store, or corporation website. It started as a blogging tool, but is now one of the most popular CMSes available and powers a vast majority of the web with its user-friendly interface, extensive theme and plugin options, plus a large and active global community. In fact, WordPress powers over 43% of the internet and commands over 61% of the market share among CMS.
This CMS is ideal for fast-growing organizations, marketers, and content teams. It can adapt with growth and has no licensing fees, plus there’s no vendor lock-in. It is also marketer-ready and can seamlessly integrate with a number of marketing tools. WordPress has intuitive content management, advanced collaboration, and content hubs. Other features include an extensive module ecosystem, layout builder, custom code, API-first capabilities, custom roles, granular permissions, content moderation workflows, and role combinations
Overview: What Is Drupal?
Drupal is also an open-source CMS and web application framework that allows companies and organizations to build and manage their websites, complex digital applications, and content. It also has no licensing fees or vendor lock-in. It is known for its flexibility, scalability, security, and customizable nature. Drupal is favored for large-scale projects, such as large and complex websites, high-volume content management, integrated digital experiences, and decoupled applications, used by government organizations or agencies, higher education, and large enterprises.
Drupal’s strength is in structured content, customization, and user roles. It was built from the ground up as a strong, enterprise-grade content management system. Drupal models content as small, reusable data components rather than large, unstructured blocks of text. Like WordPress, it also has an extensive module ecosystem, a layout builder, custom code, and API-first capabilities. It has custom roles, granular permissions, content moderation workflows, and role combinations.
WordPress vs. Drupal: Key Differences That Matter
There are many similarities between WordPress and Drupal. They’re both open source, Enterprise-ready, and share a lot of the same advanced features. However, there are some differences. Both are very powerful CMSes, but they have different target audiences and core philosophies. Let’s break down some of these.
Editorial Experience
WordPress is highly intuitive and beginner-friendly, offering a clean and user-friendly dashboard. It’s more accessible for people who are less technically minded. It has two post types as a default — post and pages — which can lead to an easier and faster site build when it comes to common use cases. For example, if you’re building a simple blog site. However, when it comes to more advanced sites that require custom post types with complex workflows or advanced features — i.e. multilingual sites or other integrations — you will need customization, which is similar to using Drupal. One of the key differences is that WordPress has a lot of features right out of the box, which means there is a faster turnaround time with easier entry points, especially for those nontechnical users. Training also tends to be easier as many people, such as editors, are already familiar with the interface.
Drupal tends to be more popular for complex, large-scale sites that have unique requirements and are more developer-friendly. It has a steeper learning curve and requires more technical expertise, which can make it feel less intuitive right out of the box. However, this promotes extreme flexibility and makes it more modular by design. The administrative interface has complex menus and granular controls. It also has strong built-in features for complex content structures, including custom content types, fields, and taxonomies (this is also available for WordPress). This makes it great for things like product catalogs or online directories. In terms of workflow, Drupal has extensive, built-in content moderation tools, allowing for highly customized, multi-step publishing and approvals. It fits with large teams that have complex editorial needs. Lastly, the CMS has native, built-in multilingual support in its core system.
Developer Extensibility
Both WordPress and Drupal are PHP-based and written in object-oriented architecture, plus are easy to extend and customize. However, one difference is that WordPress is better at backwards compatibility, so migration to the next core version is much more graceful. Drupal often requires a complete migration. WordPress’s fast turnaround really comes out to play in rapidly changing environments, meaning users can iterate quickly, test new designs, and push out campaigns faster. While Drupal is also highly customizable, it tends to do better with static, long-term projects that don’t need to be adapted on a constant basis.
Performance & Security
When it comes to the performance of WordPress, it depends on the quality of hosting, themes, and plugins. Use too many poorly coded plugins and it can significantly slow down a website. Though it can be optimized effectively with the right setup and other customization features. WordPress can also be scaled to an enterprise level, especially with managed hosting like WordPress VIP, Pantheon, or WP Engine. It does need optimization for caching needs for very high-traffic environments, such as caching, CDN, and database tuning. However, this can be handled well with enterprise-level managed hosting. When it comes to security, it is a more popular target due to market share. Because of this, you should be aware of selecting the right plugins and keeping up with regular maintenance, like regular updates, and good hosting.
Drupal tends to be faster and more scalable out of the box, especially on high-traffic, complex websites with a lot of data. It has a more mature, multi-layered caching system. It was built to handle complex, large, and high-traffic sites from the ground up with strong caching, like built-in reverse proxy caching with Varnish, and scalability options. As such, it’s often chosen and preferred by government agencies, universities, multinational corporations, and financial institutions with sensitive data due to its strong reputation for security. However, you still need proper maintenance and to take advantage of Drupal’s regular security advisories and dedicated security team.
Cost of Ownership
WordPress generally has a lower development cost since it has a large developer community and many cheap or free themes and plugins. The user-friendly interface also saves time and money associated with setup. In terms of maintenance, WordPress can be cheaper for small or medium websites. Solutions to common problems often cost less and are easier to find, thanks to the large community and readily available resources. While it scales well for a lot of sites, when it comes to very complex sites that have heavy data needs, they’ll need significant optimization and premium hosting. This can potentially increase long-term costs.
Development costs for Drupal tend to be higher than WordPress. This is because it requires more specialized technical expertise, custom builds take longer, and Drupal developers are less common and more expensive to hire. It also has higher maintenance costs because of the complexity and need for specialized skills. However, when looking at scalability, Drupal can offer better long-term return for large-scale projects that scale over time. It’s designed for scalability and performance under a heavy load, so it can handle more complex requirements more efficiently as the website grows.
How to Choose Based on Business Needs
The best way to choose between WordPress and Drupal is to assess your business needs and then examine which CMS will best fit them.
WordPress tends to have a rapid turnaround time and editor-friendly interfaces, with a great balance between ease of use and scalability. It could be a better fit for digital publishers, media companies, SMBs, and enterprises looking for quick deployment and an editor-friendly CMS.
However, Drupal might be better for your company if you have complex data needs, intricate integrations, and evolving digital strategies. For example, organizations with strict compliance, security, and complex content structures. It has a powerful framework with advanced tools for custom content types and offers greater control over complex data relationships. It is highly customizable and best for long-term projects with static needs.
Looking at team size and internal resources, if you need an extremely user-friendly and intuitive dashboard with easier training, WordPress might be a better option. It has a more accessible interface, a large developer community, broad market share, meaning it will be easier to find skilled talent and agencies for support and development.
If you have a more skilled and technically minded team, then Drupal may be better. You’ll have to rely more on the development team for complex changes. The community is smaller, but still highly engaged.
In terms of security, governance, and long-term flexibility, WordPress’s popularity does make it a bigger target for hackers, and plugins are a major source of vulnerabilities. Not to mention, rushing AI integrations could also lead to some vulnerabilities. However, if you are vigilant and maintain updates and check for reputable plugins, this is less of an issue. It also has basic content workflows and is great for single-team publishing. It’s also a bit more complex to set up a multilingual site with WordPress. It’s capable of scaling, but could require extensive optimization for very high traffic or complex data.
On the other hand, Drupal offers enterprise-grade security and is popular among organizations and companies that require very strict security protocols. Not to mention, the smaller and more curated module ecosystem is less vulnerable than using third-party plugins and is easier to manage. It offers a high level of workflow control, with multi-step approvals and granular permissions built in. Drupal also has built-in support for multilingual sites and is better for organizations that are looking to scale up and have high traffic demands.
Use the 3E Framework to Evaluate Fit
At Ndver, we look at it from our unique approach to help you determine whether you should go with WordPress or Drupal.
Audience Experience: We look at your company’s needs in terms of speed, performance, security, and target audience. We provide options plans to build and maintain various aspects of a stable, secure, and scalable platform for your best audience experience. Creator Experience: We assess what your company needs in terms of publishing, workflow, and permission. This includes determining whether you need faster publication with fewer checks or a more detailed and intentional approval process.
Developer Experience: We take a close look at your customization, scalability, and integration needs. This could mean looking through the requirements and working out just how much customization your site needs, as well as the approach to scalability, and if you need more complicated integrations.
Case Example: Why One Company Chose WordPress
A client of ours was doing a rebrand and needed to launch a new website on a very tight schedule. Keeping this timeline in mind, we went through and assessed what the client needed before determining that WordPress would be the best option.
The company wanted a simplified, intuitive workflow that didn’t require a large amount of training for their team. We also kept it similar to the workflow on the client’s other website so their team would already be familiar with it. WordPress also made it easier for us to create reusable components throughout the site to save on development time.
At the end of it, we were able to deliver a new website that the client was very happy with on the timeline that they provided.
Need Help Choosing or Migrating?
Want to have a deeper conversation about whether WordPress or Drupal is a better fit? Contact us to set up a free discovery call.
