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There are many platforms to help you build your website. They all grapple for your undivided attention, making the decision challenging. Joomla vs WordPress is a popular comparison because both website builders offer extensive help in website development.
Both have many standard functionalities, scalability, and infrastructure aspects. However, they also have many differences. Because of this, you’ll want to weigh up each platform based on several factors.
In this post, we’ll compare Joomla vs WordPress. By the end, you’ll have all the information you need to decide which website platform to choose.
Introducing Joomla
Joomla is almost as old as WordPress. Its birth has lots in common with WordPress. It ‘forked’ a solution called Mambo in 2005 and (of course) still develops Joomla today:
Joomla 4 went live in August 2021 and maintains a free, open-source business model. Like WordPress, Joomla uses PHP as a core programming language and stores data in a MySQL (or equivalent) database.
Because Joomla and WordPress share so many similarities, there are many reasons to use both platforms. However, in the next section, we’ll look at the benefits of the Joomla ecosystem.
Why You’d Want to Use Joomla For Your Website
Given the dominance of WordPress, it’s sometimes hard to see why you’d opt for another platform. Here are a few reasons we’d recommend a Joomla website over WordPress:
- There is more flexibility for different types of content. WordPress is great for blogging, while Joomla can more naturally work with non-standard content types for web design.
- Using different site templates at once gives you more scope. While WordPress lets you use only one theme, Joomla allows you to mix and match templates for various pieces of content across your site.
- An out-of-the-box multilingual support solution with Joomla templates and Joomla extensions. WordPress requires third-party plugins to make it a complete multilingual solution. However, Joomla’s ease of use can handle this without needing additions.
- Joomla offers fantastic user management. Its user-friendly system is essential for advanced needs and complex websites, and it provides rich depth when managing users.
These reasons give some users a great reason to choose Joomla for their site. For example, if you have complex site design needs or want the least hassle running a multilingual site, Joomla’s easier learning curve might suit you better than WordPress.
However, let’s look more closely at how Joomla vs WordPress compares next:
How WordPress Compares to Joomla
We’ve discussed what Joomla offers to a would-be site owner, but WordPress is no slouch. Yes, there are lots of similarities, but WordPress does pull ahead of Joomla in several areas:
- WordPress is the ultimate in extensibility. The WordPress Theme Directory and Plugin Directory offer many more ways to boost your site’s functionality and web development. You’d be unfortunate not to find exactly what you’re looking for in either of these places.
- The WordPress community is immense. Whichever way you look at the community of WordPress users, developers, support workers, and other champions, WordPress has many paths to help you find out whatever information you need, along with well-supported user groups, forums, FAQs, and tutorials.
- WordPress is a great blogging platform. A blog is essential to a site, and its pared-down content types meet most users’ needs. SEO friendly (Search Engine Optimization) is easy to use and manage SEO features with SEO plugins like Yoast SEO.
- WordPress is free. Amazingly, you have so much power that the content management system (CMS) is free. Moreover, many free themes, page builders, and plugins are also available at no cost. Due to its popularity, regular upgrades and patches are released.
While we’re on the subject, pricing is essential to any decision regarding your type of website platform. We’ll discuss this next.
Joomla vs WordPress: Pricing
Like many other similarities between Joomla and WordPress, pricing is almost identical. This is because both cms platforms are free and open-source. You can download and install them on a hosting provider server for zero outlay.
What’s more, WordPress themes and plugins are often free, much like the extensions you’ll find for Joomla. We’d suggest that WordPress offers many more premium extensions and modules than Joomla! but provides more assets.
As such, you’d do well to consider the other aspects of both platforms than the price. This is because whichever platform you choose, your budget won’t suffer.
Joomla vs WordPress: Which One You Should Choose
Overall, there are many reasons to choose either Joomla or WordPress. Both offer flexibility and core functionality that you can depend on. Moreover, you can extend your chosen platform based on your needs.
However, our money goes to WordPress in most cases. It’s a long-term solution, has a mammoth community of developers, educators, and users, and includes so many customization options and ways to extend the platform with WordPress development.
You have almost all the tools you need, and plugins can do the job for those that don’t exist. While Joomla does offer some handy functionality out of the box for non-developers, this doesn’t mean it’s yards ahead of WordPress. The most popular CMS in the world can catch up fast, so we recommend a WordPress site for almost every scenario.
In Summary
When you look at the right platform to build your site, Joomla vs WordPress is a standard comparison. Both have similar features, long-term development strategies, and an extensive suite of add-ons to boost site functionality. Joomla arguably pushes ahead in terms of multilingual content and user management. However, WordPress websites are beginner-friendly and have a more excellent front-end user experience, back-end control, and a larger community. As such, it’s the best CMS platform we recommend in most cases.
Have we done our job with this Joomla vs WordPress review? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!