WordPress rules the web. Almost half of all the websites and two-third of all the websites with a known CMS are being powered by WordPress. (Statistics say so!). We do not recommend building WordPress websites and WordPress mobile apps for nothing.
However, it is not the only CMS and there are several other CMS platforms and website builders that are the hallmark of amazing content management systems. Drupal is one such platform that has been in existence before the arrival of WordPress.
So, how has the platform evolved and how do the two CMS platforms compared against each other, let’s find out in our detailed comparison. Stay tuned till the end and know which one is best for businesses willing to enter the mobile-friendly market.
WordPress and Drupal: An overview
WordPress and Drupal are leading CMS platforms in the world. Both are open source and enable their customers to embark on their website building journey for free. However, despite having many similarities, the two platforms differ a lot in terms of their scope and approach.
Drupal was launched in 2001 and was a couple of years ahead of WordPress that was launched in the year 2003. Around 2% of all websites in the world as well as 2% of the websites powered by CMS are built on Drupal. While this is way less than the coverage by WordPress, it is still one among the top six-seven CMS platforms.
In fact, several governments, NGOs, and global enterprises have their websites built on Drupal. As the platform is quite developer-centric and secure, it is the popular choice of those who are looking for robust results and a safer ecosystem.
It has been the home to several Olympic, NBA and other soccer league websites. It also powered several state websites in the USA including those related to the White House (they have now switched to WordPress). The United Nations, NATO, and NASA have also been using Drupal.
On the other hand, WordPress has more mass-appeal and rules almost two-third of the CMS market. With a pool of thousands of plugins and themes and a community of millions of users, you can create any kind of website with WordPress, and that too with very basic technical aptitude.
You can read more about the spread and popularity of WordPress in the blog suggested below. Continue to read and find out how WordPress compares against Drupal in terms of features and functionalities.
Suggested Read: Latest WordPress market share data & statistics
WordPress vs Drupal: A detailed comparison
In this section, we will take you through a detailed comparison between WordPress and Drupal, two powerful website builders and CMS platforms. You can also go through the table below and catch a quick glimpse of the comparison below and then read about it in detail one by one.
Suggested Read: CMS Market Share: Top trends and usage statistics
Starting price
Both WordPress and Drupal are essentially free. You can start building your website on either of the platforms without any huge investment. However, you will have to pay for extensions, themes, and plugins, as well as purchase domain and hosting for both the platforms as it is not included.
We recommend having a host like WP Engine that ensures automated management, robust security, and cost-effective maintenance. This will reduce the load of maintenance and help you in better utilization of efforts and resources.
Now if you factor in other aspects of development, the cost may vary for the two platforms. For instance, with Drupal you will either need to learn development or hire developers. This can get costlier than hiring WordPress developers as they are easier to find.
Ease of use
WordPress is hands down the winning platform when it comes to ease of usage. While it may not be as easy as platforms like Shopify and Wix, it is still absolutely beginner friendly. Anyone with even a basic technical aptitude can create a website with WordPress.
The visual interface of WordPress has evolved over the years and now everything boats of simplicity, making it easier to proceed one step further in the development process. Besides, there is a pool of resources, documentation and a super-active community that is always ready to help if you get stuck.
On the contrary, Drupal has an ecosystem that is more developer friendly. It has a steep learning curve and requires a generous amount of technical aptitude and coding skill. The process is quite complex and the resources for assistance are also limited when compared to WordPress.
Design customizability
Terms like design, UI, UX, etc., have taken the internet by storm. Fortunately, both WordPress and Drupal power you to build websites that are aesthetically rich and functionally powerful. Both the platforms rely on themes and templates, but this also opens up more options and imparts more flexibility.
You can select your theme from a range of prefabricated extensions and templates and create your own amalgamation for more customized results. The two platforms also power you to optimize your website and make it more media and picturization friendly.
Besides, both the platforms offer immense support for third-party plugins, themes, and extensions. Therefore, you can turn all your ideas into a reality and build the website of your dreams without any hindrance.
Scalability & flexibility
The one word to define scalability on both the platforms would be “unlimited”. As discussed above, both the platforms rely on extensions and plugins. Therefore, you can scale the website and amplify its scope in terms of traffic handling, data handling, etc., in an unlimited manner.
However, when it comes to flexibility, Drupal can be given some brownie points as this is one of its powerful traits. Therefore, those who need a website with complex but customized data organization can go with Drupal.
Drupal comes with built-in capabilities for creating custom content types and altering content taxonomy, thereby being the better choice in terms of functional customizability. However, WordPress is also extensively customizable and less reliant on developers.
Therefore, no matter what your business goal, niche, industry, or scale of requirement is, you can build a website with either of the two platforms. Both the platforms can used to create a website for any vertical or industry including blogging, retail, fintech, education, governance, etc.
Performance & speed
Ideally, only fast loading websites have the power to propel a business. Both WordPress and Drupal can power you to build lightning fast websites with robust performance. However, if you fail to optimize a WordPress site in the right manner it can also be really slow and perform poorly.
In fact, a WordPress website can load in seconds or take ages, and it all depends on the use of plugins and optimization from your end. On the contrary, a Drupal website is more likely to have strong speed and performance.
As Drupal is not very resource-intensive, it enables you to build lightweight websites that perform surprisingly well. With WordPress, it highly depends on the resources you use. This goes without saying for the mobile optimized websites as well. Therefore, you must choose the right host and maintenance partner for the best results.
Domain and hosting
Both WordPress and Drupal require you to manage your domain and hosting requirements on your own. As they are open source platforms, you can have them installed on your existing server for free.
However, this is not a complicated process and you can install them both without any difficulty or friction. As far as the domain registration and hosting is concerned, there are several third-party options available to choose from.
You can go with either managed or shared hosting, depending upon your budget and needs. Read more about the two options in the blog suggested below.
Suggested Read: Managed WordPress Hosting vs Shared Hosting: Know what is best for your website
Features and functionalities
While both WordPress and Drupal are rich platforms and offer a wide range of features and functionalities, both of them rely on extensions and plugins for advanced features and functionalities.
For instance, WordPress offers basic blogging features natively, but can be scaled to build any type of website with nuanced features and capabilities. The same is the case with Drupal. You can create any kind of website with Drupal as long as you use the right tools and technique.
eCommerce support
WordPress has several eCommerce plugins when it comes to offering support for building shopping enabled websites. This includes WooCommerce, which is the leader among eCommerce platforms and technologies.
In fact, with WooCommerce WordPress becomes one of the best eCommerce solutions available in the market. This gives WordPress an edge over other platforms that either do not have the vast pool of resources like WordPress or lack a powerful eCommerce extension like WooCommerce, among others like WP eCommerce, Jigoshop, Cart66 Lite, etc.
However, you can also create a fairly robust and powerful eCommerce website with Drupal as well. With several eCommerce modules like Ubercart, Drupal Commerce, etc., Drupal can be a great fit for creating a shopping website or online store.
Suggested Read: Must-know WooCommerce market share statistics and facts
Security & maintenance
No CMS is 100 percent immune to external threats and despite having a robust and secure ecosystem one must be aware of this aspect of having and maintaining a website. However, the available security optimization options definitely shape the ultimate experience each platform can offer.
Now over the years Drupal has earned the reputation for being one of the most secure CMS platforms. (Like we mentioned earlier, it is used by many governance and corporate websites.) Additionally, most Drupal websites are managed by tech experts, therefore there are fewer loopholes. It also handles security complications and compliances better.
Moreover, WordPress is almost at par when it comes to security. However, WordPress websites tend to get hacked more because there are more WordPress sites on the internet and several of them are being managed by amateurs. Besides, there are more security plugins available for WordPress as compared to Drupal. So, the competition is quite close.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
A website must be SEO friendly if it is to gain good visibility and aims to rank higher on SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Wondering if Drupal is SEO friendly or whether WordPress really has the best SEO friendly ecosystem? Let’s find answers.
Essentially, both WordPress and Drupal are SEO friendly. You can build websites with high-ranking potential on both the platforms as there is ample availability of SEO plugins and tools. However, Drupal has some built-in SEO friendly features for which WordPress mostly relies on plugins.
For instance, caching, customizable meta tags, title-based URL node creation, etc., are native features in Drupal. However, WordPress may require maintenance and management of additional caching and meta optimization plugins.
Now it is noteworthy that with WordPress you can implement SEO optimizations without necessarily relying on a developer. However, Drupal is more complicated to work with and so is optimizing the website for making it more SEO friendly.
All in all, the final verdict would be that both the platforms are SEO friendly, and websites built on these platforms will likely have the ability to fair through the competition with ease. All you need to do is pick the right plugins and make the right decisions and modifications.
Technical support
Over the years, both WordPress and Drupal have become more user-friendly and advanced. However, with Drupal you may still need to learn coding or hire developers. But what is common among both the platforms is their approach towards offering support.
They have a more generic approach and there is a lack of one-on-one customer support per se. However, both the platforms offer huge documentation, community forums, etc., for getting all the help one may need.
WordPress earns extra points in this section as it has a bigger community that includes both developers as well as users who are less tech-savvy. There are also several platforms who have their business aligned with WordPress and you may get the required assistance from there.
Overall experience
In our opinion, both WordPress and Drupal are powerful CMS platforms and are unique in their own way. However, one cannot overlook the fact that the popularity of WordPress is unmatchable, and it is used by a huge number of people.
Additionally, WordPress is also simpler to use and you may not necessarily feel the need to hire a developer even if you are not one yourself. On the contrary, Drupal demands intensive technical understanding and efforts and may not be the best fit for beginners.
However, if you are looking for a more niche market and want developers to build a robust and secure ecosystem for you, then you can go with Drupal. Else, go with the choice that is preferred by almost two-third of the world and build your website with WordPress. You can always migrate from either of the platforms if you feel lost at any point of time.
Best CMS for building apps with AppMySite
In a world dominated by smartphones, just having a website is not enough. Once the website is done, the next step should be building an app. This has become really easy over the years due to the evolution of code-free development.
Once you have a website, you can effortlessly build an app for it. All you need is an app builder software, and you can go from web to app in minutes. You can build apps for both Android and iOS without any coding.
In fact, AppMySite enables you to build apps for any and every kind of website. As long as you have a website that is mobile-friendly, responsive, and optimized, you can have an app that functions well.
However, when it comes to WordPress and WooCommerce, the experience goes several notches up as AppMySite offers deep integration with these platforms. This powers you to build high-performing native apps.
Therefore, depending upon your goals, you can build an app for your website that is powered by any CMS platform, including WordPress and Drupal. Both platforms can power you to build mobile responsive websites and you can pick the one that suits you best.
In conclusion
That was all from our end today! Now that you know how WordPress and Drupal compare against each other and what are the pros and cons of each platform, you should be able to make a better choice. Pick the platform that suits you best and go online with a powerful website.
If you are interested in reading more CMS comparisons, do not forget to checkout our blogs on WordPress vs Joomla, WordPress vs Squarespace, WordPress vs Wix, WooCommerce vs Shopify, etc. You can also find blogs on website building and maintenance, app development, marketing, and more.
If you want us to cover a specific topic of your choice related to CMSs, website development, app building, etc, do let us know in the comment section below. We would love to hear from you and write on a topic of your choice.
