Choosing the right CMS can make all the difference in how easy or tricky it is to build and maintain your website. Drupal and WordPress are both popular content management systems (CMSs). But which will work best for your project? In this article, we discuss:
- The differences between Drupal vs. WordPress
- Drupal and WordPress pros and cons
- Use cases
- Frequently asked questions
Drupal vs. WordPress: Key Differences
The main difference between WordPress and Drupal is that WordPress has been created for anyone to use, regardless of their technical expertise, whereas Drupal is better suited for those with development expertise.
In this article, we’ll explore the various features and aspects of both platforms to provide a comparison of Drupal vs. WordPress.
Usability
WordPress is more beginner-friendly than Drupal. With an intuitive interface, it offers user-friendly features providing you with the ability to quickly build out pages on your site.
Drupal has a steeper learning curve than WordPress, and requires technical knowledge. Drupal is suited to those with development experience, or if you have a development team you can work with.
Performance
Performance refers to how quickly and efficiently your website loads and operates. This includes factors like responsiveness, page load times and server response times.
WordPress achieves high performance through themes and plugins that improve website speed, caching plugins, server optimisations and CDNs.
Drupal provides high performance for complex websites through its architecture, caching functionalities and handling of heavy traffic loads.
According to a study by Kinsta, Drupal outperformed WordPress. However, both WordPress and Drupal can achieve excellent performance when optimised correctly.
Hosting and Maintenance
WordPress
WordPress is self hosted, meaning you’ll have to find your own hosting in order to use WordPress CMS. However, this brings with it its own advantages. Being able to choose your own hosting means you have much more control over your website long term. This means in future, if your website grows too large for your current hosting platform, you can migrate to a new hosting platform.
Popular ways of hosting using WordPress include a web hosting plan, some providers offer WordPress specific features like one click installation. Other options include a local server where you can use a computer to host WordPress locally if you have the right tools. Another option is cloud hosting, which uses multiple cyber resources that are connected virtually so your website isn’t relying on a single physical server. Popular hosts include Hostinger and Bluehost amongst others.
Choosing your own hosting also means you can make various performance optimisations as time goes on. But does Drupal give the same benefits?
Drupal
Drupal also can be self-hosted. There are two main ways that you can host your website. The first is on-premise which means the organisation owns all aspects of the infrastructure, this offers a high level of customization and flexibility but it will require a high level of technical knowledge in order to manage your sites safely and securely, or you can work with an agency to help you manage this.
Another option is to set up a local development environment using Docker-based solutions like DDEV or Lando. This approach is primarily for development and testing rather than production hosting, allowing developers to work in an isolated environment without worrying about creating security vulnerabilities.
There are other hosting options available for Drupal, including managed hosting providers specialising in Drupal (such as Acquia, Pantheon, or Platform.sh), cloud hosting services (like AWS or Google Cloud), and shared hosting providers that support Drupal.
Security
Both platforms have robust security systems in place. However, Drupal is often perceived as being more secure due to its controlled development process. Drupal has less of a reliance on plugins which can be subject to security vulnerabilities, and has a smaller user base, so it’s less of a target for hackers.
WordPress is generally considered to be highly secure, however security vulnerabilities can appear through plugins. According to patchstack, plugins were responsible for 97% of new security vulnerabilities in 2023. You should ensure to keep plugins and themes up to date to mitigate against any security vulnerabilities. WordPress does have dedicated teams working on security and as long as you’re maintaining your site and regularly updating it, the risk of security vulnerabilities is low.
E-commerce functionality
WordPress has a large variety of dedicated e-commerce plugins that you can use to start your online store with ease. Woocommerce is the most popular plug-in that’s generally recommended to use for e-commerce as it seamlessly integrates with WordPress and offers a lot of useful features.
With Drupal, the main option for your e-commerce store is using Drupal Commerce. You could instead use a headless commerce approach, or use third-party integrations. There are fewer options for e-commerce on Drupal compared to WordPress however the e-commerce solutions that are available do offer powerful customisation options and a range of suitability for even the most complex e-commerce websites.
Customisation
Drupal does offer extensive customisation options, meaning you have a lot of freedom over your website’s appearance and functionality, if you have coding experience. Drupal’s modular architecture supports extensive customisation through custom modules, which is beneficial in particular for complex projects.
WordPress offers extensive customisations through its plugins and themes, with a large ecosystem available. Customisation is available without the need for developer involvement with WordPress, however for more advanced customisations you may choose to work with a developer.
Scalability
Drupal can handle thousands of pages effectively, and works well for large, complex, enterprise-level websites, however it has a steeper learning curve than WordPress.
WordPress’s vast customisation options allow it to be optimised for performance through the use of various plugins. WordPress is a good option for medium to large websites alike, and is the preferred choice for many large websites including TechCrunch and BBC America.
SEO
WordPress requires installation of a plugin such as Yoast or All in One SEO to optimise for SEO. With the extensive SEO plugins available, WordPress is a good option if you’re interested in implementing advanced SEO strategies.
Drupal on the other hand offers several built-in SEO features, such as meta tags, which can be enhanced with SEO modules like Pathauto, XML Sitemap, and Redirect.
Both options are good for SEO, if they are optimised correctly.
Blogging and Content Management
WordPress was originally created as a blogging platform. It offers a simple, intuitive interface for creating and publishing content. Images can easily be added into posts using drag-and-drop functionality, and posts and pages are easy to create.
Drupal does provide a user-friendly interface for content creation, with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors for easy content creation. Recent versions of Drupal have made improvements in user-friendliness, however, on the whole Drupal has a much steeper learning curve and requires technical knowledge to set up and optimise. Drupal’s content management capabilities are particularly beneficial for complex, content-heavy websites that need advanced content structuring.
Overall we’d recommend WordPress for content creation and blogging. It was originally designed as a blogging platform and the tools offered such as categories, tags, comment moderation and the ease with which pages can be created makes this a top choice when selecting a blogging or content management platform.
Support
Both Drupal and WordPress have good community support. Drupals’ community is smaller, however users tend to be technically proficient due to the technical knowledge required to use Drupal. Drupal offers training resources, forums and documentation to help users build their website.
WordPress has a large community, with vast resources, tutorials and guides available. WordPress’s support and community available is one of the key advantages to using WordPress over Drupal or other CMS’s.
Drupal vs. WordPress: The Verdict
The choice between WordPress and Drupal is largely reliant on your, or your team’s technical expertise. Drupal requires more technical expertise to work with, so you may prefer to use this if you have a coding background. WordPress on the other hand can be used by anyone, and additional enhancements can be made if you have coding experience.
Drupal or WordPress: FAQs
Is Drupal still relevant in 2024?
Drupal represents less than 2% of the CMS market. However, it has a strong reputation as a secure platform, offers granular customisation and is highly scalable. It works particularly well for complex websites. You can see a list of websites using Drupal here.
What is Drupal best used for?
Drupal is best used for complex websites, e-commerce platforms, educational websites and multilingual platforms. It’s less useful for simple websites where ease of build and management are the primary concerns, due to the the technical expertise required.
Should I switch to WordPress from Drupal?
You may wish to consider switching from Drupal to WordPress if you require an easy-to-use CMS platform. WordPress is considered to be more SEO-friendly ‘out-of-the-box’ so this may be a consideration for you too.
Find out more about WordPress vs. other platforms in our guides: WordPress vs. Wix vs. Squarespace, WordPress vs. Joomla, WordPress vs. Webflow, HubSpot vs. WordPress, WordPress vs. Umbraco and Headless CMS vs. WordPress.
Yellowball has an award-winning team of WordPress website designers to get your ideal WordPress website up and running. Visit our portfolio to see some of the amazing things we’ve been able to achieve with WordPress. Have a vision for your website? Talk to us! We’ll make it a reality.
