We are often asked to compare Drupal vs WordPress. Both WordPress and Drupal are fantastic tools and we use them to build websites for a large number of our clients.
So, which one is best for your business needs?
Drupal vs WordPress – Introduction
WordPress is an open-source platform that allows you to easily build your website. It offers free templates, and many free and paid WordPress plugins are available to add extra features to your site. You can host WordPress yourself if you have your own domain name and hosting, or you can use a service like SiteGround for a small monthly fee.
In this article, we’ll go over the pros and cons of both WordPress and Drupal and guide you in choosing the best platform for your needs. Ready for the Drupal vs WordPress showdown? Let’s begin.
WordPress Overview
It’s a common misconception that WordPress is only for blogging. That’s only one of many things that you can do with it. Any time you want to start a website, the first thing you need to decide is what kind of site you want to build. Do you want to:
- Start a personal blog?
- Create an online store?
- Or maybe a business website, portfolio site, or something else entirely?
Once you know what kind of site you want, how much control do you want to have over its design and functionality? Do you want something that’s super customizable and allows you to code every page from scratch? Or are you looking for something simpler and faster to set up, but less customizable?
WordPress is a favorite among users who just want to get their site up and running quickly. It can also be used by advanced developers who want everything under their control. In fact, WordPress is regularly used for all sorts of sites, from simple blogs to complex business websites. We use WordPress for 95% of our projects.
Contact us today if you need help building a WordPress website, or have questions regarding the Drupal vs WordPress debate.
Not just a blogging platform
WordPress was originally designed as a blogging platform. Even today, it’s still the best tool for creating an online journal or publication. The flexibility of WordPress makes it usable as almost any type of content management system. It can even function as an e-commerce platform.
WordPress is an open-source project (different from WordPress.com), which means that anyone can download the free software and install it on their own web hosting account to create a website. There are thousands of free themes available and you can easily build your own custom theme with drag-and-drop functionality.
Because WordPress isn’t limited to just one hosting provider, it has no downtime or performance issues and is incredibly easy to set up and manage for beginners. It also comes with thousands of add-ons and plugins that you can install to extend the functionality of your website.
Drupal Overview
Drupal is an open-source content management platform (CMS), enabling individuals and organizations, without previous knowledge of web programming, to easily create and manage content for different types of websites.
Due to its reliability and wide range of great features, the Drupal platform is used by large global companies, government institutions, and many other large organizations around the world. It integrates easily with a large number of business applications, so you can choose a combination of the best business tools today, and easily follow the innovations tomorrow, easily adapting to changes and trends.
Drupal is able to serve the world’s largest sites with huge amounts of traffic. Sites that have a high number of visits per day (such as weather.com), as well as sites that have periodic “peaks”, can rely on this platform without worries. Clients use Drupal to ensure the stability of their sites as the amount of content and traffic grows.
Drupal Community
The Drupal community is known as one of the largest communities in the world, with more than 1 million developers, designers, strategists, trainers, coordinators, editors, and sponsors working together on the same goal.
Just like WordPress, Drupal has a free downloading option, and so far, it has 15 million downloads. There are also over 2K free themes available, and 34K free plugins.
Drupal Features
Drupal is an extremely customizable platform. It provides tools to help you implement any strategy for your online presence. It is suitable for any type of website and app. The best evidence of its reliability and popularity is that exactly Drupal has been chosen by Red Hat, Timex, and Greenpeace websites.
It is possible to customize and extend Drupal functionality, plus integrate it with 3rd-party services. Drupal offers the following features:
- Audio File Management
- Electronic Forms
- Full Text Search
- Text Editing
- Video Support
- Website Management
Sites made in Drupal are “responsive” – i.e. optimized to give your visitors the best possible experience regardless of the device they use.
Security is also a priority in the Drupal community. Following the work of the Drupal community, you will be up to date with all possible weaknesses and ways to best protect your site.
Extensions and plugins
WordPress plugins
WordPress library has thousands of plugins and most of them are free. This is because WordPress developers want to give back to the community, either by offering truly useful plugins and themes for free or by making money by selling premium plugins and themes.
With so many options to choose from, you can use plugins to do almost anything you want with your site. For example, if your business specializes in selling widgets, you can add a custom widget plugin that will allow users to purchase widgets directly from your site. Or, if you run a local business, you can add a plugin that will give users a Google map with directions and distance to your location.
No matter what you need, there’s probably a plugin available that will do it for you. This extensive availability of plugins and extensions tips the scales in the Drupal vs WordPress debate.
Plugin Examples
Here are just a few of the plugins that you can use to enhance your site:
- All In One WP Security & Firewall – This plugin allows you to block malicious requests and display a login screen to any guest user, even if they’re not logged in. You can also change the login URL and add an option to generate a random string as a replacement for the default ‘Log in’ link.
- Contact Form 7 – This plugin lets you create contact forms, polls, and surveys on your WordPress website. It also includes over 100 free templates for you to choose from.
- Google XML Sitemaps – Sitemaps allow search engines to index your website more efficiently and make it easier for users to find what they’re looking for. Google XML Sitemaps is one of the most popular plugins of its kind with over 2 million downloads.
- Yoast SEO – If you want your website to rank well in search engines, then this is an essential plugin. It will help you optimize your posts so they appear higher in search results.
There are thousands of other plugins out there that you can use to improve functionality, increase security, streamline workflow, or do all three!
Drupal extensions
Drupal has modules that enable adding new backend features, plugins, or other extensions to the Search API. These extensions allow users to add a wide range of functionality to their sites.
Drupal has these amazing modules you can use to build incredible digital experiences.
- Layout Builder – users can choose a predefined set of layouts and use them to build pages with Layout builder.
- Devel Module – this module is used mainly for testing purposes due to its ability to generate a lot of content for comments, nodes, users, and different content types. Also, it allows developers to debug problems with node access.
- Twig Tweak Module – This module makes the work of developers, dealing with complex twig templates, easy thanks to different functions and filters that are created to ease and enhance the development experience. Thanks to this module, developers can write well-formatted code, that is easy to comprehend.
- Drupal GraphQL Module – GraphQL is a modern querying language. It replaces old-school languages to communicate with APIs. It’s faster and only shows the results you are looking for.
- Redirect and Pathauto Module – this module will save you from broken links. It is used for creating URL redirects.
- Google Analytics – this module provides all features of Google Analytics, and allows domain tracking, user tracking, monitoring tracked links, monitoring downloaded files, site search, Adsense support, etc.
WordPress vs. Drupal for e-commerce
If you’re planning to launch an e-commerce website, the WooCommerce plugin might be your best bet. The Woocommerce Plugin is a free e-commerce plugin for WordPress that allows you to add a powerful, easy-to-use e-commerce system to your WordPress-powered website or blog.
You can use the WooCommerce plugin to sell physical or digital goods on your website. The plugin has been tested with over 1,000 different payment gateways. The product catalog allows you to organize products using custom taxonomies and attributes, including variations and bundled products. You can also add related products to your products.
Drupal is another great option for building an e-commerce website. It allows you to manage products, carts, and transactions. If you choose Drupal, you will provide a unique customer experience, integrations allowing perfect marketing, payment, and fulfillment tools, to attract and cover a wider audience. It meets security standards to secure safe, and dependable releases.
If we had to choose Drupal vs WordPress for e-commerce, WordPress / WooCommerce would be a clear winner, due to a larger number of plugins, payment gateways, and customization options.
Pricing
WordPress pricing
WordPress is free and open-source, but you will need to pay for both web hosting and a domain name. If you are looking for more information on all you need to launch a website, check out this article. If you just want to “publish” content, WordPress will work just fine without any additional features or design. However, most WordPress sites are built with some degree of customization that requires the use of either premium themes or premium plugins or hiring a professional to do it for you.
Premium themes and plugins can cost anywhere from $10 to $100+, depending on what feature set you’re looking for. And while some premium themes and plugins are sold under a “use forever” license, some of them impose restrictions on the number of sites that can use them (for example, you might need to purchase a license for each site you want to use).
The minimum cost of getting started with WordPress is whatever the price of your chosen hosting and domain name is.
Drupal pricing
Drupal is also open source and free to use for your website project.
While WordPress has clear pricing, Drupal pricing is different because everything depends on the type of website you build and the features you pick.
- A simple construction of a website part can cost from $5,000 to $20,000 or even higher.
- A standard Drupal project which takes 6-8 weeks for development can cost from $20,000 to $40,000 and higher.
- Monthly maintenance varies from $500 to $1,000 and higher.
The reason Drupal is typically a more expensive option is because it’s less popular, has a smaller pool of developers, and it requires more customization.
SEO Considerations
Search engine optimization (or SEO) can be implemented on both of these platforms. However, if your goal is to focus on SEO, we recommend WordPress due to the many available integrations and extensions. We believe that WordPress just can’t be beaten when it comes to SEO, and in this article, we outline why.
That being said, you can implement sound search engine tuning strategies to any web platform and Drupal is no exception. Its speed, security, and reliability are advantages that put it ahead of other content management system platforms.
Drupal vs WordPress – Conclusion
In summary, we prefer WordPress for building websites in 2024. Due to the extensive features and SEO benefits, WordPress is more aligned to what our clients are looking for and doesn’t tie your hands in the future.
WordPress started with blogging functionality but has since expanded its capabilities to provide a state-of-the-art CMS. This wide range of features makes it easy to create practically any type of website with WordPress. WordPress is popular because it’s flexible, reliable, and powerful.
Drupal is a reliable, open-source, and flexible website builder. It offers a wide palette of features and great safety and security. If you’re planning to create content-focused websites like blogs or news sites that need to handle a large userbase, Drupal is a great choice.
If you aren’t sure which tool is right for you, try out both, or get in touch with us! We hope that our article helped you make a decision regarding the Drupal vs WordPress debate.
About Clio Websites
Clio Websites is a full-service website design and marketing company in Calgary. We have vast experience in responsive website design, website maintenance, WordPress development and support, and SEO. Clio offers free consultations and free website evaluations and we receive glowing reviews from our clients.
We have experience building both Drupal and WordPress websites and both platforms have their own advantages and disadvantages.
If you are looking for help deciding which platform is better (Drupal vs WordPress), contact us today. We are always available and happy to answer any questions you may have so don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.
Drupal vs WordPress FAQs
Can Drupal be used with WordPress?
No, Drupal and WordPress are different platforms, and they can’t be used together. Both solutions have a content management system and offer e-commerce capabilities.
Is Drupal still relevant in 2024?
Drupal is an awesome CMS that offers great performance, and features. It’s great for creating fast and efficient websites. WordPress has a better and more popular ecosystem which results in better support, but Drupal is still very relevant in 2024.
Is Drupal or WordPress better for SEO?
Drupal is a powerful system, it ensures search website optimization with its modules, and the ability to control all the elements of the web pages with the help of already installed automation tools for SEO, which places it at the very top of SEO friendly CMSs.
We still prefer WordPress for SEO projects due to its flexibility, extendability, and ease of use.
Is WordPress better than Drupal?
WordPress and Drupal are both fantastic tools and we use them to build websites for a large number of our clients. They each have their own advantages and disadvantages. If you are looking for help deciding which platform is better (Drupal vs WordPress) contact us today.
