With the popularity of Drupal and WordPress as content management systems, it is easy to get stuck when deciding which CMS to use for your next web design project.
This article will help you make a well-informed decision so that you will have zero regrets post-development. We will extensively describe and compare both CMS and show you when to use either.
Table of Contents
What Is Drupal?
Drupal is an open-source CMS that developers and agencies use to create stunning websites and manage various content. It is flexible and sophisticated, and therefore, it is a preferred choice among governmental and institutional parastatals.
Drupal: A Brief History and Core Features
Since its inception in 2001 by Dries Buytaert, Drupal has evolved into a robust platform for creating websites of all sizes, from simple personal blogs to advanced corporate websites.
Drupal’s core features include modular architecture, customized themes, and several modules for building beautiful, responsive designs and sophisticated websites. It also has built-in SEO tools, multilingual support, and multi-level user role management.
Key Use Cases and Popular Websites Built with Drupal
According to statistics, Drupal powers 4.7% of websites. Due to their complex needs, the CMS is widely used to build websites for educational institutions, governmental parastatals, NGOs, and corporate enterprises.
Some popular websites built on the Drupal framework include The Economist, Harvard University, Pinterest, Tesla, United Nations, NASA, and the White House.
What Is WordPress?
WordPress is a popular open-source content management system (CMS) that allows developers and agencies to build and manage websites easily.
WordPress is highly customizable, flexible, user-friendly, and has a very saturated community. It is a common choice for beginners and experienced users, and platforms like InstaWP provide free sandbox environments for building temporary WordPress sites for several purposes.
WordPress: A Brief History and Core Features
WordPress was developed in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little as a blogging platform. Since its inception, WordPress has undergone a series of upgrades, releasing significant updates such as plugins, themes, and the block-based editor called Gutenberg.
It is now a versatile platform for building websites of all sorts and sizes, including blogs, portfolios, forums, and e-commerce websites.
Some of the core features of the WordPress CMS include built-in SEO capabilities, shortcodes, hooks and filters, template parts, and a host of plugins and themes for extensive functionality and responsive designs.
Key Use Cases and Popular Websites Built with WordPress
WordPress powers 47.3% of CMS globally and is widely used for building personal blogs, portfolios, large corporate sites, e-commerce stores, and news portals.
The New Yorker, BBC America, Microsoft News Center, Tech Crunch, Times, Meta Newsroom, TED blog, Vogue, and Walt Disney Company are popular websites built using WordPress.
Why Choosing the Right CMS Matters
We endure negative consequences and pay a heavy price whenever we choose poorly. The same applies to website development. Choosing the wrong platform can be a nightmare, but when you choose correctly, you can sleep peacefully.
Let’s look at some reasons why choosing the right CMS between Drupal and WordPress matters:
Ease of Use
Even If you are a developer or agency with the right technical expertise, you must also consider your customers when choosing a CMS for their project.
You must choose a user-friendly CMS with a very low learning curve so clients can easily manage and publish website content. Failure to do so will result in unhappy customers and an increased workload for you as well because you will have to manage the websites completely.
However, choosing the right CMS will help you and your customers handle projects with minimal effort, saving time and resources and increasing customer satisfaction.
Flexibility and Customization Needs
One key factor influencing your choice of CMS is the flexibility and customization required to execute the project successfully.
When you choose the wrong CMS, you end up painstakingly building the project, deriving no pleasure in the process. You will hit a lot of snags at every turn. In the worst-case scenario, you may have to start all over again using another CMS should you encounter an issue that you can’t go around.
However, with the right CMS, you can effortlessly create unique websites that align with your customers’ brand identity and incorporate any functionality they desire.
Performance and Scalability
Another reason to choose the right CMS is the ability to enhance your website’s performance and scale it as it grows. Your preferred CMS should be one that you have the technical expertise and the freedom to optimize for speed and increased content and traffic.
Security
Website security is a paramount concern in website development. Choosing a CMS with robust security features to protect sensitive data against cyber threats is critical. The CMS has to be regularly updated, provide patches for vulnerabilities, and have a community that keeps you updated on recent security measures.
Cost vs Budget
Lastly, cost and your customer’s budget are vital reasons to choose the right CMS. Website development costs vary between CMS, and you want to consider the best option within your customer’s budget. You also want to consider your profit margin. This way, everybody is happy.
Drupal vs. WordPress: Head-to-Head Comparison
Here’s a head-to-head comparison of Drupal and WordPress across various aspects:
1. Drupal vs WordPress: Ease of Use
A user-friendly interface makes it easier for users to understand and use a thing without extensive technical knowledge. A user-friendly CMS will allow you to build and manage websites easily with little or no technical expertise. So, which one is more user-friendly for Drupal vs WordPress?
Drupal
Drupal is relatively easy to set up on most hosting providers. The dashboard is user-intuitive with clear navigation. However, you need help understanding the interface and terminology at first glance. Luckily, you will be provided with a link to a beginner’s guide that shows you the step-by-step process of building your website with Drupal.
While Drupal may offer powerful content management capabilities, understanding how to create, manage, and structure content on Drupal might require some learning for most users.
WordPress
WordPress is extremely easy to install and set up. Most hosting providers, especially managed WordPress hosting like InstaWP Live, offer one-click WordPress installation. Once installed, you can log into the WordPress admin dashboard, which is simple, user-intuitive, and easy to navigate. This makes it easy for users to understand the interface and start creating and managing content straightaway.
The Winner
WordPress is generally user-friendly and has a relatively low learning curve compared to Drupal, especially for beginners. There are many resources and a vast community for support. Drupal has a steeper learning curve due to its sophistication.
2. Drupal vs WordPress: Customization and Flexibility
Creating a basic site is one thing, but the ability and freedom to customize it are another. Drupal and WordPress allow you to customize your website aesthetics and extend its functionalities with specialized add-ons.
Drupal
In Drupal, you can use themes to transform your basic look into beautiful designs and use modules to extend its functionality.
The Drupal directory offers over 2,000 themes and 30,000 modules. In addition, Drupal is highly customisable, giving you the flexibility required to build beautiful, complex websites with various capabilities.
However, technical expertise will be required to efficiently set up modules and themes and develop custom modules for specific features.
WordPress
WordPress provides a vast repository with over 5,000 themes and 50,000 plugins, including free and premium, for customizing website design and extending its functionality.
You can select niche-specific themes for the right look and feel and use the WYSIWYG theme customizer to customize your website design further to suit your needs. You can also use drag-and-drop page builders like Elementor, Divi, Beaver, and even the Gutenberg Block editor to build beautiful, interactive, responsive pages without coding easily.
WordPress plugins are easy to install and set up and contain helpful documentation and guides. The extensive selection of plugins provides more flexibility for building different types of websites. However, WordPress also requires technical knowledge to create custom features.
The Winner
Both platforms are highly customizable and flexible. WordPress is easier to customize due to its extensive selection of plugins and themes, including beginner-friendly drag-and-drop page builders and easy theme customization options compared to Drupal. Drupal, however, is more flexible, allowing for very complex and in-depth customization.
3. Drupal vs WordPress: Security
Moving on with the Drupal vs WordPress comparison, what about security? How do they stack up in terms of protection?
Drupal
Drupal is very secure out of the box and experiences very minimal security breaches globally. This is either because of its low user base or because Drupal developers consistently release fixes for the Drupal core and modules with advanced warnings, detailed security advisories that rate vulnerabilities, and a structural and transparent response to security management.
WordPress
WordPress has a large user base and is the most widely used CMS globally, making it a common target for hackers and cyber threats.
WordPress is also quite secure out of the box and owes many of its vulnerabilities to third-party plugins. That is why WordPress developers and agencies ensure that they use fewer trusted and regularly updated plugins and themes for their customer sites. WordPress also fixes security issues with every core update, and developers do the same to their products.
However, you can enhance WordPress security using reliable security plugins, SSL certificates, and a managed WordPress hosting solution with robust security features, including DDoS protection, Brute force attack protection, malware scanning, and firewalls like InstaWP Live.
Winner
There needs to be a clear-cut winner. At the core level, both CMS are very secure. Exposure to threats comes from poor security practices, including using outdated or compromised cores, themes, plugins, or modules and hosting without proper security protocols.
4. Drupal vs WordPress: Hosting, Server Resource Usage, and Scalability Considerations
You need web hosting to create a site using WordPress or Drupal. What kind of hosting would you need for each CMS, and which has a simplified setup?
Drupal
Most traditional hosting providers support Drupal, which you can install from your cPanel. However, setting up Drupal sites within a hosting environment can be tricky and complicated.
Since Drupal websites are typically meant for complex sites with a lot of content and traffic, they are resource-intensive, require copious server resources, and require hosting like VPS or dedicated hosting for optimal performance. These types of hosting are very expensive to buy, maintain, and scale.
WordPress
Most traditional hosting providers also support WordPress, and you can install it from your cPanel using one-click install tools like Softaculous.
WordPress uses fewer server resources but may require additional resources with increased traffic and content.
WordPress thrives in all hosting environments, including shared, VPS, and dedicated hosting. Specialised, affordable, and easily scalable WordPress hosting solutions, known as managed WordPress, are also available. Managed WordPress hosting like InstaWP Live comes with a one-click WordPress install, robust security, optimized performance, support, and maintenance services.
Winner
WordPress is the obvious winner. While Drupal hosting needs high maintenance, WordPress is typically easier and cheaper to host, maintain, and scale.
5. How Well Do Drupal and WordPress Perform on Large Websites?
If you intend to build a large site or expect massive growth in a short time, consider which CMS will serve you with better performance.
Drupal
Drupal is designed for complex, content-heavy websites and can seamlessly handle large websites. Its architecture can manage large volumes of content and support high traffic, even at an enterprise level.
WordPress
WordPress can also handle large websites, but it will require very strong hosting and a combination of performance optimization, including caching, content delivery networks (CDNs), image compression, lazy-loading, and minified coding, to improve speed and efficiency.
Winner
Although both CMSs can handle large websites, especially with strong hosting, Drupal is hands down the best at handling large websites without compromising performance.
6. Budget Considerations for Drupal and WordPress Development
Drupal and WordPress are both open-source and free. The cost comes from the website development process and can vary between CMS depending on the size of the project and customisation needs. But ultimately, you need to choose a CMS that fits your budget.
Drupal
Drupal development costs are quite high. Apart from requiring expensive hosting infrastructure, complex projects may require the services of a skilled developer. Due to its complicated customization demands, setting up and building websites with Drupal is time-consuming, even for a professional expert. That is why big corporations, institutions, and the government largely use Drupal.
WordPress
Developing WordPress sites is very affordable and cost-effective for small to medium-sized projects. You can save money on website development by using starter and cheaper hosting plans, free plugins and themes, and even save money on developers by setting up the site yourself, as WordPress plugins and themes are easy to configure.
Winner
WordPress is a cheaper and budget-friendly option best suited for solopreneurs and SMEs. However, large organizations requiring content-heavy websites might find investing in Drupal more cost-effective than WordPress.
7. Long-Term Maintenance and Updates: What to Expect
Both Drupal and WordPress are here to stay. They continually improve and optimize their frameworks and release updates regularly. Updating core themes, plugins, and modules is straightforward. However, technical expertise may be required for compatibility checks and to ensure sites are well-maintained and running smoothly.
When to Choose Drupal vs. When to Choose WordPress
Ideal Scenarios for Using Drupal
Drupal has the inherent capacity to handle complex data organization, content structures, and workflows, making it best suited for building web applications and complex websites.
Here are some ideal situations when using Drupal makes sense:
- Sites requiring complex search experiences and custom functionalities like Wikis and e-commerce platforms.
- Sites with a large user base and multiple levels of user roles and permissions, such as forums, communities, social networks, enterprises, banking sites, etc.
- Content-heavy and high-traffic sites with elaborate content needs and categorisation, such as news portals, music sites for albums, tertiary and governmental institutions, etc.
- Multilingual sites for platforms that operate in multiple countries or regions, such as search engines, domain registrars, etc.
Ideal Scenarios for Using WordPress
WordPress, on the other hand, is a very flexible and versatile CMS. Its adaptability and extensive features make it suitable for anything else that Drupal might be too advanced for.
Here are some ideal scenarios when using WordPress makes sense:
- Blogs, podcasts, and News websites
- Websites for Small and medium-scale businesses
- Personal websites and portfolios to offer personalized services and showcase your work.
- E-commerce stores for selling both digital and physical products.
- Membership and subscription sites for exclusive or gated content.
- E-Learning portals for selling online courses.
Leveraging InstaWP for WordPress Development
InstaWP is an all-in-one WordPress tool for developers and agencies that revolutionises WordPress development. It allows you to spin WordPress sites in seconds for development or staging.
InstaWP offers many great features for WordPress developers and agencies. You can increase productivity and streamline your development workflow by leveraging these features.
Here are some ways you can leverage InstaWP for WordPress development:
Rapid Website Development
InstaWP allows you to build WordPress sites from scratch without complex setups. You can build WordPress sites from the ground up and remotely collaborate with your clients and team. InstaWP has advanced tools, such as a database editor, code editor, log viewer, etc., to meet your customisation needs. Once completed, you can seamlessly deploy the sites from development to live hosting. You can deploy to any hosting provider or use InstaWP Live WordPress hosting.
WordPress Staging
InstaWP allows you to replicate live WordPress sites into a staging environment for testing updates, making changes, and syncing those changes from staging to live sites and vice versa.
Product Demos
It allows you and your target customers to quickly set up sandbox WordPress sites for building and testing product demos without needing paid hosting.
Learning and Experimentation
As a WordPress beginner, you can practice and experiment safely with the WordPress sandbox environment for free. You have full access to the WordPress theme and plugin repository and up to 1GB of free space.
Hosting Migration
You can use InstaWP’s migration tool to migrate from one hosting provider to another. You simply create a staging copy of your live site with InstaWP and then migrate from InstaWP to the new host with just URLs. With a few clicks, you can easily migrate your site to any hosting provider, including InstaWP Live cloud-based managed WordPress hosting.
Troubleshooting and Fixing WordPress Errors
InstaWP comes with a log Viewer with error and debug logs, which you can use to identify bugs and their origin or cause. This makes it easy for you to debug errors and fix issues on your live site. You can also use InstaWP’s 2-way sync feature to undo any change that developed into a mistake and restore your live site to normalcy.
Conclusion
Drupal is highly customizable, flexible, and scalable, making it suitable for complex websites and applications requiring sophisticated content management and user roles. WordPress, on the other hand, is user-friendly and flexible, with a larger community. It’s ideal for blogging and small businesses with minimal customization needs.
Choosing between Drupal and WordPress for your website depends largely on your project’s specific requirements, technical expertise, and long-term vision.
You can choose the right CMS for your website when you clearly define and understand your specific needs and technical abilities.
If you choose WordPress, you can leverage tools like InstaWP to streamline and accelerate the development process significantly. InstaWP allows for quick WordPress site setup, enabling you to build cool websites and test features, plugins, and themes.
FAQs
Is Drupal still relevant in 2024?
Yes. People still use Drupal, which is still relevant in 2024 and not as outdated as some may think. The CMS is still widely used for website development and e-commerce development.
Is Drupal completely free?
Drupal is a free open-source CMS with no licensing fees or hidden charges. However, it costs money to buy hosting and a domain or a developer to build your site.
Do you need PHP for Drupal?
You can use Drupal to build websites without knowing PHP. However, you may need some basic knowledge of PHP to apply custom features.
Which is more secure, Drupal or WordPress?
Drupal and WordPress are relatively secure. That said, Drupal may seem more secure than WordPress because WordPress may depend on third-party plugins for maximum security and because, due to its popularity, it is more targeted by hackers.
Is Drupal or WordPress better for SEO?
Both platforms have good SEO. However, WordPress has a plethora of SEO plugins that simplify SEO optimization, and many SEO experts specialize in WordPress rather than Drupal.
Should I learn Drupal or WordPress?
Drupal is best for building web applications and complex websites with highly advanced needs. WordPress takes a more simplistic approach. If you desire to create sophisticated web projects, you should learn Drupal. Otherwise, you should learn WordPress. However, no rule prevents you from learning both.
How long will it take to learn Drupal?
An average learner with foundational knowledge can take about 3-6 months of consistent study to be moderately proficient in the CMS. It may take longer to truly master the CMS. WordPress, on the other hand, will take less than 3 months to grasp.
Is Drupal more expensive than WordPress?
Which CMS is more expensive depends on the size of the project. WordPress is less expensive when building small—to medium-sized websites. On the surface, Drupal is more expensive than WordPress due to its high development cost. This is because developers charge more for Drupal projects due to their complexities. However, Drupal can be more cost-effective than WordPress when building enterprise-grade projects.