Differences between WordPress and Drupal

The winner here is clearly WordPress. With a market share of almost 60%, WordPress is the most widespread content management system. This is followed by Joomla and Drupal. The popularity of Wordpress can be concluded from the fact that Wordpress can be installed very easily and quickly. After installation, you get a ready-to-use solution without any additional effort. Drupal, on the other hand, is available with a standard installation, but requires additional work to get what you need.

 

Technology

In this respect, Wordpress and Drupal are very similar. Both content management systems are based on the PHP programming language and MySQL databases. Both PHP and MySQL are widely used and have no special hosting requirements. All popular hosting providers support Wordpress and Drupal.
 

OpenSource

One thing that Drupal and WordPress have in common is the license. Like Wordpress, Drupal is open source and can be downloaded and installed for free. There is no license fee. Especially compared to "closed source" content management systems, this is a big advantage. The saved costs can be invested in customizations and extensions.
 

Costs

If you look around the market, WordPress sites tend to be cheaper, as they are sometimes created by agencies without programming skills. Usually, the default functionality of WordPress is used and websites are customized with a free or paid theme. This way, a satisfactory solution can be found quickly and inexpensively. If you later want to add more complex functionality to your Wordpress site, this may not be possible because the plugins or templates used do not easily allow it. Drupal projects tend to be larger, more complex and therefore more expensive. Programming skills are often required to create a solution with Drupal. Drupal also has powerful proprietary features and an extensive API for deploying custom applications. If you want to deploy a more complex web application, the initial investment becomes more expensive, but with Drupal you get a scalable and scalable solution.
 

Modules & Plugins

Both systems have extensions in the form of "modules" or "plugins". Wordpress lists more than 45,000 modules, while Drupal lists more than 35,000 modules. However, the number of modules says very little about their quality. Both systems have useful modules as well as outdated and rather useless modules. In addition to a large number of extensions, Drupal also offers a powerful API, i.e. an interface for creating your own modules. Drupal clearly offers more flexibility here. See also the following "Features
 

Functionality

Compared to Wordpress, Drupal's functions are much more comprehensive. With Drupal, large web projects can be realized that go far beyond pure content management. Wordpress, on the other hand, has fewer features and is therefore more suitable for simpler web solutions.

Drupal knows the concept of so-called content types (page types), blocks, views and more. With this, almost every imaginable application on the web can be mapped. On the other hand, WordPress has standard post and page types of pages. They are particularly well suited for a blog and a simple website.

In this way, Drupal is like a "construction kit." A Drupal solution typically consists of the Drupal core, several add-on modules, a theme, and custom development. The process for Wordpress is similar, although Wordpress can be seen as more than one product. WordPress solutions include the WordPress core, plugins and themes. Private add-ons are the exception.
 

Security

Both systems are considered secure as long as the latest security updates are installed. However, the risk of being hacked is higher with WordPress, as security updates need to be applied more frequently. In 2015, the federal government even specifically warned that WordPress sites were not secure.
 

Are you hesitating between WordPress or Drupal? Both systems need to be looked at more closely. We recommend that our clients conduct assessments strategically. Costs, functionality, scalability, maintenance costs, security need to be considered.

We will be happy to review your requirements and advise you in a personal meeting.