Choosing a Content Management System (CMS) is an important decision that can have

huge repercussions for your website. There are a number available, each with their
own pros and cons, and fanatical fanbases pulling for their chosen platform. That
being said, there are two platforms that stand out among the pack that can be
directly compared: WordPress vs Joomla.
Both platforms are renowned for their ease-of-use, extensive customization
opportunities, and active communities. While WordPress and Joomla have their
respective pros and cons, they can both be employed to build modern, feature-filled
sites
WordPress vs Joomla: a 4-round comparison
The basic difference between WordPress and Joomla is that Joomla started out as a
CMS meant to serve portal-like websites, while WordPress was originally a blog-
focused platform. These days, however, both WordPress and Joomla are perfectly
capable to run any type of website.

From a technical point of view, both WordPress and Joomla aren’t stand-alone pieces
of software – they only work when installed on a web server. This is usually a web
server that you get from a third-party company, and here we recommend Bluehost.
If you want to build a website, the key aspect to think about is how comfortable
you are with web software configuration, working with servers, and dealing with
technical aspects of the process in general.

Traditionally, Joomla is more geared towards developers who aren’t afraid to “get
their hands dirty” working with servers. WordPress, on the other hand, is more
beginner friendly and uber-easy to get started with.

For example, the common path to starting a website with WordPress is as follows:

Choose a web host for your site and sign up for an account
During the registration process, select an option to have WordPress installed
automatically on your hosting account (yes, you don’t have to install WordPress by
yourself)
Complete the hosting setup and log in to your WordPress dashboard
Configure your site, install a theme and some much-needed plugins
Joomla, on the other hand, doesn’t give you this sort of a hands-free approach. The
hosts that do allow Joomla don’t usually have those custom installation processes,
meaning that you’ll have to do most things on your own.

Not yet sure which is better for you between WordPress vs Joomla? Here’s a detailed
comparison:

1. Search engine optimization

If we compare the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) capabilities of both platforms
out of the box, Joomla takes a slight edge due enabling its users to set meta
descriptions and keywords for new articles, like so:

A screenshot of Joomla's meta settings.

That being said, the true SEO capabilities of either platform aren’t readily
apparent unless we take a look at the plugins or extensions available for the task.
On WordPress’ side, we’ve got the incredibly popular Yoast SEO plugin – it’s
powerful, offers lots of features, and best of all anyone can get to grips with it
in a matter of minutes.

Yoast categorizes your SEO score in different areas using a traffic light system of
red, yellow, or green colors. Furthermore, the plugin tells you exactly how to
improve your score in each area – and if that wasn’t enough, it also rates your
post’s readability.

During our testing, we found Easy Frontend SEO (EFSEO) to be the best Joomla
equivalent to Yoast. It enables you to carry out many of the same tasks – such as
editing your meta information – directly on the front end of your site, and also
includes a handy automatic mode for generating this data without your input.

A screenshot of Easy Frontend SEO's header.

However, it’s clear that as handy as EFSEO is, it’s no match for Yoast. Due to
this, round one of WordPress vs Joomla goes to WordPress.

2. Security
When it comes to security, any system is only as strong as its weakest link – so
the question is: which platform is more secure out of the box?

Due to its popularity, WordPress has a giant target on its back when it comes to
security vulnerabilities. Each WordPress install is unique thanks to the thousands
of plugins (there’s a plugin for everything, from making charts to using pig latin)
and themes available for the CMS.

While this is a definite positive, it’s also a nightmare from a security standpoint
– it’s impossible to make sure that every plugin employs proper safety standards,
and remains compatible with newer versions of the platform.

Moreover, WordPress doesn’t ship with basic features such as forcing a Secure
Socket Layer (SSL) connection on its dashboard – you need to modify its core files
to enable it – or Two-Factor Authentication (2FA). In fact, most of its advanced
security features rely entirely on plugins.

On the other hand, Joomla ships with both an option to force connections over SSL
and another one for 2FA. In addition, it offers its own set of security extensions,
and its developers maintain a list of those extensions with known vulnerabilities.

A screenshot of Joomla's Force HTTPS option.

Round two of WordPress vs Joomla goes to Joomla.
3. Customization potential
We’ve already covered some ground when it comes to WordPress plugins and Joomla
extensions. Both CMSs have their own roster of plugins for the most conceivable of
use cases – although WordPress wins hands down due to sheer number.

However, when looking into the top plugins on each respective CMS, we feel
WordPress’ offerings have a greater subjective ‘polish’. You don’t need to take our
word for it – a simple side by side comparison of two tools we’ve already
mentioned, Yoast SEO and EFSEO (shown in that order), reflects this:

Yoast SEO vs EFSEO comparison.

While the latter offers just as many features as its WordPress counterpart, the
former provides a better experience overall.

Moving on, when it comes to customizing your site’s style there are WordPress
themes on one side and Joomla templates on the other, and the same story repeats
itself here as with plugins. Not only is it easier to find high-quality WordPress
themes, but they also often offer a higher level of support and a mostly better
experience.

Round three goes to WordPress.

4. Content management and potential

Both WordPress and Joomla are complex CMSs, enabling users to create and manage
just about any type of website. Although WordPress is often associated with simple
blogs, it’s also a great solution for landing pages and even more complex sites.
On the other hand, Joomla is renowned for its complexity – although it does offer
some fantastic documentation. A site built with Joomla can evolve into anything it
wants, but the learning curve is much steeper for users with no experience in web
development.

Despite being equal when it comes to sheer potential, it’s fair to say that
WordPress enables its users to manage their content with relative ease. Anyone can
install the platform and pick up how to create posts, pages, or custom post types
within minutes, whereas Joomla is less forgiving.

Taking all of this into consideration, we must award the final round of WordPress
vs Joomla to the former, which gives the overall contest to WordPress!

Conclusion
In some ways, Joomla is more flexible than WordPress. It offers an incredibly
customizable system that can take almost any shape you want, and it enables you to
implement a lot of small customizations without relying on extensions. However,
between WordPress vs Joomla there can only be one winner, and the crown must go to
WordPress.

It beats out Joomla when it comes to SEO, customization possibilities, and content
management – so the choice is clear. Furthermore, WordPress is just plain simpler
to pick up for new users, and its popularity gives it the added edge of providing
users with a better support structure – it’s the cherry on top of the WordPress
sundae.

WordPress Advantages
Ease of use – WordPress is generally regarded as being the easiest content
management system to use, especially for non-developers.
Better suited for blogging – WordPress includes a distinction for “blog posts” vs
“static pages” right out of the box, whereas Joomla just includes a single
“article” type that you can manipulate with categories.
Extensibility – WordPress has, by far, the largest ecosystem of WordPress plugins
and WordPress themes, which makes it easy to extend your site with a variety of
different features.
Huge support community – because WordPress is so popular, it’s easy to find help
via the massive third-party ecosystem of blogs, Facebook groups, and developers.
Lower development costs – this huge community also means you can generally get
development work done a bit cheaper.
Joomla Advantages
More advanced user management – Joomla offers a more advanced system for user
access controls and user management out of the box.
Flexible for different content types – Joomla’s components and modules give you a
bit more flexibility for displaying non-standard content types.
Multilingual support – Joomla has multilingual support built-in to the core, while
WordPress requires you to use a third-party plugin.
Multiple templates – Joomla lets you use different templates for different pieces
of content, whereas you can only use one WordPress theme.