Wordpress vs Drupal: What's The Best CMS in 2018?

Here are some clear tips to help you make a smart, unbiased, future-proof, risk-averse decision between the two platforms. Both platforms are highly flexible but serve different stakeholders as well as project sizes and complexities. Let's take a look at the differences to help you choose. 

When Drupal Makes Sense 

Drupal often makes sense in the following contexts. Is your project really complex? Does it cater to one of the industries listed? Then Drupal will likely make sense, given a few caveats – read on to see the caveats.

1. Complex work environments or project specifications

2. Higher education, government, or medium-to-large business and enterprise

Drupal historically wins out in government by a long shot. See this large list of government sites and countries across the world using Drupal.  Higher ed tends to do their web projects in Drupal, especially at larger and highly reputable institutions, although they will choose WordPress quite often for smaller sites (read on below). Medium to large businesses will choose Drupal when project complexity gets sufficiently high. 

Is my project complex enough to be done in Drupal vs WordPress?  

If your project involves any of the following, it is likely complex enough to be done in Drupal over WordPress.

• You have a large authenticated user base that needs to log into the site and perform complex tasks, such as creating user generated content in forums or user communities.
  
  
• You have complex content needs, i.e. content beyond your garden variety of blog posts, news articles, standard site pages, landing pages, a staff directory, etc. For example, a course catalog, content that comes from microservices or REST,  multiple levels of permission on content for different user roles,
  
  
• Complex integrations are a must, such as integrating with other web services, microservices, an iPhone app, or other complexities. Drupal is generally better-suited and easier for developers. 
  
  
• Configuration management. This is important and doesn't receive as much attention from non-developers as it deserves. If you want to be able to reliably make changes to your live website using version control,
  
  Drupal 8's configuration management system is a huge time saver and reduces errors by developers. If you can't have errors popping up on your site after you push a new feature or bug fix, or are generally averse to downtime, Drupal offers a much more professional, enterprise-ready way to push configuration changes. As your site grows more complex, this becomes more and more of a big deal.
  
  
• You have strict security requirements. Drupal is generally better at security, but WordPress can come up to its level with the proper steps and time investment: 
  
  
  • Drupal can handle PCI compliance requirements such as database encryption or other complex security situations a bit better.
    
    
  • WordPress is overly popular from a security standpoint, since it tends to dominate in the personal and small business arena, that the Microsoft vs Apple security phenomenon has emerged: WordPress tends to get hacked more because there are more WordPress sites on the internet, just like Microsoft PCs tend to get hacked more because there are still more PCs than Macs. There are simply more plugins for the WordPress security team to keep up with, which may make it more difficult to identify vulnerabilities.
    
    
  • However, WordPress can be just as secure as Drupal if you take the appropriate steps and measures, including plugins and practices for prevention, detection, auditing, and security insights. It may take a bit more work, but security can be achieved. Work with a knowledgeable vendor to ensure these measures are taken. The Drupal and WordPress security teams have actually worked together on some vulnerabilities that affect both platforms.
    
    
• You are building a web application. Drupal is better suited for web applications, as opposed to web sites, that need to do complex things, handle complex logic and integrations, sometimes involving a decoupled user interface.
  
   

When WordPress Makes Sense 

WordPress can be great for large projects in terms of the amount of content, or even the total project budget. It's highly flexible, extensible, and makes a lot of sense for a great many scenarios. Here are the scenarios that make the most sense for WordPress: 

1. Less complex work environments or project specifications

2. Small-to-medium businesses, publications, eCommerce stores, startups, nonprofits (and sometimes higher education, larger businesses, and the enterprise)

WordPress is great, and it tends to fit the above categories quite well. People love its ease of use, it generally has a great reputation among marketers and less-technical developers, and more people tend to have experience with it than Drupal.

For both higher ed and the enterprise, WordPress can actually be preferable for less-complex needs. WordPress may suffer from a "perception problem" in some of these industries, because it can work for relatively simple needs such as The White House (whitehouse.gov), which has been greatly simplified since the last administration and now serves as more of a (fake) news and propaganda site than a repository of complex content.

There are a few examples of other countries and municipalities using WordPress for the more story-, informational-, and news- based content types that it excels at. In higher ed, we have seen a university use Drupal for its main web presence, but WordPress for student orgs and other smaller initiatives, due to its ease of use, simplicity, and possibly less time to train. We've also seen community colleges and smaller institutions use WordPress entirely, often in combination with other systems.

 Here are some examples of situations where WordPress excels:

• eCommerce. It integrates extremely well with the beautiful, simple-yet-powerful ecommerce solution WooCommerce. Drupal has a decent integration with Shopify, which is a pretty great platform, too, but we think Woo is the way to go if you are a SMB and the rest of your website doesn't necessitate Drupal for any of the reasons described above.
  
  
• Usability and flexibility. It can empower site owners to Just Get Things Done without contacting their web team, if their web team allows proper permissions to do so. Initially this can translate to Just Break Things, but if you have the right agency partner to support you, this hurdle can be worth it, and you'll be Just Getting Things Done in no time. 
  
  
• Lower cost due to starter themes (with caveats). WordPress has a much larger base of starter themes than Drupal. These themes give you a visual and functional outline of a website without having to hire a team to design and build your website from scratch.
  
  
  • NOTE: This is not a problem with WordPress per se -- this is a problem with using a starter theme. The same thing happens when clients want to use a Drupal starter theme.
    
    
  • Just like anything that sounds this good to be true, there are caveats and frequent issues with starting from something that someone else built for somebody who is not you.
    
    
  • Pushing a theme beyond its intended use can happen often, and you often don't find out its limits until you are well into the project.
    
    
  • We have found severe security vulnerabilities in a plugin that a theme used just before launch, making the entire site unlaunchable, because the theme was built with that plugin as a hard requirement. We've seen themes that have had to be endlessly tweaked by us and client stakeholders in order to make it fit their vision.
    
    
  • Instead of doing a proper wireframing, user experience, and design process, we are left tweaking and tweaking in a very inefficient, iterative manner. That can be "good enough" if your budget is low, but sometimes the temptation to use a lower-cost starter theme rather than doing a custom website design and build can actually cost more and do more harm than good for your website in the long run. 
    
    
• Plugins for everything. Both Drupal and WordPress have a great many community-supported plugins (Drupal calls them "modules"), but WordPress really wins in terms of availability and variety of plugins for the current version of WordPress. 

Making a Choice

What it comes down to is this: Drupal is a truer "framework" in that it is a highly extensible, very powerful blank slate. WordPress makes more assumptions, gives you more niceties out of the box, but those niceties can come at a cost of extensibility, or the ability of the website to handle more complex business cases.

In the end, though, pick the one you like best, and find an experienced, technical partner who can make the website work hard for your objectives, be it getting you leads, more eCommerce purchases, higher ed enrollments, market exposure, or what have you –– a beautiful website that doesn't do anything is just a lifeless brochure in digital space.

Don't overestimate the importance of both technical and marketing expertise in implementing anything but the most simple website. This quote came to us a few days ago from a prospective client at the University of Minnesota, who has worked in web development environments for a good part of her life:

“If you start out on the wrong foot, you can be in for years and years of pain.”

This quote applies equally to digital marketing -- a new site redesign can tank your SEO, or, without the proper digital marketing strategy, do long-term damage to your business. These issues are all greater and more important than the actual platform that you choose.

Similarities: Where Both Platforms Excel

Both platforms contend well with other "as a service" platforms when running on hosted environments such as Pantheon. A major asset of both is that they have vibrant and enthusiastic open source communities, although Drupal’s is arguably more organized worldwide.

One thing that is certain is that both of these platforms have had dramatic growth, and they each improve with every new version. WordPress is making strides in its "block" layout configuration abilities with the new Gutenberg project, which Drupal has had for years, and Drupal is making strides in its usability for content editors, which WordPress has had for years. 

Drupal 8 Roadmap

WordPress Gutenberg "block" layout

(Source: Wordpress.org)

There are a lot of similarities, where both platforms excel. You can unquestionably create amazing sites on both platforms. Here are some things that both platforms have in common and do well:

• Supports high traffic; speedy websites. Can support very high volumes of traffic, and run websites with vast amounts of content. 
  
  
• Security. Can be just as secure or more so than other proprietary platforms.
  
  
• No vendor lock-in. Both Drupal and WordPress have a huge community of developers and companies worldwide who can help if your current vendor is not satisfying your needs.
  
  
• SEO. Very SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly from its core installation. With the right modules and configuration it can dramatically simplify SEO tasks for an organization.
  
  
• Lower cost of implementation. A multitude of out-of-the-box plugins or modules to add instant features and functionality. This is reassuring and speeds up development of your site and lowers costs, since functionality does not need to be "custom coded" or re-built. 
  
  
• Multilingual. Both can be internationalized and translated into other languages. We've written a special guide on Drupal's multilingual challenges and considerations. You will need to make similar considerations for any complex WordPress site that you wish to internationalize.
  
  
• Community. A diverse and invested community that is global with a growing number of conferences, camps and local user groups. 
  
  
• Self-managing website. Both platforms are meant to be managed by you. You create the compelling content, follow an SEO strategy, tack on a CRM, and your business, organization, or institution will flourish.
  
  
• Mobile-friendly. Editing and publishing content is easy on your mobile phone, and the platforms are built out of the box to be ready for mobile devices.
  
  
• Much much more! Contact us to walk you through the advantages.

Drupal vs. WordPress Caveats

Drupal expertise is more important to have than WordPress expertise. Since it is generally more complex, Drupal is easier to screw up if the programmer or agency you hire doesn't know what they're doing. You have to learn the Drupal architecture, The Drupal Way, in order to build a strong website foundation, just as you have to learn architecture to build a strong foundation for a building. We often get "rescue" Drupal projects, i.e. architecturally weak, unmaintainable sites that we have to either clean up or completely rebuild.

Drupal sometimes gets knocked for "usability issues", but unnecessarily so. Drupal was designed to be more of a "blank slate" than WordPress, more of a true "framework" in technical speak. Usability is easily enhanced if you install simple add-on modules -- here is a list of Drupal modules that improve usability -- or by simply taking the time to design and plan for the administrative user experience in your UX design phase of the project. Otherwise, use a distribution like Acquia's Lightning to get usability enhancements out of the box.

Drupal has many distributions to get you build many types of websites quickly. Here's a list of actively maintained distributions. They include ready-made installations to help you quickly build things such as an eCommerce store, a conference website, an intranet and collaboration portal, online communities, social networks, government websites, news sites, media and publishing sites, and the list goes on.

When scouting for a Drupal developer, agency, or web development partner, look for participation in the Drupal community, such as their presence on Drupal.org, attendance at conferences or Drupal "camps", code or "modules" that the agency has contributed back to Drupal.org, and get a few references from clients for which they have done Drupal. 

Conclusion

Both CMS platforms are highly evolved and are good bets if you want to future-proof your decision from a technology standpoint. Both now offer relatively smooth upgrade paths between major versions, with Drupal announcing that an upgrade to Drupal 9 will be quite similar and seamless as a minor version upgrade in Drupal 8.

Ultimately, the one you pick comes down to choosing the right tool for the job at hand. To make an informed choice you have to do a lot of work in the planning and discovery stages where you lay out what your website needs to do, who will be running it, how complex it will be, who your best vendor is and what platform they are most skilled at, and anticipate what your future needs will be. 

Which one will you chose, and why?

Leave a comment below to help others. If you're still not sure, contact us to discuss options! No sales reps here – just technical experts who can help you decide and evaluate your business KPIs and criteria.