The Showdown
First, let's take a look at a competition that was performed between the 3 CMS's... the "SXSW Web Content Management System Showdown." Three teams competed to build a community website with the same requirements. Here's the results:
| Drupal | Joomla! | WordPress | |
| Total Hours | 79.25 | 57.25 | 90.5 |
| Hours spent on front end | 21.75 | 15 | 36.5 |
| HTML Validation | No (8 errors) | Yes | No (8 errors) |
| CSS Validation | No (7 errors) | No (1 error) | No (21 errors) |
| Page weight | 180K | 140K | 154K |
| Lines of custom PHP/JS code | 220 | 30 | 1,808 |
So what does this breakdown tell you?
First let me point out that the most expensive thing clients pay for is custom code or custom graphic design. Wordpress, while having a friendly and pretty backend, can be incredibly costly and took nearly twice the amount of time to make a similar Joomla! site. That is twice the cost to you the client! When we say our websites cost half that of our competitors, we are grossly understating things... our cost to you is half what even other inexpensive companies using other CMS's might charge! Wordpress is best left to it's specialty... blogging websites, where it likely would have been a real competitor of Joomla! and likely toasted Drupal. Bottom-line, Joomla! has more add-ons available, and therefore needs less custom coding, and saves you money.
Drupal vs. Joomla!
So let's take Wordpress out of the equation and compare Drupal and Joomla! I should point out that even though Drupal's stat's were below Joomla!'s above, Drupal took 1st place at the PAKT CMS Awards last year, while Joomla! took second, so Drupal is a serious competitor.
Alledia.com presented a fair breakdown/comparison of the two CMS's out-of-the-box. This comparison is a bit dated, but highlights some major differences. This however was a silly comparison because Drupal is instantly out-shined by Joomla! and Joomla!'s flaws are instantly removed by adding a few add-ons that are freely available. This is the beauty of Joomla!. In fact by installing a single free extension, K2, a CCK (content construction kit), Drupal is instantly brought to its knees.
The Unqualified IBM "Expert"
Now here is an article showcasing a comparison between Joomla! and Drupal from the view of an IBM Consultant looking for an enterprise level solution. He favors Drupal, even while pointing out glaring flaws such as "Drupal’s backend admin functionality is bad. The front end, backend separation is tenuous and confusing. Joomla is far better." He also admits Joomla wins in templates and he says about the learning curve, "Joomla is far easier to get up and running. Even with all the free videos, blogs, etc, Drupal is still a lot more challenging." Also read the comments below that article and you will see all the programmers that favor Drupal. I imagine his choice would have been different had he used Joomla! with K2, a powerful and free CCK.
How to choose? Are you a website programmer or a website design client?
Drupal is favored by programmers and coders, which is why it took first place in the CMS awards, but remember they (programmers) want to do lots of programming... that's how they get paid! Custom programming/coding and custom graphic design work are the two greatest factors that increase website design costs. The competition between the two gets even more ridiculous when you look at templates (graphical layouts and designs) that are available for the two. Joomla! wins hands down. Using Joomla! we are able to eliminate 99% of custom coding and graphic design, saving you lot's of time and money. So while Joomla! may not be the tech-nerdy piece of code chosen by programmers, it wins for you the consumers. So unless you are a programmer, you will love having a Joomla! site and when the time comes to add functionality you will find it much cheaper to do so, since an add-on has already likely been written.
In a nutshell, Wordpress is the easiest out-of-the box to administer, Drupal is the choice of coders and nerds, and Joomla! is the most versatile and least expensive AND with a few free tools is easily beats its competitors...
To compare, Wordpress is like a simple phone, while Drupal is like the open Android software for phones made by Google. Joomla! however is like the iPhone... a bit more limited than other smart-phones out of the box, but there tons of apps (extensions) available for it, which make it the best phone out there... and it is easy for non-nerds to use!
UPDATE: Our friends over at CompasDesigns posted on article with a simple chart for deciding which one to use:
http://www.compassdesigns.net/joomla-blog/how-to-choose-between-joomla-drupal-and-wordpress
So why do we choose Joomla?
Simply because we can build websites faster, with more features, at a lower price, which benefits you the consumer!
So ready to get a Joomla! site?
If so, contact us now!
ps - watch how upset the fanboys, aligned with each CMS, get in the comments below!
My goal is to contribute to the Joomla! Community and to share insights that will be usefull to other website designers and my clients.
