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Joomla vs. Drupal: What’s Best for Ecommerce

10 min read

If you’re looking for the best ecommerce platform to put your company’s online store, you’re definitely not alone. Choosing the right platform is no small decision, nor is it easy. There’s a lot of things to consider, from layout to price. Joomla, which can also be written as “Joomla!” with an exclamation mark, is a free service for publishing content on websites. Both Joomla and Drupal make it into the top five list of most popular open source platforms.

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The Brief History of Joomla

Joomla was the preferred CMS website when they started in 2005, even over the popular blogging site WordPress. However, that win was short-lived. By 2009, WordPress took over. Now, Joomla powers 2% of all websites.

Joomla-market-share

Joomla Yearly Market Share 2010–2022 (Sources: W3techs)

There ya have it, a brief history of Joomla to impress all of your friends! Be sure to keep that one in the back pocket at parties. Who doesn’t always need a good background on a great online resource?

The Brief History of Drupal

Drupal started back in 2001, making the CMS site 20 years old. While Drupal only powers 1% of all CMS websites, they power very high-powered websites, including NASA’s official website, the State of Colorado’s official website, and the Dallas Cowboys’ official website.

Drupal-market-share

Drupal Yearly Market Share 2011–2022 (Sources: W3techs)

There ya have it, a brief history of Drupal to impress strangers you pass on the street! Passersby, beware.

Joomla vs. Drupal Round One: Cost

Both Joomla and Drupal are open source softwares, meaning they are both free to download, use, and maintain. Hooray! However, both of these softwares do have paid extensions. That being said, they also both have free extensions, which makes this round a tie! You can’t beat a price like free. What this means is that there’s virtually (no online store pun intended) no loss for the initial cost of your business. There’s only going up from here.

Joomla vs. Drupal Round Two: Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important part of maintaining your brand. However, the SEO capabilities are not apparent for either Joomla or Drupal until you perform a deep dive.

Joomla isn’t exactly known for its SEO capabilities on its own. It’s actually quite tricky to manage on its own. However, it does combat its limited built-in SEO capabilities by having multiple extensions, one being comparable to WordPress’ third-party plugin, Yoast.

Drupal, on the other hand, offers you built-in SEO capabilities that are very easy to manage. Plus, Drupal offers a very fast page loading time—which, believe it or not, does affect your page’s SEO.

Joomla vs. Drupal Round Three: Security

Security is a major focus for most store owners, and if it isn’t a priority for you, it should be. A secure website not only protects you, but it protects your customers as well. Rest assured that your ecommerce data is safe and sound behind a secure digital vault. When looking at Joomla vs Drupal in terms of security, both Joomla and Drupal ecommerce packages offer excellent security in different ways.

With a track record of running over 9% of all ever known business websites, Joomla is certainly nothing to ignore in regards to its overall security rating. Joomla offers a robust codebase that helps maintain a level of complexity the best systems would have a hard time trying to crack. While offering a reliable two-factor authentication measure on top of extensive access controls, Joomla provides all the tools necessary to make sure that your data is safe.

Even better than that, they have their own GeekSquad. Sorry, did we say GeekSquad? We meant to say their own Security Strike Team. The Joomla Security Strike Team, or JSST for short, acts quickly and responsively to the ever-encroaching world of data theft. By staying ahead of the curve, releasing patches to their system before exploits can even become widespread, there is little that can get by them in terms of security measures.

What about Drupal, though? Surely they have the same itch to keep your data safe. Thankfully, they do, and with just as much passion. Drupal offers similar methods in terms of patches and dedicated support that Joomla does. Offering frequent updates and content patches, they give you everything you need to keep your ecommerce system up to date.

Platform.sh is recommended to allow ease of use when updating various modules and core data. Through Platform.sh, Drupal allows their subscribers to keep their content consistently patched. This allows them to block any site through HTTP that does not have the patch, meaning nothing will ever be able to breach your data. Drupal’s utilization of Platform.sh allows them to ensure the dedicated stability of their sites while maintaining a high standard for security at all costs.

Joomla vs. Drupal Round Four: Overall Ecommerce Experience

Having options is always a plus, and luckily Both Joomla and Drupal offer various payment gateways. The main difference between them is that Joomla’s payment gateways are extension-based and Drupal’s payment gateways are content-driven and open-source. This helps them facilitate lower costs, higher quality, greater innovation, and faster speed. Despite these benefits, Drupal’s system is a bit more challenging for newcomers. This rise in difficulty might require the need to hire a developer to set up. The payout is worth it, though.

Don’t take that to mean Joomla is behind, though! Joomla offers many great payment gateway extensions, including Ecwid, Stripe, and even offers some cryptocurrency options. And with the increasing popularity of crypto currencies, now is the time to get in on the action. Don’t get left behind with these amazing ecommerce options.

Pros of Joomla

Joomla is a free open-source platform, which allows you to use code without licensing fees. It’s easy to install and uses PHP language (the most common web development language). If you are determined to create your website on your own, you’re very likely to find classes and educational videos focusing on PHP language. Joomla uses extensions instead of plugins, making it altogether more secure.

Pros of Drupal

Similar to Joomla, Drupal is also a free open-source platform, meaning you can also use all of their code without worrying about licensing fees. Drupal is licensed under the general public license, or GPL, and is community-focused and free to use by merchants across the globe. It is neatly integrated for a mobile environment, meaning their services are available in the palm of your hand.

They also feature a large amount of third-party integration. What does this mean? Well, think of it like Apple Pay or PayPal. They offer a long list of various services that seamlessly integrate their software into their site. The application programming interface, or API, is already equipped to be extended and import and export all of your ecommerce data.

Overall

With all that said, this brings us to the tough part. Both ecommerce systems provide a dedicated and lengthy track record with stellar features that back those ratings up with ease. Both systems offer ease of use, open-source platforms for free, as well as robust security packages. Did we say free? So it comes down to a matter of reputation, as Joomla already boasts a larger number across the board, hosting sites in the millions.

In this battle of Joomla vs Drupal, however, we are going to root for the small dog and choose Drupal as the winner—albeit by a small margin. This up-and-comer certainly brings a great deal to the plate, boasting a consistent track record of twenty years so far and only getting stronger as the days go by. While it might take some web development knowledge and developer assistance, the same can be said for Joomla.

Do you want to learn more about selling online with Joomla?

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About the author

Max has been working in the ecommerce industry for the last six years helping brands to establish and level-up content marketing and SEO. Despite that, he has experience with entrepreneurship. He is a fiction writer in his free time.

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So simple to use – even my most technophobic clients can manage. Easy to install, quick to set up. Light years ahead of other shop plugins.
I’m so impressed I’ve recommended it to my website clients and am now using it for my own store along with four others for which I webmaster. Beautiful coding, excellent top-notch support, great documentation, fantastic how-to videos. Thank you so much Ecwid, you rock!
I’ve used Ecwid and I love the platform itself. Everything is so simplified it’s insane. I love how you have different options to choose shipping carriers, to be able to put in so many different variants. It’s a pretty open e-commerce gateway.
Easy to use, affordable (and a free option if starting off). Looks professional, many templates to select from. The App is my favorite feature as I can manage my store right from my phone. Highly recommended 👌👍
I like that Ecwid was easy to start and to use. Even for a person like me, without any technical background. Very well written help articles. And the support team is the best for my opinion.
For everything it has to offer, ECWID is incredibly easy to set up. Highly recommend! I did a lot of research and tried about 3 other competitors. Just try ECWID and you'll be online in no time.

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