Joomla vs WordPress Guide – SEO, Usability, eCommerce, Business and Performance

Today, we’ll take a look at content management systems (CMS). Joomla vs WordPress comes to mind.

Joomla! is a free and open source content management system created and supported by an amazing and supportive community of developers around the world.

It’s not as popular as the big kahuna (i.e. WordPress) but pound-for-pound you can make the argument that Joomla is equally as powerful.

On the contrary, what started off as a blogging software is now the world’s largest content management system (CMS) – Welcome to WordPress! It is free. WordPress is open-source. It is for blogging. WordPress is for site building. It is for online store. WordPress is for anything!

Joomla vs WordPress

In this brief, we’re going to discuss Joomla vs WordPress across areas such as Search Engine Optimization, Usability, eCommerce Capabilities, Business Websites, and Performance.

1. Search Engine Optimization

From the search engine optimization perspective for Joomla vs WordPress, both platforms are armed with array of SEO plugins. In essence, a plugin is an add-on component to extend existing functionality with specific feature – in this case search engine optimization.

Btw, check out our Best WordPress Plugs for WP Sites & Blogs guide for a list of top WordPress plugins.

Plugins such as Yoast or All in One Pack make search engine optimization support easy in WordPress.

2. Usability

Learning curve for Joomla is much harder when compared to same for WordPress. To clarify, before we get mobbed by Joomla lovers out there – Joomla is quite easy to use. However, it’s our measured opinion that it requires more effort for a newbie.

Unlike WordPress that is armed with a simple user-interface thus making it easy for a non-technie to quickly grasp. In order words technical experience is not necessary; it’s intuitive and easy to get a simple site up and running.

It’s also easy to copy and paste text from Microsoft Word document to a WordPress site than it is into a Joomla site.

3. E-Commerce Capabilities

If you want to quickly sell on your website or blog you’ll come to appreciate WordPress more. Get to know WooCommerce which is a free eCommerce plugin for WordPress over 3 million active installations.

It will certainly make your life easier when deciding to turn on eCommerce on your WordPress site or blog.

Then again, Joomla although can be used for eCommerce is not built for the small business owner. It’s a great platform for huge, database driven websites with lots of content. As such it can be daunting for the small business owner who wants to set up a quick online store.

However, that being said Joomla has some great plugins for eCommerce. Thus it allows you to manage your products and content in all one place.

So do your research, evaluate your needs and then decide which platform gives you the best edge. As for us, we’ll posit that given WordPress is great for blogging, and blogging is great for eCommerce then WordPress is great for eCommerce.

4. Business Website

Looking at Joomla vs WordPress from a business website perspective, Joomla is suited for complex, advanced and versatile websites. Basically, those that require some complexity in the organization of data.

Therefore, you need to take a closer look at Joomla if your business have such needs. If you looking to build a platform of sites or online stores with tons of users then consider Joomla.

However, if your needs border around simple websites, blogs or news sites that you can easily manage; then under such circumstance WordPress is your goto platform.

Coupled with the fact that the vast availability of add-ons and plugins on its platform; makes it easy to expand and grow the functionality of your site as time goes on.

5. Performance

By the same token, it’s all subjective when it comes to the performance side of Joomla vs WordPress. There are several factors that can affect the performance of any WordPress or Joomla installation.

In the first place, we can all agree that if things are not set up and configure properly; performance is affected. Consequently, if the right hosting environment is not selected for housing and delivery the Joomla or WordPress content; then again performance is affected as well.

These are just two examples but there are many variants out there that can affect the performance of a WordPress vs Joomla installation.

That being said, we must state that one of the awesomeness of WordPress is the amazing support community behind it. Vast number of developers have put time and effort developing plugins and extensions that gives WordPress better performance.

Popular plugins such as W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, and Varnish come to mind. Likewise, if you look at the Joomla ecosystem you’ll see plenty of extensions designed to enhance performance.

Regardless of which platform you decide to use, when it comes to performance it’s worth noting that whether you’re running Joomla or WordPress the most important aspect of keeping your website or blog running at optimal performance is to ensure that you actively maintain and update your site/blog.

In Conclusion

All things considered, both platforms (Joomla vs WordPress) are tested and proven. As such they can get the job done – it all depends on their application and implementation. So do your research, spend some time and play around with both platforms and get a feel of each one before making a decision.