Drupal vs WordPress: 4 Key Differences

Drupal and WordPress are often grouped together as open source Content Management Systems (CMS). But in practice, WordPress and Drupal couldn’t be more different. Picking the wrong CMS for your project can make development a lot more troublesome.

With the right approach, WordPress can be the backbone of almost any type of website. Drupal, on the other hand, tends to shine for either very simple websites or highly complex projects with high-security requirements.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at Drupal and WordPress. We’ll also go over their key differences to help you choose the right option for your project. Let’s get to it!

An Introduction to Drupal and WordPress

Drupal and WordPress are both open-source CMSs. They enable you to build almost any type of website and manage its content. When you look closer, however, you’ll find several differences between them.

Drupal is a modular content management system that enables you to create and publish content. It offers content creation and editing tools, a comprehensive user role and permissions system, and built-in multilingual support:

Drupal can be customized using modules. It shines for small projects that might not require too much customization, or massive sites if you have access to experienced developers.

Meanwhile, WordPress is mainly known as a blogging platform. However, it’s a very mature CMS with a market share that eclipses other similar tools, and it’s used for all sorts of websites.

In fact, 43.5 percent of sites on the web use WordPress:

With WordPress, you’ll get access to a massive ecosystem of services and custom solutions for the CMS. There are even hosting services that offer plans just for WordPress sites (like our managed WordPress hosting plans).

You can tailor WordPress to work with almost any type of project, from small portfolios to enterprise-level sites. Drupal functions just as well in most cases, but it often requires a bigger investment in terms of web development work.

Drupal vs WordPress: Ease of Use

A good CMS should be relatively easy to use, within reason. Depending on the CMS, you might need to work with a developer for some tasks, but it shouldn’t be the norm.

Drupal struggles a bit in terms of ease of use. It’s easy to set up, but it can take a while to learn how the CMS works and master its main features, such as creating custom post types and content blocks:

Drupal offers a lot of features out of the box. These include support for web forms, custom post types, custom user roles, and redirects.

Having said that, Drupal starts to become difficult to manage as your website scales. Running a large Drupal site and keeping it functional will typically require you to work with a developer.

WordPress benefits a lot from its popularity when it comes to ease of use. There are a lot of web hosts that will automatically install WordPress for you, including NameHero. You can sign up for a hosting plan and get access to the WordPress dashboard in a matter of minutes:

There is also a lot of documentation on how to use WordPress, implement features, and grow your site. It’s safe to say you can run a complex WordPress site without hiring developers once you master the CMS.

Although both WordPress and Drupal offer simple setup processes, WordPress is the more user-friendly option.

Drupal vs WordPress: Customization

Drupal offers a lot of customization options. It’s designed to be a lightweight CMS and you can expand Drupal core using modules.

There’s also a healthy Drupal community around developing modules. You’ll find options for a lot of features, including Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools and e-commerce.

Overall, there are over 18,000 actively maintained modules for Drupal, although not all of them are available with the latest version of the CMS:

Drupal also supports custom content types, fields, and taxonomies. Plus, you can create custom user roles and content blocks, set up multilingual sites, and more.

When you compare Drupal against WordPress, the former wins, at least in terms of what it offers out of the box. However, WordPress has two things going for it that make it more customizable: its popularity and the community of developers around it.

WordPress eclipses other CMSs in terms of the sheer number of services, themes, and plugins created for it (thanks to its CMS market share). There are thousands of plugins and themes that get active maintenance for WordPress, and new options come out every day:

You can also find tutorials on how to do almost anything using the CMS, such as installing WordPress on a cloud provider, creating custom plugins, and more. While Drupal is more customizable by design, WordPress offers many more customization options and extensions.

WordPress vs Drupal: Content Management

WordPress and Drupal offer similar features for content management. With Drupal, you can create and publish any type of content you want, as custom post types are built into the CMS.

Creating content in Drupal involves sections and blocks. Sections are pre-configured elements you can add to pages. However, you don’t get access to modern drag-and-drop building capabilities when working on content. It’s all mostly text-based:

Drupal also enables you to set up custom post types, taxonomies, blocks, and user roles. All of that without having to use modules.

WordPress adopts a more visual building experience for creating pages and content. The Block Editor offers advanced layout options, a broad selection of blocks (or modules), easy customization, and drag-and-drop capabilities:

There are also a lot of page builder plugins that you can install on your WordPress site, including popular tools like Elementor and Divi. You can test different options and decide which one works best for you.

In terms of management, WordPress enables you to create pages and posts by default. To add custom post types, you’ll need to create them manually or use plugins that add this functionality to your site. WooCommerce, for example, adds products as a content type.

If you prefer a visual approach to content creation, WordPress is the logical option. However, plenty of users enjoy Drupal’s approach to creating content, as it’s a more “classic” option.

WordPress vs Drupal: Hosting Options

Both WordPress and Drupal can be set up on basically any web host. A lot of web hosts even offer exclusive plans for Drupal websites or WordPress sites. These are usually tailored to the unique needs of either CMS.

Overall, Drupal and WordPress are pretty equal in terms of hosting options. But it tends to be much easier to find reasonably-priced WordPress hosting plans.

There are also managed WordPress hosting plans. These handle a lot of WordPress maintenance tasks for you, including backups and updates. This way, you can focus on running your website.

With NameHero, you’ll get access to affordable managed WordPress hosting. We’ll set up WordPress for you and optimize it to offer top-of-the-line performance:

We also offer a free domain, free Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates, a Web Application Firewall (WAF), and malware scanning. Plus, our servers can handle large numbers of traffic.

NameHero plans are perfect for WordPress developers, web design agencies, and complete beginners.

Conclusion

Drupal and WordPress are both fantastic options for creating and managing websites. However, they offer incredibly different experiences. Drupal is a good option for very simple or enterprise-level websites, but not for projects that fall in the middle of that spectrum.

WordPress, on the other hand, is much more versatile. You can use it for personal blogs, online stores, and many other types of websites. Plus, you can customize WordPress with plugins, themes, and page builders, and choose a powerful web hosting service to enhance your site’s performance and security.

NameHero offers managed WordPress hosting plans at accessible prices. Sign up for a WordPress hosting plan today!