Table of contents

IntroductionEase of useDesign and customizationContent management and flexibilityPlugins and extensionsPerformance and SEOSecurityNext stepsAdditional resources

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WordPress Guide → Vs → Joomla

Joomla vs WordPress: Which Will Serve Your Website Better?

Creating a website begins with choosing the appropriate CMS. Joomla and WordPress are leading options, each offering distinct functionalities. WordPress is recognized for its ease of use and powers over 40% of all websites. Joomla, although more intricate, provides high flexibility, making it suitable for users requiring advanced features.

WordPress is ideal for small to medium businesses, bloggers, and content creators who prioritize ease of use and quick setup. Its intuitive interface makes it perfect for non-technical users who need a professional website without a steep learning curve.

Joomla, with its more advanced structure, targets users who need complex content organization and are willing to invest time in learning the platform. It excels for websites requiring detailed user permission systems, multilingual capabilities, and complex data structures.

Grasping the differences between these platforms can help you align your choice with your specific needs. Below is a comparative table highlighting essential attributes of both Joomla and WordPress, assisting your evaluation process.

Joomla vs WordPress: Overview

Grasping the differences between these platforms can help you align your choice with your specific needs. Below is a comparative table highlighting essential attributes of both Joomla and WordPress, assisting your evaluation process.

Feature	Joomla	WordPress
Ease of Use	Moderate	Easy
Customization	Highly customizable	Highly customizable
Flexibility	Very flexible	Flexible
Plugins/Extensions	Over 8,000	Over 58,000
SEO	Good SEO capabilities	Excellent SEO capabilities
Security	Strong security features	Good security features, requires regular updates
Community	Active community support	Large community support
Best Use Cases	Complex sites, social networks, and e-commerce	Blogs, small to medium-sized websites, and e-commerce

By assessing these features, you can more accurately determine which CMS fits your needs. Our managed hosting services are optimized for both Joomla and WordPress, ensuring your website performs optimally regardless of your selection.

Ease of use

When selecting a CMS, ease of use is a critical factor. WordPress is celebrated for its beginner-friendly platform, showcasing a straightforward interface that enables content creation and management with minimal technical expertise. Its user-friendly dashboard and extensive plugin library allow even new users to set up their websites swiftly. A variety of themes makes personalizing your site a fun experience rather than a daunting task.

Conversely, Joomla presents a more intricate environment, resulting in a steeper learning curve for newcomers. While it provides powerful features for advanced users, beginners might find its multifaceted interface challenging.

Let’s explore both platforms in more detail.

WordPress: Ease of use

WordPress has built a strong reputation around its simplicity and accessibility, making it the go-to CMS for beginners and non-technical users. Its intuitive dashboard allows users to publish content, manage media, install plugins, and customize themes with just a few clicks. The interface is clean, with a minimal learning curve, and it’s backed by extensive documentation and community support.

One of the standout features is the Gutenberg block editor, which makes content creation more visual and flexible. Users can insert, rearrange, and style different types of content using a drag-and-drop interface. Additionally, WordPress installations are often one-click through most hosting providers, streamlining the setup process.

Themes and plugins are easy to install and activate, with most offering guided setup wizards. Even if you’re unfamiliar with HTML or CSS, WordPress empowers you to build a functional, attractive website. Overall, WordPress excels in user-friendliness, allowing creators to focus more on their content and goals and less on technical implementation.

WordPress: Ease of use

Joomla is often considered a more complex CMS, particularly for users new to website management. Its interface is not as immediately intuitive as WordPress, primarily because of its emphasis on flexibility and modular control. Joomla uses a system of components, modules, and menus, which gives users greater command over site structure, but also introduces a steeper learning curve.

For example, creating a simple page in Joomla may involve configuring modules, linking menu items, and setting display parameters, which can be overwhelming for beginners. However, this complexity is also what makes Joomla a powerful choice for developers and tech-savvy users who want granular control over their website’s behavior.

That said, Joomla has improved its user experience in recent versions, and its backend dashboard is cleaner than in years past. The Joomla community provides robust documentation and forums, which can help bridge the learning gap. Once users understand its logic, Joomla offers deep customization options that rival many enterprise platforms.

Both platforms allow significant customization and flexibility, enabling users to tailor their websites to meet specific needs. WordPress excels with its vast array of plugins and themes, allowing effortless enhancement of functionality. Joomla, while requiring more effort to customize, provides robust options for developing complex websites.

The decision between WordPress and Joomla hinges on your comfort level with technology and the specific requirements of your project, but our hosting solutions can support you regardless of your choice, ensuring smooth and efficient website performance.

Design and customization

In the realm of design and customization, both Joomla and WordPress present unique strengths. WordPress offers a user-friendly approach to design and customization, while Joomla provides advanced options for experienced users.

Design and customization

Design flexibility is one of WordPress’s biggest selling points. With over 10,000 themes (both free and premium), users can find designs tailored to nearly any niche or aesthetic. Whether you’re launching a personal blog, a portfolio, or a corporate website, there are theme options that suit your vision right out of the box.

Customization is equally robust. Page builders like Elementor, Beaver Builder, and Divi allow real-time editing using drag-and-drop functionality. These tools offer control over layout, typography, color schemes, and more—without writing code. For developers and designers, WordPress themes are also easy to modify with custom CSS or child themes.

Furthermore, WordPress follows a template hierarchy system, making it developer-friendly when deeper customization is needed. The WordPress Customizer, available for most themes, allows for quick branding updates such as logos, colors, and fonts. Combined with its extensive plugin ecosystem, WordPress is the ideal platform for users who want full control over the look and feel of their website with minimal technical barriers.

Joomla: Design and customization

Joomla offers a powerful template system that supports modular design, making it ideal for complex layouts. Unlike WordPress, where design customization is usually theme-based, Joomla’s design structure allows for more precise placement of content blocks via modules. This modular flexibility is especially useful for websites that require different content layouts across various pages.

While the number of ready-made templates for Joomla is smaller than WordPress, many are highly sophisticated and tailored for specific industries. Commercial template providers like JoomShaper and RocketTheme offer professional, responsive designs with built-in customization tools and pre-configured layouts.

For more advanced users, Joomla’s override system lets you customize core output without altering the original codebase, which is ideal for preserving updates and stability. Joomla also supports template frameworks like Helix and T3, which add drag-and-drop editing and layout flexibility similar to WordPress page builders.

Though Joomla may require more effort to customize, the payoff is substantial: fine-tuned control over every design element. For developers and power users, Joomla’s structure offers unmatched design potential.

Our hosting solutions are optimized for both platforms, ensuring smooth and efficient site performance, allowing you to focus on creating the ideal design for your audience.

Content management and flexibility

Assessing content management capabilities and overall flexibility is vital when considering Joomla vs WordPress. WordPress is widely recognized as the preferred option for blogs, small businesses, and general websites.

Joomla excels in managing more complex and structured content, making it ideal for websites that require sophisticated architecture, such as membership sites, e-commerce platforms, and community forums.

WordPress: Content management and flexibility

WordPress was originally built as a blogging platform, which gives it a natural advantage in content management. Its intuitive editor supports various media types, and users can easily categorize and tag posts for better organization. WordPress also offers custom post types and taxonomies, allowing developers to expand content structures beyond pages and posts.

For content scheduling, WordPress provides built-in publishing tools such as post drafts, scheduling, and revisions. This functionality is especially helpful for editorial workflows and collaborative environments. With plugins like Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) or Pods, users can further extend content types and customize the admin experience.

Although WordPress is typically used for simpler websites, it can also scale for more complex projects with the right configurations and plugins. Features like multisite support, multilingual content (via WPML or Polylang), and content staging environments add layers of flexibility. Ultimately, WordPress offers the right balance of simplicity and scalability for managing content at various levels of complexity.

Joomla: Content management and flexibility

Joomla’s strength lies in its native content architecture. From the outset, Joomla supports custom content types through its “articles” system, backed by categories, tags, and custom fields. This makes it a robust choice for sites that require structured, complex content such as intranets, directories, or educational portals.

Unlike WordPress, Joomla has built-in multilingual support. You don’t need third-party plugins to manage multilingual websites—language packs and content associations are included by default. This makes Joomla especially effective for global businesses and multicultural audiences.

Joomla also excels in managing user permissions and access control levels (ACL). You can assign users to specific groups and control what they can view, edit, or manage. This makes it suitable for organizations with hierarchical team structures.

While Joomla may require more effort during initial setup, its depth of customization makes it more adaptable to large-scale or specialized projects. For developers or teams managing intricate content workflows, Joomla offers a level of native flexibility that can reduce long-term dependency on plugins.

The choice between Joomla and WordPress ultimately depends on your specific needs. For straightforward content creation and management for small-scale projects, WordPress might be more suitable. For managing complex content or requiring advanced functionality, Joomla could be the better option. Recognizing these differences will help you make an informed decision that aligns with your business goals.

Plugins and extensions

Enhancing your website’s capabilities is achievable with both WordPress and Joomla through their respective plugin and extension systems.

WordPress: Plugins and extensions

With over 58,000 plugins available in the WordPress repository, it’s safe to say the platform excels in extendibility. Whether you need SEO tools, eCommerce integration, social media feeds, or security enhancements, there’s a plugin that fits the bill. Popular plugins like WooCommerce, Yoast SEO, and Jetpack have become essential tools for millions of sites.

Installing and managing plugins is easy through the admin interface. Most are plug-and-play, with guided setup wizards that make integration seamless for beginners. Many plugins offer both free and premium versions, giving users the flexibility to upgrade as their needs grow.

The plugin ecosystem also encourages innovation and community development. Many developers build niche plugins to solve specific problems, which makes WordPress adaptable across industries. However, it’s important to be selective—poorly coded plugins can affect performance or introduce vulnerabilities. Trusted hosting providers, like Liquid Web, can help monitor plugin compatibility and performance to ensure your site remains secure and optimized.

Joomla: Plugins and extensions

Joomla’s extension ecosystem may be smaller than WordPress, but it’s by no means limited. With around 8,000 extensions, Joomla supports a wide range of functions including eCommerce, forms, SEO, analytics, and more. Many of these extensions are highly configurable and built with advanced use cases in mind.

Joomla extensions are grouped into components, modules, and plugins, each serving different roles in the site’s architecture. This modularity gives developers more control over how features are integrated and displayed. For example, a component might manage a store, while modules display related products in different positions across the site.

While installation requires more configuration compared to WordPress, Joomla’s centralized update system makes it easy to keep extensions up to date. Documentation and developer support are generally strong, especially for premium extensions.

Overall, Joomla extensions are better suited for users who value control and don’t mind investing time in setup and testing. When paired with optimized hosting, Joomla’s modular architecture can deliver powerful, efficient sites.
Regardless of the platform you choose, our hosting solutions are optimized for both WordPress and Joomla, guaranteeing smooth, secure, and efficient site performance.

Performance and SEO

Both Joomla and WordPress present unique advantages regarding performance and SEO. Speed optimization is essential for user experience and search engine rankings. Both platforms support various caching mechanisms.

WordPress: Performance and SEO

Performance optimization in WordPress is supported by a mature ecosystem of plugins and tools. Users can boost site speed with caching plugins like WP Rocket, image optimization tools like Smush, and content delivery networks (CDNs) like Cloudflare. Hosting also plays a major role—Liquid Web’s managed WordPress hosting includes server-level caching, staging environments, and performance monitoring for consistently fast load times.

SEO is one of WordPress’s strongest areas. Plugins like Yoast SEO and Rank Math make it easy to manage meta titles, descriptions, structured data, XML sitemaps, and keyword optimization. These tools provide real-time feedback and scoring systems that guide users to improve on-page SEO.

The combination of fast loading times, mobile-responsive themes, and SEO-friendly plugins makes WordPress ideal for maximizing search visibility. When paired with high-performance hosting, WordPress sites can meet and exceed Core Web Vitals metrics, helping boost search rankings and user engagement.

Joomla: Performance and SEO

Joomla also provides strong performance features, though they often require more manual configuration. Built-in caching systems, gzip compression, and page speed tools are available within the admin panel. Joomla allows administrators to fine-tune performance parameters such as cache lifespan, session handling, and plugin loading order.

SEO in Joomla is also solid, though less intuitive for beginners. You can enable SEF (Search Engine Friendly) URLs, manually add metadata, and configure URL rewriting using the built-in tools. Joomla also offers structured data support and breadcrumbs through extensions, but it lacks the guided SEO workflow that WordPress plugins provide.

Advanced users can achieve excellent SEO with Joomla, especially if they’re comfortable managing technical configurations. Paired with performance-focused hosting, Joomla sites can compete effectively in search engine rankings, although the optimization process may require a higher degree of involvement.

Both platforms have made significant advancements in mobile responsiveness. WordPress themes are predominantly mobile-responsive, ensuring your site adapts seamlessly to various screen sizes. Joomla also provides responsive templates, but users may find the selection more limited compared to WordPress.

The two platforms also offer tools to enhance accessibility, ensuring your website reaches a wider audience. These considerations are essential, as they affect your search rankings at a core level.

Search rankings are just about as much about speed, uptime, and user experience as they are about keywords. That’s why our WordPress and Joomla hosting is engineered for performance at every level, helping your site meet Core Web Vitals and SEO goals.
Tiffany Bridge, Product Manager, eCommerce Applications

Security

Security is an essential concern when comparing Joomla and WordPress. WordPress, being the most popular CMS, is frequently targeted by hackers. To reduce these risks, it is essential to follow best practices such as using strong passwords, enabling two-factor authentication, and regularly updating plugins and themes.

WordPress: Security

WordPress security is a common concern due to its widespread use, but the platform has matured significantly. Regular updates, a responsive core team, and a vigilant community make WordPress safer than ever, provided site owners follow best practices. These include:

Keeping plugins and themes updated.
Using security plugins like Solid Security or Sucuri.
Enabling SSL, 2FA, and strong passwords.
Limiting login attempts and using activity logs.

Managed hosting providers like Liquid Web also offer real-time malware scanning, DDoS protection, and automatic updates to reduce risk. For enterprise-level security, firewalls and IP blacklists can be added at the server level.
While WordPress requires more attention due to its plugin dependency, the security tools and services available make it possible to maintain a highly secure site. With the proper setup, WordPress can meet even strict compliance requirements.

Joomla: Security

Joomla takes a security-first approach in its core architecture. Its built-in Access Control List (ACL) system allows precise role and permission settings, limiting who can access or modify content. This is especially important for enterprise or multi-author sites.

Joomla’s admin panel includes security recommendations and a checklist to help users stay on top of best practices. It also supports two-factor authentication and CAPTCHA integration out of the box. Many security vulnerabilities in Joomla result from outdated extensions rather than the CMS itself, which makes regular updates essential.

Joomla also allows admins to force SSL across the site and enforce password policies, creating a secure environment with minimal external tools. With fewer third-party dependencies than WordPress, Joomla can offer a more stable security posture for users willing to manage updates proactively.

Regular updates and proactive security measures are vital for both platforms. Timely updates to core systems and installed extensions safeguard against newly discovered vulnerabilities. By prioritizing security and utilizing a dependable hosting provider, you can ensure your website remains secure, performs optimally, and is protected from potential threats.

Costs and Pricing

When evaluating WordPress versus Joomla, cost factors extend beyond the free software itself. Both platforms are open-source, but building and maintaining a site involves additional expenses based on your needs and technical skills.

WordPress

Lower initial costs for simple sites – Ideal for small businesses, bloggers, and beginners.
Premium themes typically cost between $30–$100 for a one-time license or annual subscription.
Plugins range from $15–$200 per year, depending on functionality and support.
Wide availability of developers helps keep customization and maintenance costs relatively low.
Additional costs may include security plugins, backups, and performance optimization tools.

Joomla

Higher upfront development costs – Especially for complex builds that require professional setup.
Fewer paid extensions needed – Many advanced features (like multilingual support, ACL) are built-in.
Template and extension marketplaces offer both free and commercial options, though the ecosystem is smaller than WordPress.
Specialized Joomla developers can be more expensive and harder to find compared to WordPress freelancers.

Other Considerations

Ongoing maintenance – Both platforms require updates and monitoring for themes, plugins, or extensions.
Hosting requirements – Choose a provider optimized for your CMS to reduce hidden performance and security costs.
Custom development – Budget for developer assistance if your site needs unique functionality or integrations.

Liquid Web offers optimized hosting plans for both WordPress and Joomla, helping reduce long-term maintenance costs while improving site speed and security.

Hosting considerations for Joomla and WordPress

Both WordPress and Joomla have specific hosting requirements that directly influence performance, security, and long-term scalability. WordPress is compatible with nearly all major hosting environments, and many providers offer specialized WordPress hosting plans that come with optimized server configurations, one-click installations, automatic updates, and built-in performance enhancements. These features make it easy for users to set up and manage their websites with minimal technical intervention.

Joomla, while also widely supported, typically demands slightly more server resources, especially for complex websites that rely on multiple extensions, advanced user permission systems, or multilingual functionality. Although Joomla can run on shared hosting, more robust environments such as VPS or dedicated servers are often better suited to support its modular architecture and heavier load requirements.

When evaluating hosting providers for either platform, it’s important to ensure compatibility with the latest PHP versions, support for MySQL or MariaDB databases, and sufficient storage and bandwidth to handle your site’s traffic and content. Reliable SSL support and consistent uptime are also essential for maintaining security and user trust.

Managed hosting solutions are available for both Joomla and WordPress, offering advantages such as automatic backups, enhanced security, expert support, and performance tuning.

One of the best ways to optimize the speed of your WordPress site is to host that site with the fastest WordPress hosting services on the market. Liquid Web has a suite of premier hosting solutions specifically designed for WordPress sites to make sure yours is secure, reliable, and as fast as possible.

Joomla and WordPress serve different types of users, but both need a solid hosting foundation to deliver performance and reliability. Our managed solutions are configured to meet the demands of both platforms—from caching layers and staging environments to real-time monitoring and expert support.
– Carrie Wheeler, President, Liquid Web

Choosing a provider like Liquid Web ensures your CMS operates within an optimized environment, helping you achieve strong performance and stability from day one.

Joomla vs WordPress: Which is best for you?

Joomla and WordPress each bring their own strengths to the table. WordPress offers unmatched ease of use, a vast plugin ecosystem, and strong community support, making it ideal for small to mid-sized websites and users without technical expertise. Joomla, with its built-in advanced features and greater flexibility, is better suited for complex sites that demand structured content, layered permissions, and multilingual capabilities.

If you have chosen WordPress or want to migrate from Joomla to WordPress, consider upgrading your hosting solution to unlock its full potential.

Ultimately, the right CMS for your project depends on your goals, technical comfort level, and long-term plans. Understanding the differences and planning your hosting infrastructure accordingly can empower you to create a website that performs reliably and scales with your needs.

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