The Best Website Platform for 2024

Managing a website is a lot easier than it used to be. Over a decade ago, you used to need to use complex software to connect to and edit the HTML files of your website. Today, modern websites utilize Content Management Systems (CMS). There are plenty of platforms out there, but the two most popular are Joomla and WordPress. We’re going to compare the differences to help you make the right choice for your next website.

When It Comes to Website Platforms, We Know Our Stuff

Before we dive in, I wanted to touch briefly on the qualifications for judging these two platforms. Directive has been offering website services for three decades, way back when Microsoft Frontpage and Adobe Flash were a thing. Those technologies are ancient history, but for over 15 years we’ve been using content management systems for all of the websites we build. We’ve tried and explored many of them, and we’ve taken on projects where the website was already built on a particular platform, so we’ve had a lot of experience over the years. We’ve launched over a thousand websites over the last 15 years alone for organizations of all shapes and sizes.

On top of that, we’ve developed and maintained software for both WordPress and Joomla, and we help businesses manage their marketing which heavily involves websites. We maintain the hosting environments for hundreds of websites across the globe. We eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff. 

Other Than Joomla and WordPress, What Other Platforms Are Out There?

Joomla and WordPress are definitely the titans when it comes to content management systems, but there are others that are worth mentioning.

As-a-Service Website Builders

The following are popular website-building platforms that essentially work as a subscription. You pay to access the website builder and that typically covers your website hosting and everything else. These tend to be good options for individuals looking to start a web presence before they have a budget for a professional website. The biggest downside is that these services are very difficult to move away from once you build the website. You can’t export the site and do something different—you have to rebuild your website from the ground up instead.

Wix - Wix is a website builder that is sort of a walled garden when it comes to your website. It has a bunch of built-in tools for building a decent-looking website, but if you build your website on Wix, it’s stuck on Wix until you build it somewhere else. You can’t host it somewhere else, and if you want to add a feature or improve something on it that is beyond the capabilities of Wix, you are out of luck. It’s a decent option if you simply don’t have the budget to have a professional build your website, but most businesses will outgrow it pretty quickly.

Squarespace - Similar to Wix, Squarespace is another walled garden website builder. It has the same problem as Wix—if you build your website there, it’s stuck there until you rebuild your website somewhere else. Squarespace’s toolset is a little less intuitive than Wix, and Wix has more features built-in, but either way, these as-a-service website builders all have limitations that most businesses will eventually outgrow.

GoDaddy Website Builder - We’ve bumped into this one a few times and it’s worth mentioning. Some of the big web hosts have their own proprietary website builders to try to get businesses to commit to their monthly hosting bill. After all, if you build your website on GoDaddy’s builder, you have to keep using GoDaddy’s hosting. If you are going to use an as-a-service builder, you are probably better off using Wix, since it has more features.

Shopify - Shopify is specifically designed for eCommerce, and it does eCommerce extremely well. In fact, if your business is just focused on selling products online, Shopify is likely the option we would recommend. There is a massive library of add-ons so your store can likely do anything you can think of. About 25% of the world’s ecommerce sites use Shopify. You can usually sell products on most of the leading website platforms with some effort, but Shopify really blows them out of the water with modern-day features that include marketing, analytics, and customer features. Even though it’s a walled garden like the other options above, for sites that are strictly eCommerce, Shopify is a really good option.

Hubspot - Hubspot is one of the biggest Customer Relationship Management platforms out there, and they offer a website builder. Think of their website builder in the same vein as GoDaddy’s—you purchased Hubspot for their CRM, but if you build your website with their builder, it’s an incentive for you to keep paying for their CRM. The Hubspot CRM is a great tool for sure, but you don’t need to use their website builder and don’t inherently gain much from it. If you outgrow it or want to go beyond its capabilities, you are still stuck in its environment until you build something else. Plus, if you use Hubspot, you can still get all of the CRM features on any other modern website platform. You don’t need to build your website in Hubspot to get the most out of Hubspot itself.

Self-Hosted Website Platforms

This category gets you out of the website-as-a-service realm. It means you have to pay for hosting and you need to manage the website yourself, but it also means you have more control over the site itself, and that usually results in more flexibility. For instance, all of these platforms can be hosted virtually anywhere as long as the hosting provider supports modern website platforms. These platforms don’t require a subscription (although some addons and features might cost money) and you can even develop custom software for them. These are the platforms that most businesses should consider.

Drupal - Drupal is an open-source development framework that can be used as a CMS. It’s a great platform for web developers, but it tends to be a little too complicated for the average person to manage their website. It’s a great option if you want to develop custom software for the web, and need to integrate your website with other systems or databases; just keep in mind that you’ll need a developer to do that for you. It’s secure, and it has been around for a long time. It doesn’t have the same popularity as some of the other platforms mentioned below, mostly due to its complex learning curve. 

WordPress - WordPress is the most famous Content Management System, and for good reason. It started out as a humble blogging platform and over the last decade or so it has expanded to be a viable website platform. In fact, about 43 percent of all websites use WordPress. WordPress is easy to use, widely supported, and offers a massive community of developers building plugins and addons for it. Wordpress’ biggest weakness is that it relies on third-party plugins so heavily that you run the risk of relying on a third party for critical features of your website. This is a risk with any self-hosted website platform, but with WordPress, it seems to happen more often. For instance, if you pick a really nice theme and pay for it, in a few years, that theme might no longer support new versions of WordPress, and you will be stuck redesigning your website just to keep your website secure.

Fortunately, there are some WordPress plugin and theme developers that are in it for the long haul, but usually, their products are more expensive and have monthly or yearly fees on top of your website hosting. If you are going to build a WordPress site, be aware that there may be additional costs associated with it in order to get the best features and longevity out of it.

Joomla - Joomla is our personal pick. It’s a little older than WordPress and has had plenty of time to mature over the years. Unlike Drupal which is more of a framework, and WordPress which started off as a blog platform, Joomla was developed to be an open source website platform first and foremost. Joomla has a large community of third-party developers that make extensions for it, and this can result in the same issue with WordPress where you become reliant on a particular third-party template or piece of software that could become unsupported. 

Joomla’s biggest flaw is in its development lifecycle. Any version of Joomla has about a 3-year support life, and after that, it’s time to upgrade, which usually involves a migration to the next version of Joomla. This migration can be labor-intensive if you rely on third-party plugins, which you probably do. It’s certainly gotten less intensive over the last couple of versions, but the way around this is to consider that every few years, you should be giving your website a facelift anyway. Plus, you can usually get by using a version of Joomla that has reached end-of-life for a little while since the final versions are usually very stable and secure—you just miss out on new feature updates with the latest and greatest version.

It’s complicated, but if you are working with a competent web designer, you don’t really need to worry too much about it until it comes time to make major changes to your website anyway. It’s a similar issue with WordPress when it comes to using third-party tools, but with Joomla, you at least know when it’s coming and have a healthy grace period.

What CMS Platform Should My Website Use?

We’ve just scratched the surface, but for most businesses, the obvious winners are going to be Joomla or WordPress, unless you are strictly focused on eCommerce, which we’d usually suggest Shopify. We’re putting together a follow-up blog that does a very intensive deep dive between WordPress and Joomla, so stay tuned!

If you need help establishing your web presence, don’t hesitate to give us a call at 607.433.2200.