Craft CMS vs. Joomla!

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Craft CMS
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
Craft is a CMS for creating custom digital experiences on the web. Craft can support design portfolios, multinational marketing sites, and other kinds of sites, and integrates with tools like Salesforce, Mailchimp or Hubspot to offer a full business solution.
$130
per month per project
Joomla
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Joomla! is a free and open source content management system used to publish web content. Included features are page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, a search function, and support for language internationalization.N/A
Pricing
Craft CMSJoomla!
Editions & Modules
Team
$130
per month per project
Pro
$240
per month per project
Team
$279
per year includes one year of updates ($99 for support each subsequent year)
Pro
$399
per year includes one year of updates ($99 for support each subsequent year)
Enterprise
Contact Sales
for when a project has specific licensing requirements
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Craft CMSJoomla
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsHosted Craft CMS option available with a discount for annual pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Craft CMSJoomla!
Features
Craft CMSJoomla!
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Craft CMS
-
Ratings
Joomla!
8.4
51 Ratings
2% above category average
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.451 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Craft CMS
-
Ratings
Joomla!
6.8
48 Ratings
13% below category average
API00 Ratings7.246 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language00 Ratings6.447 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Craft CMS
-
Ratings
Joomla!
7.8
54 Ratings
0% above category average
WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings8.353 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness00 Ratings8.651 Ratings
Admin section00 Ratings8.349 Ratings
Page templates00 Ratings6.952 Ratings
Library of website themes00 Ratings6.550 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design00 Ratings7.650 Ratings
Publishing workflow00 Ratings8.450 Ratings
Form generator00 Ratings7.646 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Craft CMS
-
Ratings
Joomla!
7.6
52 Ratings
2% above category average
Content taxonomy00 Ratings7.951 Ratings
SEO support00 Ratings7.750 Ratings
Bulk management00 Ratings8.149 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions00 Ratings7.052 Ratings
Community / comment management00 Ratings7.350 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Craft CMSJoomla!
Small Businesses
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 10.0 out of 10
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
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Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Craft CMSJoomla!
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.2
(75 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(28 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(14 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.9
(2 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.8
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(3 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.9
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
Craft CMSJoomla!
Likelihood to Recommend
Pixel & Tonic
Suitable for mid-size to large websites (20 pages+). If you have a massive project with dozens or hundreds of content contributors, complex editorial process/workflow, are tied to a non-Linux platform (Microsoft Server), you may want an enterprise CMS like Episerver. If you need a small, cheap, theme-based, basic website with 5-15 pages, you'll probably go to WordPress.
Read full review
The Joomla Project
If your developers want to have some fun, Joomla offers the stability and friendliness to do custom coding. Certain marketing initiatives require us to get "cute" with the interface, and Joomla allows for that a bit easier than WordPress (and definitely easier than sites like Squarespace). The security of Joomla is also always a plus.
Read full review
Pros
Pixel & Tonic
  • Design-agnostic templating system. No themes. This means you can use whatever HTML, CSS, JS you want, and integrate it with Craft.
  • Versatile field types, with 3rd party plugins providing a bunch more. Everything from plain text to address, color picker, date/time, file assets, one-to-many relationships, and more.
  • Control panel with clean, responsive UI makes content updates easy for clients.
Read full review
The Joomla Project
  • Security. Its got many new features in the new Joomla! 4 which make the already good security even better. I like the ability to use my Yubi keys to log in with the new webauth standard, I don't think any other CMS has that built in
  • W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 (with AA compliance)
  • Really good SEO that gets our sites to the top of the search engines again without the need for any extra things
  • Speed, it gets a really good score (100%) in the google lighthouse on our server, can't beat that
Read full review
Cons
Pixel & Tonic
  • Could use a more robust implementation of rich text editor.
  • Some functionality that requires plugins, for example, advanced field management, should be part of the core install.
  • It should be a bit easier to brand the control panel w/logo and color scheme.
Read full review
The Joomla Project
  • Because Joomla's user community is smaller than WP, it lacks as many choices from 3rd party developers, meaning it can be a little more difficult to find the right extension for what you need to accomplish
  • Along the same vein, most of the best 3rd-party software for Joomla! is paid
  • Simple features such as Add to Menu and Cache cleaners should be adopted as part of the Joomla! core, though they are available as extensions
  • Joomla! could use a simpler and easier URL rewriting process
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Pixel & Tonic
No answers on this topic
The Joomla Project
I gave it a rating of 10 because I just love how Joomla! works, how it is set up and how it handles many users. Also it is very fast, and there is no overload on the MySQL database or servers ever.
Read full review
Usability
Pixel & Tonic
No answers on this topic
The Joomla Project
Joomla! 3.x is easily installed either manually or via a script provided by your host. It contains most of the tools needed to begin creating websites right from the start. Those features that it doesn't have are easily installed via links and buttons from the thousands of extensions available in the community
Read full review
Performance
Pixel & Tonic
No answers on this topic
The Joomla Project
Today's Modern Joomla performs very well and is robust and durable. The pages load faster than they ever did in the past and Modern Joomla's integration into other software or systems has become seamless. Modern Joomla sites will last long and will stay running forever.
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Support Rating
Pixel & Tonic
No answers on this topic
The Joomla Project
Between the core Joomla developers who are excellent at answering questions and providing support, you have a whole community of developers who work with Joomla and are happy to help fellow developers out answering questions and supporting the Joomla project. Out of the many communities I am involved in for open-source software, Joomla's community is by far the best.
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Online Training
Pixel & Tonic
No answers on this topic
The Joomla Project
It is good if you know Joomla! if not it can get a bit confusing
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Pixel & Tonic
No answers on this topic
The Joomla Project
Joomla has gone through tremendous growing pains. It is now better than ever. But before, when it was going from 1.5-2.5, the templates and plugins would break over and over again. If you don't understand what Joomla was trying to do back then, you might have a bad attitude toward it. Today, those pains are over and things don't break like they used to during that time period.
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Alternatives Considered
Pixel & Tonic
Craft was originally developed in response to ExpressionEngine's shortcomings. While ExpressionEngine has caught up in some regards, it still looks and feels a bit unpolished by comparison. Additionally, ExpressionEngine's vendor has never gotten UI right - not on their website, nor in their CMS. Craft remains easier to use, more polished and provides a wider feature set in its base install (without needing plugins). As for WordPress - while I recognize its massive popularity, I find its reliance on themes, third-party plugins, along with security shortcomings, make it a poor fit for the larger custom projects we build. On the other hand, if you want to throw up a passable website in a day, you can't beat WordPress.
Read full review
The Joomla Project
We tested other platforms like WordPress, Magento and some local CMS. 
But Joomla offered us better resources for generating content.
Joomla is a CMS suitable for many types of projects, especially if you have several people editing content at the same time.
It allows you to maintain visual standardization and offers many options for working with images.
With its ability to control access to different articles, categories or even different components, it is a great tool, even if they are managed by different people.
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Return on Investment
Pixel & Tonic
  • We don't have hard numbers on Craft's impact on our ROI, but we recognize that its feature set, ease of use, and integrated ECommerce allows offering a superior product to clients.
Read full review
The Joomla Project
  • Joomla has reduced our costs of rolling out a new website because it uses less developer time and can be rolled out by individual users as needed.
  • Joomla has a lot of extensions and add-ons that make it easy to create and implement advanced solutions quickly.
Read full review
ScreenShots