Joomla! vs. MODX vs. RWS Tridion Sites

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.

Incentivized

[MODX is well suited for] all websites, from blogs to corporate sites. It is fast scalable and really good. A small site can be build really fast, and a large site can be made extremely scalable. A website redesign is easy to implement with a new template, without having to redo the content. It got great user groups and users and back-office access can be completely customized.

While ecommerce is possible with some really good plugins I would only use MODX with ecommerce for sites where ecommerce is not the primary role. For pure ecommerce sites rather use a dedicated system like e.g. PrestaShop (i would say the same thing with other ecommerce plugins e.g. WP woo commerce don't do it unless its a site add on.)

Love the product and I really like how we use it for public sites. The only negative aspect is that it is just hard to find Tridion devs that understand the tool, grasp .net, react, and understand the blueprint, etc.

• 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

• Ease of use - the MODX platform is very easy to use for someone who may have limited experience in content management.
• Content blocks - the content blocks within MODX add to the usability and customization of the website being managed.

Incentivized

• Makes it easy to spin up a new site quickly
• Allows for numerous users to work on the same site without conflicting with each other's changes
• Allows you to unpublish changes or revert to old versions if you make a mistake
• Allows you to time publishing actions (for example, you can set it to happen overnight)

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized

• The user interface was confusing at times.
• Not a plug and play CMS system.
• The site manager doesn't always run fast.

Incentivized

• Tridion is complicated in enough ways that it makes it difficult to train new users. Therefore, we have to limit the number of people with access to the system since we have not yet implemented Workflow.
• When something goes wrong (items fail to publish, or there is unexpected behavior with components), there is little explanation provided that would point us in the right direction to troubleshoot. As a result, content Authors and Editors have to frequently ask for IT assistance.

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.

Incentivized

It is the CMS we use the most, not because we know it well but because we literally tried many of other CMS and this one did it for us.

However having said we really do not like the one shoe fits all approach. E..g for eCommerce we usually use PrestaShop etc. if a specialized CMS can do a task rather use that.

However for a general CMS [MODX] is hard to beat.

I am giving this a semi-high rating because we have already got Tridion up and running and we are still in the process of moving the sites over to Tridion. It is unlikely we will be moving things to a new CMS AGAIN in the near future as the cost to get Tridion was high.

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

Great and easy to use for both the coder and the end user. Especially if setup correctly by the coder.

The editor user interface is very user friendly and in-site editing makes simple updates fast and easy. The extensibility of Tridion is a big plus and the ability to add our own options into the default Tridion interface helps us integrate with external systems. Finally, the user permissions and security system helps us deploy it within our large organization.

We have not had it go down due to bugs etc. especially when comparing it to other cms out there.

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.

Incentivized

Damn its fast. really good page speed out of the box.

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.

Incentivized

Great community support on slack.

If you have a paid plugin great support also esp from modmore

If you have cloud hosting MODX support is fast and all servers are optimized for MODX

It is good if you know Joomla! if not it can get a bit confusing

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.

Incentivized

Good system

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.

Incentivized

The other company that we looked into was WordPress and all of the features that it offered our organization. What MODX offered to us from development to everyday use just made more sense for our organization as a whole. WordPress is still a great CMS platform, just not exactly what we were looking for.

Incentivized

It is a nuclear missile compared to the other handguns and knives on the market today. But it also requires nuclear technicians and expertise that a handgun doesn't require. Do you need to decimate your competition and you have the investment capabilities necessary to put a nuclear missile into the sky? Then definitely do it. Especially if you need a very good multi-lingual blueprint provider like Tridion.

Incentivized

Very scalable. e.g. in the [MODX] manager you can manage multiple websites at once without having to login else where. it is very convenient and this way resources and be easily managed and shared.

• 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.

Incentivized

• Increased security permissions of the users and freelancers who worked on our website.
• Gave our developers the ability to create any page that they wanted with custom code.
• Hindered our Marketing team's ability to stay on top of our content strategy with changes.

Incentivized

• SDL is a very complex system. Creating custom components by external vendors turned out to be expensive.
• The learning curve is very slow, so training takes a lot of time and cost.
• The revamped corporate site looks clean, modern, and is mobile-friendly.

Incentivized