Plone vs. WordPress

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Plone
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Plone is a free and open source content management system built on top of the Zope application server. Plone can be used for any kind of website, including blogs, internet sites, webshops, and internal websites.N/A
WordPress
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Wordpress is an open-source publishing platform popular with bloggers, and a content management system, known for its simplicity and modifiability. Websites may host their own blogging communities, controlling and moderating content from a single dashboard.N/A
Pricing
PloneWordPress
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
PloneWordPress
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
PloneWordPress
Considered Both Products
Plone
Chose Plone
Plone is much harder to learn then Wordpress. Development in Wordpress is learnt in day's, where development in Plone really takes years to get to the full depth. That said, once you're able to develop in Plone, is it a rock solid system, with readable code. In my experience …
Chose Plone
Plone may be more complicated than Wordpress when considering organizational factors and overall use, but for a reason. It has further capabilities than Wordpress and other content management systems. It takes slight training to learn, but it provides great knowledge that many …
WordPress
Chose WordPress
WordPress has the largest community of users, selection of plugins and themes, and the best third party support on the market.

It's tempting to go with something that is less customizable and therefore requires less maintenance, but if you desire flexibility, WordPress is a good …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
PloneWordPress
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Plone
8.0
5 Ratings
0% below category average
WordPress
8.2
127 Ratings
2% above category average
Role-based user permissions8.05 Ratings8.2127 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Plone
8.5
5 Ratings
10% above category average
WordPress
6.4
104 Ratings
18% below category average
API9.05 Ratings6.394 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language8.05 Ratings6.679 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Plone
8.0
6 Ratings
5% above category average
WordPress
8.0
133 Ratings
5% above category average
WYSIWYG editor8.06 Ratings8.3120 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness8.05 Ratings7.3121 Ratings
Admin section7.05 Ratings8.6131 Ratings
Page templates10.05 Ratings8.2128 Ratings
Library of website themes8.05 Ratings8.4130 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design7.05 Ratings8.5129 Ratings
Publishing workflow8.05 Ratings8.5125 Ratings
Form generator8.05 Ratings6.3104 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Plone
7.8
5 Ratings
6% above category average
WordPress
7.9
131 Ratings
8% above category average
Content taxonomy7.05 Ratings6.9113 Ratings
SEO support10.04 Ratings8.2118 Ratings
Bulk management5.05 Ratings7.5100 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions8.05 Ratings8.5121 Ratings
Community / comment management9.05 Ratings8.5120 Ratings
Best Alternatives
PloneWordPress
Small Businesses
Divi
Divi
Score 9.8 out of 10
Divi
Divi
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
PloneWordPress
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(13 ratings)
8.9
(169 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.3
(10 ratings)
9.4
(36 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.6
(16 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(3 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.6
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(10 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
PloneWordPress
Likelihood to Recommend
Plone
The larger your organization, the more appropriate Plone will be. This is not to say that Plone is a worse choice for small websites, only that the minimum investment for a Plone site is certainly higher than for other platforms. If you already use Plone for your site and are looking for a redesign or an overhaul, I would only advise switching to a different platform such as WordPress or Drupal if your organization is downsizing. For any other situation, Plone is the natural choice for your growth.
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Automattic
If your business relies heavily on content creation, and particularly on blog posts, then WordPress is really the best option you have. But if you don't have a blog, you only need static pages, or you want to build an eCommerce site, then you might want to explore other alternatives.
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Pros
Plone
  • Plone is a folder-based system, organising content in a similar way desktop-users are doing for the last two decades. No need to teach non-tech customers some relational-database like paradigm for content management.
  • Plone is secure. It is the most secure CMS you can get your hands on.
  • Plone is flexible, and makes fast development easy.
Read full review
Automattic
  • WordPress is incredibly easy to set up and get running with little to no technical knowledge. Most web hosts will do it for you, since it's so easy.
  • With thousands of themes available for free and for low cost, WordPress can accommodate any design you can imagine.
  • The community behind WordPress is generous, and there are loads of educational opportunities both online and in person to learn and connect with other users.
Read full review
Cons
Plone
  • Not everything is configurable or editable by Plone, and when you need to adjust or add custom pieces in, you need to deal with Zope. Zope has an ugly, confusing and difficult UI and structure as a backend.
  • Using 3rd party products is difficult to do - there are a few different ways to get them installed, all of which take a bit of luck to get right.
  • Building custom products for Plone is not fun. You've got to deal with an archaic framework to tie in that is not well documented (there is documentation about many things, but not great documentation and there are a lot of holes in the documentation).
Read full review
Automattic
  • WordPress breaks often so you need to have someone who understands how to troubleshoot, which can take time and money.
  • Some plugins are easier to customize than others, for example, some don't require any coding knowledge while others do. This can limit your project if you are not a coder.
  • WordPress can be easily hacked, so you also need someone who can ensure your sites are secure.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Plone
I no longer use Plone because I got an internship in the web development field and my current place of employment uses their own content management system that they created. After getting to know other CMS's and similar software and comparing them to Plone, I would enjoy using Plone again in the future, but there are more complicated software that I'd like to learn as I progress in my field of study.
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Automattic
My rating is based on the knowledge I have of the community that WordPress has had built around it for years now. It's as solid as it comes when you talk about community involvement and expansion. There's no other CMS out there that can match-up with it, hands down.
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Usability
Plone
Compared to the amount of Plone sites, users and customizations we have in our organization, the amount of support requests and training needed is really small
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Automattic
It's a sophisticated but easy to use piece of software. Many of the content addition pieces are familiar from other pieces of software so there isn't a huge learning curve. And for new areas, there is a lot of info on WordPress.org as well as other WordPress help sites.
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Reliability and Availability
Plone
No answers on this topic
Automattic
Anyone can visit WordPress.org and download a fully functional copy of WordPress free of charge. Additionally, WordPress is offered to users as open-source software, which means that anyone can customize the code to create new applications and make these available to other WordPress users.
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Performance
Plone
Plone is very intensive in its operations, and if not configured well it can be slow. However it is designed and built with speed in mind and with proper use of coding, templates and caching can perform extremely well under high loads. It is capable of scaling to very high load availability environments with no specific coding requirements.
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Automattic
Mostly, any performance issues have to do with using too many plugins and these can sometimes slow down the overall performance of your site. It is very tempting to start adding lots of plugins to your WordPress site, however, as there are thousands of great plugins to choose from and so many of them help you do amazing things on your site. If you begin to notice performance issues with your WordPress site (e.g. pages being slow to load), there are ways to optimize the performance of your site, but this requires learning the process. WordPress users can learn how to optimize their WordPress sites by downloading the WPTrainMe WordPress training plugin (WPTrainMe.com) and going through the detailed step-by-step WordPress optimization tutorials.
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Support Rating
Plone
No answers on this topic
Automattic
WordPress itself only has community service so your experience will depend on where you turn. Online, through forums and community boards, support is rudimentary but effective. You can easily turn to your local community and find exceptional individuals who know and use WordPress regularly for more advanced, inexpensive, support. I'm rating this less than 10 because of the lack of any formal support provided by a company.
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In-Person Training
Plone
No answers on this topic
Automattic
Varies by the person providing training. High marks as it's incredibly easy to find experienced individuals in your community to provide training on any aspect of WordPress from content marketing, SEO, plugin development, theme design, etc. Less than 10 though as the training is community based and expectations for a session you find may fall short.
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Online Training
Plone
No answers on this topic
Automattic
It is very easy to find online resources to learn how to do just about anything with WordPress.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Plone
No answers on this topic
Automattic
WordPress is not a great solution if you have: 1) A larger site with performance / availability requirements. 2) Multiple types of content you want to share - each with its own underlying data structure. 3) Multiple sites you need to manage. For very small sites where these needs are not paramount, WordPress is a decent solution
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Alternatives Considered
Plone
Drupal: Plone is cheaper, so with Drupal is more complex to reach the required ROI. However, Drupal has a lower learning curve WordPress: For our necessities it has a more expensive learning curve than plone. Joomla, is easier to use. However, it have some issues on security and web content where Plone is much better
Read full review
Automattic
We have considered and operated within Shopify and Squarespace. Both serve their purpose for niche clients, but we do recommend WordPress as being the superior option. We find that WordPress is easier to use and offers maximum scalability while the others are more challenging to design, code, configure and launch.
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Scalability
Plone
No answers on this topic
Automattic
WordPress is completely scalable. You can get started immediately with a very simple "out-of-the box" WordPress installation and then add whatever functionality you need as and when you need it, and continue expanding. Often we will create various WordPress sites on the same domain to handle different aspects of our strategy (e.g. one site for the sales pages, product information and/or a marketing blog, another for delivering products securely through a private membership site, and another for running an affiliate program or other application), and then ties all of these sites together using a common theme and links on each of the site's menus. Additionally, WordPress offers a multisite function that allows organizations and institutions to manage networks of sites managed by separate individual site owners, but centrally administered by the parent organization. You can also expand WordPress into a social networking or community site, forums, etc. The same scalability applies to web design. You can start with a simple design and then scale things up to display sites with amazing visual features, including animations and video effects, sliding images and animated product image galleries, elements that appear and fade from visitor browsers, etc. The scaling possibilities of WordPress are truly endless.
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Return on Investment
Plone
  • As a development company Plone allows us to provide complex web applications in a short amount of time.
  • Plone is quite robust and reliable so when you customize some parts you do not risk to damage other parts. This is quite positive for a web development framework,
  • Plone allows our clients to spread their activities among different employees improving the efficiency of content generation and management.
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Automattic
  • WordPress helps us reduce website management costs because we can oversee updates in-house.
  • WordPress is easy to use, reducing the amount of time we spend on website management.
  • The ease of use enables us to offer website management for clients, helping us grow our capabilities/business.
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