Overview
What is Joomla?
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.
New Joomla! 4 jumps ahead of the others
Jooma! the website developer's software of the future.
My two cents on Joomla!
We are creating creative websites with unparalleled ease
Be satisfied with Joomla
Joomla was adopted in my company as a content generator for the internet, with the objective of making websites quick for temporary or …
Ok for users, not fascinating for developers
Joomla is a developer's dream
A Satisfying CMS software
Joomla! Is the best CMS that you don't know you need.
Nobody puts Joomla in a corner!
Joomla Expert Admin Since 2006 - Technical Support Specialist
Excellent, Easy To Use CMS
Jammin' with Joomla!
Joomla is a great CMS which can be used for free or a very low ongoing cost.
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Popular Features
- Role-based user permissions (43)8.484%
- Availability / breadth of extensions (44)7.777%
- Page templates (44)7.676%
- WYSIWYG editor (45)7.272%
Video Reviews
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Pricing
What is Joomla?
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.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting / Integration Services
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Product Demos
Joomla! 3 Quickstart Installation Step by Step Guide
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Features
Security
This component helps a company minimize the security risks by controlling access to the software and its data, and encouraging best practices among users.
- 8.4Role-based user permissions(43) Ratings
Permissions to perform actions or access or modify data are assigned to roles, which are then assigned to users, reducing complexity of administration.
Platform & Infrastructure
Features related to platform-wide settings and structure, such as permissions, languages, integrations, customizations, etc.
- 8.1API(38) Ratings
An API (application programming interface) provides a standard programming interface for connecting third-party systems to the software for data creation, access, updating and/or deletion.
- 8.6Internationalization / multi-language(39) Ratings
The software supports multiple languages, countries, currencies, etc.
Web Content Creation
Features that support the creation of website content.
- 7.2WYSIWYG editor(45) Ratings
What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get editing tool allows users to build pages without writing code.
- 8.2Code quality / cleanliness(43) Ratings
Code generated by WYSIWYG editor is clean and validates according to W3C standards.
- 8.4Admin section(43) Ratings
The admin page is easy to navigate and use.
- 7.6Page templates(44) Ratings
The CMS has standard webpage templates or types of web pages (e.g. homepage, article page, interior page, blog page, etc.); users can also build custom templates.
- 7.3Library of website themes(42) Ratings
A library of website frameworks or themes is available as a starting point for building a website.
- 8Mobile optimization / responsive design(42) Ratings
The CMS helps users build webpages that work well on mobile devices – whether m-dot pages or responsively designed pages.
- 8.7Publishing workflow(42) Ratings
The software allows users to set up a custom workflow for updating the website, including approval processes.
- 7.4Form generator(38) Ratings
Users can build website forms for visitors to fill out.
Web Content Management
Features for managing website content
- 8.1Content taxonomy(43) Ratings
Users can create multiple levels and types of content categories including tags.
- 7.7SEO support(43) Ratings
The CMS helps users create the right website infrastructure (pagination, page headers, titles, meta tags, url structure, etc.) to increase the site’s visibility in search engine results.
- 7.4Bulk management(41) Ratings
Users can change an attribute on a group of documents or sites all at once through features such as global search and replace, making bulk changes easier.
- 7.7Availability / breadth of extensions(44) Ratings
There is a broad library of extensions, plug-ins, modules or add-ons that allow users to easily customize their websites without building custom code.
- 8.2Community / comment management(42) Ratings
Users can put post/page comments through an approval process, auto-approve commenters based on their email addresses, block commenters by IP address, delete comments, etc.
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Joomla?
Joomla Video
Joomla Integrations
Joomla Competitors
- Drupal
- Kentico Xperience
- Plone
- Magnolia (V5 and later versions)
Joomla Technical Details
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
---|---|
Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(283)Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 67)Joomla! Review By JoomTech Solutions
I have worked for many clients in Joomla!. It is more secure and well managed than WordPress but it has fewer templates or themes available for everything compared to WordPress. The same thing for SEO purposes, WordPress has lots of plugins available to boost website blogs. So nowadays Joomla! [is] going down in comparison to WordPress. Every Blogger recommends WordPress.
- Joomla! [has the] best component for eCommerce website that is Virtuemart and Hikashop.
- Joomla! [has the] best component for membership like RS Membership. It manages memberships in [a] very well manner.
- Joomla! [has a] Drag and Drop template like Helix Ultimate framework - JoomShaper.
- [It] is [a] very good theme provider.
- First of all, I suggest to Joomla! Support Team, it should be more flexible to reply. There are no live chat options available. It should be developed.
- Joomla! templates need to develop more functionalities like WordPress where templates [are] available for most of [the] functionalities.
- Joomla! SEO options [are] not enough.
New Joomla! 4 jumps ahead of the others
- 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
- There is not much. I think perhaps a built in cookie system but thats planned for 4.1
- Always welcome more tutorials but they seem to have a fair few
- Not all extensions have been converted to [Joomla!] 4 but the important ones are there
But the new interface is so simple it seems pointless using WP when Joomla! is as easy and can then grow as big as you like.
The Workflows feature which allows you to set up work pipelines easily is going to be a boom to any larger enterprise sites.
Couples with the new API which I got to see at one of their user groups, is amazing. They were creating articles on one site then another site was taking the feed directly for just certain categories. Really blows your mind what you could do with that and the new workflows.
Jooma! the website developer's software of the future.
- Joomla! has a vast quantity of developed extensions available. There are very few applications for which there isn't an extension available, paid or free.
- The Joomla! CMS back-end administration control panel is extremely user friendly. Once you have mastered the basics of Joomla! editing it is very simple to manage the content of your website.
- Joomla! is easy to install and there is a legion of information available on how to use the software, once installed. Using Akeeba Backup, makes the backing up of sites simple and easy to move around, if necessary.
- Joomla! needs to be constantly updated. Some of the extensions makes it vulnerable to attacks from hackers. This makes it very important to always update to the latest version.
- One has to be very thorough before updating Joomla!, or any of it's extensions. Backups are extremely important as some updates are known to "break" the site.
- One can do a lot with Joomla! using CSS and PHP but both these languages are fairly difficult to learn. This forces you to do a lot of research if you want to be able to tweak sites using CSS and PHP.
If you do the research and you learn how to, properly, work with Joomla! you will never look back.
One can honestly make a very good living as a website developer using Joomla! CMS
My two cents on Joomla!
- Very light interface and fast loading response.
- Easy content manager.
- Good builder.
- SEO should be better.
- Limited to certain things such as customization.
- More intuitive.
- We use Joomla to build our websites and web applications because of its incredible intuitiveness and tools to make everything more manageable.
- Its working environment is quite comfortable for my development team, and its web design resources significantly speed up our work when carrying out web development projects.
- It allows you to use blocks to create and visually manage websites and divide them into different categories without programming knowledge.
- Its interface is complicated to understand; it is not as friendly as other tools and text editors to develop web pages.
Be satisfied with Joomla
Joomla was adopted in my company as a content generator for the internet, with the objective of making websites quick for temporary or permanent projects. It is basically used in only one area of the company, but it has the potential to be expanded in the future. It is not used alone, we have other complementary tools for our communication portal.
- Easy for portals with forums
- Easy setup
- Framework is robust
- Variety of useful features
- Dashboard should have more options
- It can't create a very complex website
- Some extensions should have a free version
There are constant security updates that you need to be aware of and keep the current version. You must always read the instructions before making the updates, to ensure that certain Modules continue to function correctly. It works in a very dynamic and comfortable way. It has a comprehensive navigation system for managing hierarchies. I also used this content management system to build the internal sites and it works very well. Another important issue is that the community behind Joomla is very active and it is easy to find development issues in the forums.
Ok for users, not fascinating for developers
- Image gallery
- Statistics
- Localization
- Terrible for updates (compared with alternatives)
- Poor in links customization (for SEO)
- A big learning curve (takes time to learn where options are and easily forgotten)
I enjoyed very much the gallery functionality and some minor article settings (change author, date) but in general, from my experience and compared to WordPress, it was a disappointment. The learning curve is steep for the occasional user and things get hard to find after a few days away from it. It is only a viable option for content creators who use it on a daily basis (agencies, for instance).
Joomla is a developer's dream
- Content management.
- Image management.
- free templates
- extension help
A Satisfying CMS software
- It provides control and personalization to your website.
- The third party components are also easily available for Joomla!.
- Joomla! has built in revision control. Going back and fixing previous work is easy.
- It's free and open source.
- Sometimes cache buildup becomes a problem..
- Its learning curve is more complex compared to others.
- It can't create a very complex website.
Joomla! Is the best CMS that you don't know you need.
- Moderate control of features.
- Extensive customization.
- Robust and secure structure.
- Should have better interface, automatizing more features
- Should have a better customer service, even when it's an open-source project.
- Should have better outreach for beginner customers.
Nobody puts Joomla in a corner!
- Security.
- Expandability.
- Their built-in editor is not as user-friendly as WordPress.
- Canonical links are not a thing unless a third party extension is used.
Joomla Expert Admin Since 2006 - Technical Support Specialist
Here are many of the situations where I've been involved in Joomla projects with clients paying me to guide them and serve their digital platform building needs.
- Comprehensive online websites with sophisticated front and back-end functionality (with ecommerce, event booking, email marketing, etc..).
- Basic small business websites
- Online product gallery websites (non-ecommerce)
- Online blogging platforms
- Online content repositories
- Complete control over your website content, menus, SEO elements, and site layout.
- A logical and intuitive admin interface for creating and managing the website.
- An engaged and supportive community and marketplace of people, tools, and extensions.
- A module management system to provide more control over a page layout and content in flexible ways.
- A flexible design layout paradigm easily allowing for different design use across different pages.
- A strong community of design template creators and page builders.
- Joomla eliminates antiquated code with two-year deprecation pathways. This ensures all active components stay up to date and are currently supported.
- The functionality power of Joomla can make users feel overwhelmed that they may break something.
- Joomla doesn't have a corporate backing, so the growth and future of the tool is based on community involvement. It is currently strong and well-organized, but has had issues in the past.
With the countless extensions, Joomla's functionality can be extended to provide you with more advanced tools the default install lacks. This includes email marketing, event booking, online store, online community, and popup boxes. It is, by far, has the best multi-lingual support system in a CMS.
Joomla, out of the box, has terrific access control and privacy settings. This allows you to tier both admin access and public user experiences based on the level of the user and in many cases, the level of their paid subscription.
Excellent, Easy To Use CMS
- Joomla! is easy to install. It takes about ten minutes from installing to get it up and running.
- Joomla! uses modules, they are easy to install, configure and use.
- Results are excellent and SEO friendly.
- Because there are many options, beginners may find it overwhelming.
- Some modules are paid only (though there are many free).
- Customization of themes and modules can be confusing.
Jammin' with Joomla!
We love the additional plugins/components that can be integrated into Joomla! that solves our business needs without relying on hosted services that may hold your services hostage due to their policies. With Joomla, you have the freedom to do what you need and that's what we love.
- Joomla! now does automatic updates very easily by just clicking one button. Vulnerabilities are patched quickly with automatic notifications.
- There are so many additional plugins, many of which are free or for a nominal cost, that extend your business capabilities. These plugins are mostly a perpetual license model so they continue to work after their support date has expired so it gives you the freedom of choice to either continue to use it without any strings attached by hosted services.
- The framework that is available to Joomla! such as the Gantry framework makes it easy to rapidly deploy and structure Joomla to our liking.
- Joomla is doing a great job so far. They should continue to improve their guidelines in which they have the developers conform to their policies and motivate the developers to make use of automatic updates of their extensions. In turn, it's easy for the end-users to keep their extensions up to date in order to reduce any vulnerabilities with outdated extensions.
- Any system requires some level of a learning curve. Like many people, in regard to complexity, I feel that Joomla! is in the middle ground compared to other CMS. If there's a way for Joomla! to make it really simple to adopt, then I think it will be a big win for them.
- If Joomla! can capture the market where it's a matter of drag and drop or a friendly WYSIWYG, then it's a huge win for them. While drag and drop environment is extremely useful for a novice or someone who just needs a basic website, we love the extensibility that Joomla! provides so having both would be immensely valuable.
- Joomla is great for managing various website pages and updating content regularly.
- We've also used it to sell items in our store. We installed a shopping cart and integrated it with PayPal.
- We have users register to be able to get access to all features of our website, such as posting on the forums. Works great for that.
- Updating Joomla and some extensions can be a little clucky at times.
Joomla! is a great open source CMS for businesses
- Multiple templates assigned on a page-level basis allow fine-grained control of your site design
- Excellent ACL out-of-the-box means you can have a mutli-user website up and running without needing to install anything additional
- Straightforward control panel and useful help features and documentation make it easy for people to manage their own websites
- 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
Easy To Deploy, Easy To Use CMS For Small And Large Sites
Joomla has been used for small 3-4 pages sites and for 100+ page sites with a significant amount of content.
- Joomla is relatively easy to deploy.
- Joomla has a lot of developers and templates available, so it is easy to get support or find answers quickly.
- Joomla offers a ton of add-ons/extensions that help build things a lot quicker.
- Joomla has a pretty complicated back-end that could be more user friendly.
- It can be difficult to initially dive into a Joomla site for new users without a thorough guide.
Perfect for content management beginners!
- Joomla's top strength is its simplicity. Even if everyone on your team is a beginner, they will be able to easily adapt to using Joomla. It mimics WordPress, but it's easier to use.
- Joomla is also great with helping beginners optimize their site for search engines. If your content does not already include keywords that your audience typically searches for, Joomla has a section where 'tags' can be added to a page so that potential visitors are more likely to find your site.
- Joomla is great at organizing content for a large website. Everything you publish can be listed by title in alphabetical order so you can search for different pieces of content easily.
- Joomla needs improvement when it comes to SEO features in comparison to other CMS's like WordPress. The features it currently has are great for beginners, but over time, users will realize that they need a more advanced system to continue to grow their site. I wouldn't choose Joomla if your team is already accustomed to using a CMS. It's only best for beginners or interns.
- The most difficult part of using Joomla, for me, is that there aren't many good web developers who specialize in Joomla. If you want to make big changes to your site that require a developer, it's much easier to find someone who's great at building WordPress sites.
- There are not as many plug-ins for Joomla as there are for WordPress so, if you need to add any special features to your site using Joomla, you will be limited.
One of the most versatile and best CMS.
- Quick and agile websites.
- Easy website content management.
- Lots of extensions for customization.
- Nothing to improve, just keep always releasing update patches.
Make sure it's the right fit for your team - for many, it's not
- The menu/category/article structure provides a decent organization.
- The check-in/check-out system can work well to prevent overwrites with large numbers of editors.
- Creating a community-driven site - with large numbers of contributors.
- The Process is smoother with the latest versions.
- There is a bit of a learning curve in order to make edits as compared to other CMSs.
- Upgrading from older versions is very difficult.
- The framework is decent, but it's not the most flexible, nor the most intuitive.
Joomla is a Robust Open-Source CMS
- Joomla has great core functionalities and is free to use.
- Joomla has a built-in user management system which allows you to control who accesses certain aspects of your site.
- Joomla is search engine optimized out of the box.
- Joomla is continuously updating itself and I am amazed at what has been accomplished for the better since I started using it.
- Joomla allows me as a simple website designer and developer to build complex sites without much of a need to hire developers.
- The out of the box blogging situation with Joomla definitely needs improving. It is pretty basic, however, there are extensions both free and paid that handle this gap. Joomla 4 is fast on the horizon so I hope this feature is addressed there.
- Joomla's media management system has improved, however, it could use more updating. It would be nice to be able to make simple edits for images.
- Joomla needs more modules to choose from for certain things users may be trying to create.
I would not recommend Joomla if all you need is a simple website to just blog and give basic information about your business. I would more than likely recommend WordPress for that.
Joomla! A small business answer with a big ROI!
- Easily update pages
- Great website templates can be found for free
- Publishing websites are a breeze
- Provide easier ways to format text
- More template options
- Easy to understand instruction manual
- Joomla! does some things like content management, banner management and templates management very well. So these features are strength of Joomla!
- If I talked about details then managing and creating menus is very easy in this tool.
- Templates are flexible to use so one can easily use templates according to one's need
- Joomla! has a problem with installing plugins that may [cause] problems sometimes when you try to install a plugin that is incompatible
- Once you [have] made your website layout and then if you change your mind to change the layout then it's a big pain in Joomla!
- I have not observed it but people say it is not [very] SEO friendly
A great CMS with an even better community of developers behind it.
- Joomla provides a strong core to get website development started quickly and easily.
- The possibilities that the many Joomla extensions offers are unlimited.
- Joomla's templating system is quick and easy to create a custom design for your website.
- The community of experts are second to none, the community offers excellent support.
- The administration can be difficult for non-technical people to use, some of my clients find it daunting and not very user-friendly.
- Security...Joomla is a really big target to hackers...I do know that Joomla works hard to get security patches out as quickly as they can though.
- Speed, I'd like to see the core Joomla sped up with out having to put in tons of work to speed it up.
Joomla Offers Hassle, Headaches and Stress
- Document indexing
- WYSIWYG editor
- Page version control
- Multiple language support
- Massive learning curve to get ramped up on the product. In my opinion, is more difficult than Drupal.
- Terrible experience upgrading between versions.
- Migrating content into Joomla is not easy.
- WYSIWYG editor is a pain. Almost always errors editing content in this fashion as extra code is generated around functions such as bold, italicize, header, etc.
- Document management can be a pain with files uploading into multiple spaces.
- Overall, not user friendly for tech leaders and content managers.