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Joomla

Joomla

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.

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Learn from top reviewers

Joomla Still Gets It Done For Developers

Rating: 7 out of 10
May 19, 2025
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We create various offshoot initiatives from time to time, including satellite websites with specific targeting purposes like landing pages, quick e-com one-pagers, blogs for o...
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Jeff Montgomery
C-Level Executive - Manufacturing
CTO
Animal Necessity
Joomla!7 years of experience

Joomla!: the only CMS you will ever need.

Rating: 10 out of 10
June 19, 2024
IncentivizedVetted Review
I run a digital agency and the majority of our web builds are with Joomla! CMS. Since changing from Wordpress we can deliver completed sites more quickly, with more features a...
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Richard Gosler
Director - Other
Managing Director
Phooenix Digital Media Ltd
Joomla!7 years of experience

Great Product for the Easy User

Rating: 6 out of 10
December 27, 2023
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We used Joomla to edit our content and maintain our website. All of our page edits were done via Joomla, as well as building new pages. This solved the problem of bulky editor...
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Verified user
Contributor
Joomla!1 year of experience

New Joomla! 4 jumps ahead of the others

Rating: 10 out of 10
September 6, 2021
Vetted ReviewVerified User
We used Joomla! to make our website. It was so easy to set up with just a few clicks of the mouse and the database details added. Odd as its the same process as wordpress yet ...
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Philip Walton
Director - Information Technology
Owner
SoftForge
Joomla!12 years of experience

We are creating creative websites with unparalleled ease

Rating: 10 out of 10
June 11, 2021
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
Joomla! is adequate for working on website development; we use it frequently, which has helped us save time and effort while getting the most creative websites. We have benefi...
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Sergey Gvozdetskiy
Manager - Sales
Sales Manager
Cleveroad
Joomla!3 years of experience
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Pricing

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Joomla

Joomla

N/A
Unavailable

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

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

19 people also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

WordPress

WordPress

$3
per month 6 GB storage
What is WordPress?

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.

ExpressionEngine

ExpressionEngine

$249
per year
What is ExpressionEngine?

ExpressionEngine is a content management system from EllisLab in 2002, a successor to pMachine Pro, a blogging system, which is written in object-oriented PHP and uses MySQL for data storage. ExpressionEngine is their flagship Content Delivery Platform.

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Product Demos

Joomla! 3 Quickstart Installation Step by Step Guide

YouTube

JA Elastica - Free Responsive Design Template for Joomla 2.5!

YouTube

Template Creator CK 3 - Overview, simple demo, create your Joomla template in 7minutes

YouTube

Template Creator CK 3 - Overview, simple demo, create your Joomla template in 8 minutes

YouTube
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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.

8.9
Avg 8.2

Platform & Infrastructure

Features related to platform-wide settings and structure, such as permissions, languages, integrations, customizations, etc.

6.6
Avg 7.7

Web Content Creation

Features that support the creation of website content.

7.8
Avg 7.8

Web Content Management

Features for managing website content

6.8
Avg 7.4
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Product Details

What is Joomla?

Joomla! is a free, open source content management system used to publish web content. Joomla is written in PHP, uses object-oriented programming (OOP) techniques and stores data in a MySQL, MS SQL, or PostgreSQL database. Included features are page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, a search function, and support for language internationalization. Its dashboard organizing administrator tasks into context menus, from which content is edited, permissions set and changed, contacts managed, and messages sent to users. Extensions modify functionality in widely varying ways and provide flexibility.

Joomla Video

What is Joomla!

Joomla Integrations

Joomla Competitors

Joomla Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Drupal, Kentico Xperience, and Plone are common alternatives for Joomla.

Reviewers rate Code quality / cleanliness highest, with a score of 9.1.

The most common users of Joomla are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews From Top Reviewers

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(1-5 of 22)

Joomla, a great CMS

Rating: 10 out of 10
November 26, 2014
CG
Cristian Grañó
Freelance
percha.com (Program Development, 1-10 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
Joomla!
8 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Joomla is a great choice for all kinds of website. Newer versions are significantly better than old; It has improved a lot. The latest version, j3, is easier for the end user , has a clean and responsive administration console and, for the PHP programmer, gives an MVC structure which is easy to maintain and control. The learning curve gets shorter day by day. I think this platform has a great future and I will follow its progress with interest.
Pros
  • Structure MVC, and great framework for developement
  • Powerful
  • Every update makes it easier for the user
Cons
  • The multilanguage system could be better
Likelihood to Recommend
For an easy website like a blog, I think it's better go to WordPress. Or for a more more specific website like a shop or learning website, there are more appropriate systems.

Joomla is best now, and will be in the future.

Rating: 9 out of 10
July 07, 2015
JJ
Jerry Janes
Director Digital Marketing Strategy
Sting Alarm, Inc. (Internet, 1-10 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
Joomla!
4 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
If you are new to CMS development, Joomla is a good solution to learn and use. I started in web dev. as a designer with low coding skills. When the time came to make myself more productive to my clients, I knew CMSs were the way, so I researched many and the two I chose to learn were WordPress and Joomla, which I picked because of their open scalability. That was four years ago and I almost exclusively use Joomla today because in my opinion it far exceeds the functionality of WordPress and only is widening the gap with its advances like Joomla Framework, which will soon bring RAD to the masses. I am about empowering my clients to do for themselves and even if Joomla (currently) has a more steep learning curve than WordPress, if trained correctly, I find my clients quickly going from newbie to developer in a short time. I taught high school for ten years and know what and when something works for my students, so trust this former teacher and make your choice Joomla. You won't regret it.
Pros
  • Scalability
  • Responsive
  • Functionality
  • Intuitive
  • Open
  • Mobile
  • Modular
Cons
  • Steeper learning curve than WordPress
  • Less customization than Drupal
  • Newest 3x versions are lagging with 2x modules keeping up
Likelihood to Recommend
I know others have said this, but I concur: Joomla is middle ground. WordPress is easier to learn but offers less functionality and scalability. Drupal offers more of latter but is harder to learn for the newbie. I choose Joomla time and time again for my clients for those reasons and use it myself for the same.

Why I Choose Joomla over other CMS's

Rating: 8 out of 10
March 18, 2015
JG
Janice Gentles-Jones
Internet Marketing Account Manager
OverGo Studio, Inc. (Marketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
Joomla!
7 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
I use Joomla to build websites for non-profit organizations and small businesses. I find it to be a great resource for non-profits who need functionality such as online donations, event registrations, online directories and online membership management. Joomla has some great extensions that makes it easy for users to manage these function right from within their website.
Pros
  • The new release of Joomla, version 3.x, has a new, user-friendly interface. This new interface reduces the learning curve a lot compared to the other versions. It also makes it easy to keep your website updated and to find extensions to add to your website.
  • Joomla is also great at managing different permission levels for users. For organizations that want to have members-only content and have different levels of membership and what people can see, Joomla 3.x handles this well without need a third-party extensions.
  • I find that Joomla has some great extensions for managing online donations, event registration and online membership. This is what makes me choose this CMS over many of the other popular CMS's out there.
Cons
  • Joomla does not have a good preview system. If you want to preview your pages before they go live you have to use a third-party extension. I wish this was built-in as this is a common feature in other popular CMS's.
  • I haven't found a great ecommerce system for Joomla yet. There are some semi-good ones but they are either overkill or not enough functionality.
Likelihood to Recommend
Joomla works great for non-profit organizations that want to utilize the web for managing their donations and memberships online. It can be a lot more cost-effective than other vendors that have monthly cost for these services. For simple websites that do not need all the bells and whistles that a non-profit may need Joomla works well for also, although depending on the client's tech level and how often they'll be updating their website, I may choose a different CMS for their business.

Joomla!, An Open Source CMS For The Rest of Us

Rating: 10 out of 10
September 30, 2015
RL
Rita Lewis
Freelance Web Designer and Content Strategist
Words To Web, Inc. (Online Media, 1-10 employees)
Vetted Review
Reseller
Joomla!
10 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
I am a freelance web designer and content strategist who uses Joomla! as my platform of choice to implement websites for small businesses and non-profits. These websites run the gamut from brochures, landing pages, e-commerce storefronts, to major information portals. Joomla! and its extensions handles all aspects of each of these types of sites.
Pros
  • Joomla! is a content management system based on a database so it creates web pages dynamically based on a single editor and keywords. This allows users to update the site themselves and let Joomla create the pages from their input in a familiar environment.
  • Joomla! is Open Source software managed by a non-profit organization called Open Source Matters. Because it's free under the GNU GPL license, there are millions of programmers worldwide working on the platform honing it and maintaining it. Open Source also means that there is a strong community of approximately 8 million users who cooperatively share this free software platform.
  • Joomla! is modular. You only use what you need for your particular project. Joomla! has an extremely strong value-added software community providing add-ons for security, editing, forms, newsletters, storefronts, payment gateways, SEO, and so forth.
  • Joomla! is currently split into a framework and kernel and because it is Open Source, programmers are using Joomla!'s framework to build enterprise-level content management systems and cloud-based systems such as Nooku. Joomla! complies with most standard modern software protocols and runs on LINUX/Apache/MySQL/PHP so it is highly secure and easy to set up.
Cons
  • Joomla!'s organization consists of a front-end and a backend (called the Administrator). The Administrator area is meant to be intuitive but falls short because of the complexity of its structure -- areas where you perform work. There is a strong learning curve to get used to modules, plug-ins, and components plus articles and categories and how they work together.
  • Joomla! has a rigid structure that allows only certain types of pages, namely blogs and lists of articles based on how you classify subjects. Everything in Joomla! is an article. You have to know content strategy to add appropriate keywords to ensure that your articles show up on the appropriate pages either with others tagged similarly, or by themselves. Navigation is based upon these keywords as well. You need to design the site before you jump in and add articles.
  • Joomla! is built using PHP and runs on an Apache server. As such, it is not totally secure from malicious attacks at the server level. Extra care has to be taken to set up passwords, roles, and permissions to ensure that spammers and hackers cannot touch the database or Administrator.
  • Joomla! is not meant to handle more than a medium- to small-sized website with up to one million concurrent users. It can be placed on the Cloud, such as Amazon Web Services, where instances of the platform can take more users, but it is not enterprise-level software.
Likelihood to Recommend
In order to work with Joomla! you have to feel comfortable with software that is in perpetual beta testing. Joomla! is Open Source meaning that its programmers are volunteers and its maintenance is based on community support. You become part of that community of users when you use the platform. The various vendors create add-ons that cost for annual subscriptions for their support and updates. In fact, you also have to be comfortable with the idea that you don't own any of the software, rather you are leasing it under the Open Source license from these vendors who offer varying levels of help.

Joomla! is best used for projects that are stand-alone and created by developers who are used to the Open Source LAMP (LINUX/Apache/MySQL/PHP) environment as well as working in the browser rather than an organization structured around an IT department and its software development protocols. You build the site on your computer inside your browser and test it on the Internet. When your users are happy, you move the site to its home on the host server. You can also build the site directly on the host but hide it until it is built, but the bottom line is that Joomla! can be created by a single person or a small team but is not appropriate for an Enterprise organization.

Joomla! requires a hosting service that offers access to their root and provides high priority to the servers, high memory allocation, and the ability to display and upload large files. It is very I/O intensive. Always purchase a business-class hosting service with plenty of storage and bandwidth. Most Joomla! designers (vs. programmers) like to use a host that offers CPanel as its graphical user interface to the server.

Joomla! a great tool that needs to continue to improve CMS admin usability

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized
June 30, 2015
Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology
Photography Company, 1-10 employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
Joomla!
10 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
A professional photographer needed a CMS tool that would allow her to have full control of content. I felt that Joomla! provided the tools needed for her request with expandability to handle her changing needs. There was a lot of good plugins to represent her photos, which was the core of what we were trying to do with her site.
Pros
  • Display photos using Lightbox
  • Sort content inside the Joomla! admin tool
  • Allow the developer (myself) alter the code inside the templates easily for personalization.
Cons
  • Not SEO friendly
  • Some Joomla! plugins cost while same is free in WordPress
  • Much bigger learning curve than WordPress out of the box
Likelihood to Recommend
The question is always, should I start with WordPress or Joomla!? I normally go to WordPress for big novices and Joomla! for slightly more inept users. This has a big impact on who is using it. Joomla! isn't as intuitive as WordPress but is powerful nonetheless once you dive into it.
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