A recent post, 3 Major Drupal Drawbacks, went into detail on a few drawbacks from using the Drupal CMS. From usability, customization to support, WordPress takes the cake on three. After doing some further research into the differences of these two CMS platforms, I found three more drawbacks to using Drupal for your website.
Cost
One of the major advantages promoted about both WordPress and Drupal is the cost, or lack there of. The reality is, that although the software itself is free to download and install, there are many elements inside a website ecosystem. Your hosting provider, server, and developer or vendor are all aspects that will eventually add up to a pretty hefty price tag. With that said, due to the smaller community of skilled developers who can work on Drupal are not only hard to find, but they are often much more expensive.
However, WordPress has a enormous community of developers actively searching for work and new ways to improve the CMS itself. That leaves you with more availability to a developer at a moments time and will cost a lot less than a Drupal developer.
Performance
Due to the advanced technical skills and knowledge required to work with the Drupal CMS, it does allow for the ability to make an ultra custom and sophisticated site. However, the drawback to this is the fact that websites do have a shelf-life of about 2-3 years. So in order to keep your website running as is with the flexibility of future growth, you need to be able to find developers who can do just that. But again, these developers are harder to find and can charge a lot more.
With WordPress, not only are you able to create a creative and functioning website with page loading times under a second, you are able to keep your site at that status because it doesn’t require super technical knowledge. Also, the ability to do majority of updates right in your Dashboard, rather than having to use a third party source like Drupal, allows for your developer’s performance to increase as well.
Security
While security is another one of Drupal’s strong suits, the platform is just like any other … none of them are 100% secure. In fact, in 2014 the Drupal community endured a malicious attack that was dubbed as “Drualgeddon”, a SQL injection vulnerability that affected numerous sites.
One of the largest misconceptions about WordPress is in regards to their security. What many don’t understand is that the reason for this is due to the high popularity of websites being supported by this powerful CMS. As the popularity grows, hackers begin to grow anxious in finding ways to attack sites and causes malicious security threats. Keeping your website up-to-date with your plugins, user roles, and version updates can help protect your website more than any fancy software can. At the end of the day, the safety of your website is in your hands.
“Most often users are the weak link in the security chain. By learning how WordPress sites get hacked and how to avoid it, users can significantly minimize the risk of their site being compromised.” – Nick Schaferhoff
Another important note to remember is that as your business grows, so will your website. This may require you to expand the flexibility and functionality of your site as traffic increases and more content publishes. If you’re site is on Drupal and you on the hunt for a new vendor, chances are you’ll have to stick with a Drupal vendor or developer — who don’t forget can get costly because of their technical knowledge. Especially important for enterprise-grade websites, with WordPress, you’ll never be stuck with one vendor or CMS platform, thanks to the large community of developers wanting and willing to improve your site.
