Wordpress vs Drupal: Which is better for a typical marketing team?

When it comes to Content Management Systems, WordPress and Drupal are the reigning undisputed heavyweight champions. Drupal has long been a major player, and is – well – a functionality monster, with the ability to tweak and customize things you never thought would need to be tweaked. In the other corner, Wordpress has added a slew of features over the past few years, which have carried it from its origins as a blogging platform, to a full-fledged CMS, with the ability to create, organize and distribute just about any type of web content you could possibly want. In fact, as of August 2013, nearly 19% of all websites were running WordPress, making it the most popular website platform in the world. Chances are, when you’re launching a new website and you have to decide on a CMS, WordPress and Drupal are the two names that are sure to come up.

Let’s assume that both platforms support your functionality needs. If you’re part of a marketing or content management team of typical technical prowess (in other words, your roster doesn’t include a web developer-turned-content-manager), the answer seems pretty clear: WordPress is the way to go.

Having launched numerous websites based on both WordPress and Drupal, we have found that Drupal installations often result in more technical questions from clients, requisite more ongoing support and, well, simply cause a bit more confusion.

If you’re an old Drupal pro, or have a lot of experience with the platform, its logic might come second nature. However, when you’re looking at a fresh learning curve, some of Drupal’s methods can seem a bit counter-intuitive or over elaborate. Changing the URL of an individual page, for example, might require you to make updates in three places, rather than one. Or maybe your WYSIWYG content editor (with your bold, italic, etc. controls) might not display properly until you add CSS to explicitly define custom text styles. Or, if you want to search your content from your administration panel, you’ll have to find and install the appropriate module.

That’s not to say that Drupal is any sort of slouch (you don’t get a million users with a sub-par product), but rather that it’s a tool which may be more suited for a web developer, or someone who is willing to tinker and experiment, rather than your typical website manager. WordPress, however, does an exceptional job making it extremely easy to manage your content and update your site. From an admin dashboard that’s easier to navigate, to an official mobile app for managing-on-the-go, to its massive support base, it’s safe to say that most teams are going to find WordPress to be a better fit, when it comes to getting things done with minimal hassle.

Not to mention, if you want to add features to your website, WordPress’ plugin library is double the size of Drupal’s module collection (~29k vs. ~15k). So if you’re looking for, say, an easy way to add a Twitter feed to your sidebar yourself, you’re going to find a lot more options with WordPress. And if you run into trouble, the WordPress support forums tend to be a bit less technical than what you’ll find on the Drupal boards.

Generally, unless a project’s requirements specifically call for particular features of Drupal, we’ll recommend WordPress to most clients who wants to be empowered to manage things for themselves. When you’re looking for ease-of-use coupled with primo functionality, for now, WordPress seems like the way to go.