WordPress vs Joomla: Quick Breakdown (2026)

Your boss wants a landing page by Friday. Your developer is on vacation. Your agency says three weeks and $5,000. Somehow, you're expected to make it happen anyway.

This is the reality for marketing managers who handle websites without technical backgrounds. You're weighing WordPress vs Joomla, trying to figure out which platform lets you work without waiting on others or breaking your site.

This guide compares WordPress and Joomla, their real strengths, actual weaknesses, and who should use each.

We'll also explore what happens when you're stuck maintaining these platforms and whether there's a better path for marketing teams who want to ship pages fast.

WordPress vs Joomla and Why does it Matter?

Both WordPress and Joomla are content management systems.

Software for building and managing websites without writing code from scratch.

WordPress powers approximately 475 million websites globally, making it the most widely used CMS.

Originally a blogging platform launched in 2003, it evolved into a multipurpose system handling everything from blogs to complex e-commerce.

Joomla powers about 3% of all websites and holds 6% of the CMS market, making it the third most popular CMS. Released in 2005, it was designed for portal-like websites with membership systems and advanced user management.

Why this choice matters:

Speed to market determines whether you launch campaigns in hours or wait weeks for developer availability. When competitors move fast, and you're waiting for page edits, your CMS choice impacts revenue.

Team independence means your marketing team makes changes safely without IT gatekeepers or agency dependencies. The wrong platform means constantly submitting tickets and waiting.

Non-technical users need platforms that won't crash sites or destroy layouts when content changes. Fear slows everything down.

Both WordPress and Joomla are powerful, but power without simplicity creates more ways to make problems.

WordPress

WordPress wins the web for good reason. It's relatively advanced and has a massive ecosystem.

Install it, pick a theme, add plugins, and you've got a functioning website. It started as a blogging tool but expanded into an all-purpose CMS through its plugin architecture.

Best for: Small businesses, bloggers, basic e-commerce stores, and users who prioritize ease of use over complex content structures. If you need something running quickly and don't have specific enterprise requirements, WordPress gets you there faster.

Key features:

• Massive plugin library with 61,000+ options for almost any functionality
• Thousands of themes, from free to premium
• A large community means abundant tutorials and quick answers
• Relatively gentle learning curve for content editing
• Built-in blogging functionality
• Good SEO capabilities with plugins like RankMath

Pricing: WordPress core is free. Complex business sites can range from $3,000 to $30,000 or more, depending on premium themes, plugins, development work, and ongoing maintenance.

Honest Take:

WordPress succeeds because it's everywhere. Creating both strength and weakness. The huge plugin ecosystem means you can find tools for anything, but quality varies wildly, and plugins often conflict.

Security is a constant concern because hackers commonly target WordPress. Updates can break your site if plugins aren't compatible. For marketing teams, the real pain is the tremendous power, but also the tremendous ways to mess things up. One wrong plugin update and your landing page is down.

You can also read our comparison between Drupal and WordPress.

Joomla

Joomla offers more built-in features than WordPress, but it has a deep learning curve.

It's structured around articles, categories, and advanced user access controls. Where WordPress relies heavily on plugins, Joomla includes more functionality in its core.

Multilingual support, granular user permissions, and complex content hierarchies.

Best for: Websites with multiple content types, complex organizational structures, membership sites, community platforms, and projects requiring sophisticated access control. Universities, government portals, and businesses managing different user groups find Joomla's structure advantageous.

Key features:

• Advanced user management with granular permission levels built in
• Native multilingual support for 70+ languages without plugins
• Strong content organization through articles and categories
• More control over content structure and relationships
• Two-factor authentication is included in the core
• Flexible template system allowing different templates per page

Pricing: Joomla core is free and open-source. Basic sites run similar costs to WordPress for hosting and a domain. Monthly costs can range from $700 to $6,500 or more for Joomla sites that require extensions, templates, and professional development work.

Honest Take:

Joomla is the platform you choose when WordPress doesn't offer enough control, but Drupal feels too complex.

It's an awkward middle ground. Joomla's market share has been shrinking since 2010, meaning fewer developers, fewer modern extensions, and a smaller community.

For non-technical marketing teams, Joomla feels rough. Installing extensions requires manual downloading and uploading, which is not accessible from the dashboard like in WordPress.

The admin interface is more complex, page builders lag behind WordPress options, and finding Joomla specialists is increasingly difficult.

If you're already using Joomla successfully, fine. But starting fresh in 2026? The ecosystem momentum isn't there.

JET-CMS: An alternative to Joomla and WordPress

JET-CMS is purpose-built for marketing teams in mid-sized companies who are tired of being held hostage by technical dependencies. It's not trying to be everything to everyone.

It's laser-focused on one use case: letting non-technical marketing people create landing pages and campaigns safely, quickly, and independently.

Best for: Marketing managers, content leads, growth teams, and brand managers. Specifically designed for people who hate dealing with WordPress complexity, are scared of breaking things, and are sick of waiting on agencies or IT departments. If you're judged on speed and results but not code, JET-CMS was built for you.

Key features:

• Create and publish landing pages in hours instead of weeks
• AI-powered multilingual content translation built-in
• Maintenance-free hosting on EU-based dedicated servers
• Performance-optimized infrastructure via Vercel cloud
• Zero fear of breaking things with safe, data-driven editing
• No IT support or technical expertise required
• GDPR-compliant with high availability during traffic spikes

Pricing: Contact JET-CMS for pricing

Honest Take:

JET-CMS understands that marketing teams don't want to become web developers.

They want to do marketing. Test messaging, launch campaigns, iterate quickly, and move on. JET-CMS strips away technical overhead that makes WordPress exhausting and Joomla intimidating. The tradeoff is less flexibility, you can't install random plugins or build complex custom functionality.

But that's the point. Most marketing teams don't need infinite flexibility; they need reliable speed.

JET-CMS is for teams burned by WordPress updates that break sites at 2 am or by waiting weeks for agencies to change a headline. It won't replace your main corporate website, but for landing pages and fast-iteration marketing content, it removes technical friction.

Final Words

Powerful tools aren't helpful if they make your job harder.

WordPress and Joomla can both build incredible websites. They're mature, proven, and well-supported.

But they were designed for a world where people expected to be technical or hire technical people. Today's marketing teams exist in the gap between those options.

The long-term benefit isn't about features. It's about velocity. How fast can you test messaging? How quickly can you respond to market changes? How much time goes to maintaining platforms versus doing marketing work?

Test before committing. Try WordPress, explore Joomla if it fits your use case, and if you're a marketing team drowning in dependencies, request a JET-CMS demo. See which platform removes friction rather than adding it.