For building your own website, there are two popular market leaders to choose from: WordPress and Drupal. Both platforms are content management systems (CMSs), and both provide you with a DIY option to build and run all types of content on your website.
Of the two, WordPress is the better known CMS. Many prominent companies use WordPress, including Mercedes Benz, Sony Mobile, The New Yorker, and other major players.
Drupal has been around longer than WordPress, although it is not as widely known and used. Large entities that use Drupal include The Economist, NASA.gov, University of Colorado, and others.
WordPress Advantages
1. User-friendliness: This CMS is substantially easier to use, especially for those who are not tech-savvy.
2. Extendability: WordPress’s external theme and add-on communities simplify its extensibility, so customizing your website is an option. If you select the right WordPress add-ons, you will get everything available with Drupal.
3. Support: WordPress has a large online community where you can solve any problem that arises.
4. Inexpensive website building: WordPress offers many ready-made solutions, and its specialists are often less costly than Drupal’s.
Drupal Advantages
1. Tailor-made content: Many users think that Drupal's options for tailor-made content are more versatile than WordPress.
2. Access control (AC): Drupal provides AC by default, letting you enable individual permissions to your created roles.
3. Support for multilingual websites: You will need external add-ons to get this feature with WordPress, while Drupal provides language support by default.
4. Handling large amounts of data: Drupal's taxonomy system is quite versatile, making it an excellent platform for handling large volumes of data.
Ease of Building and Launching Your Website With WordPress vs. Drupal
When it comes to ease of creating a site with Drupal vs WordPress, the latter is a clear winner. A relatively low learning curve and user-friendliness make it much easier to build your website from scratch with WordPress. You can select your domain-specific theme and launch your site in half a day. Of course, more full-featured projects will require more time to get them up and running. The WordPress interface is easy to understand, even for less tech-savvy individuals. Tools like the WYSIWYG Theme Customizer makes this platform even more user-friendly for ordinary people to create quality content.
Drupal's learning curve is a bit steeper, and it is somewhat less user-friendly. Although it provides many themes, Drupal-powered sites often have customized themes, meaning you will need a specialist to create something new and unique. Also, Drupal’s interface is not easy to understand for users with minimal technical knowledge. In fact, Drupal’s landing page states that, although the functions are basic, Drupal is not the easiest platform to use.
I hope the above offers some insights into the differences between the two, enabling you to select the CMS that best suits your needs.