WordPress vs Joomla

If you've asked around about which platform to build your website on, you've probably heard "just use WordPress" more times than you can count. It's the default answer. It's also, often, the wrong one.

Here's the thing nobody tells you: WordPress didn't start as a website platform. It started as blogging software, back in 2003. Everything it's become since then, the page builders, the e-commerce plugins, the membership systems, has been bolted on top of that original blogging foundation. Joomla, on the other hand, was built from day one as a full content management system, the kind organizations use to run real, structured websites.

That difference in origin still shows up in how each platform behaves today.

The Market Numbers Tell a Story, But Not the One You'd Expect

WordPress dominates by sheer volume. It now powers close to 60% of all websites built on a CMS, while Joomla sits around 2.6% of the market, according to W3Techs usage data. If popularity alone told you what to pick, that would settle it.

But popularity isn't the same as fit. WordPress got big by being easy for anyone to spin up a blog or a small brochure site. That's a real strength. It's also exactly why so many WordPress sites feel like they're straining under the weight of features they weren't designed to handle, layers of plugins trying to make blogging software act like an enterprise CMS.

Security: The Plugin Problem Is a Structural Problem

This is where the "blogging software" issue stops being theoretical and starts costing businesses money.

In 2025, security researchers tracked 11,334 new vulnerabilities across the WordPress ecosystem, a 42% jump from the year before, and the highest number ever recorded. The overwhelming majority, 91%, were found in plugins, not WordPress core. Going into 2026, new plugin vulnerabilities are being disclosed at a rate of 250 or more per week, according to vulnerability tracking data. Some of these get exploited within hours of becoming public.

Why does this happen so much on WordPress specifically? Because WordPress's core doesn't include the structural features a business site actually needs, granular user permissions, multilingual support, advanced content workflows, so site owners install plugin after plugin to fake it. Every plugin is another door into your site. More doors, more risk.

Joomla takes a different approach: much of what businesses need is built into the core, which means fewer third-party dependencies and a smaller attack surface from the start.

Permissions: Who Can Actually Do What

Here's a question that trips up a lot of growing businesses: can you control exactly what a specific employee, contractor, or department can see and edit on your site?

In WordPress, you get a handful of fixed roles, admin, editor, author, contributor, and not much room to customize beyond that without adding yet another plugin.

Joomla ships with a genuine Access Control List (ACL) system, and it's granular. According to Joomla's own documentation, permissions can be set at the global level, the component level, the category level, and even down to individual articles. If you're running a site with multiple teams, departments, or regions that each need different levels of access, this isn't a nice-to-have. It's the difference between a system you can actually govern and one you're constantly working around.

Built-In Multilingual Support

Running a business that serves customers in more than one language? Joomla has native, built-in multilingual support, no plugin required, with over 70 translation packs available out of the box, per Joomla's core features documentation. WordPress requires a third-party plugin to do the same job, which means another piece of software to keep updated, another potential point of failure, and often a subscription fee.

So When Does WordPress Make Sense?

To be fair, WordPress is genuinely good at what it was built for. If you're running a blog, a simple portfolio, or a small brochure site with one person managing it, WordPress's ease of use is a real advantage. There's nothing wrong with using blogging software to blog.

The trouble starts when a business outgrows that use case but stays on the platform anyway, stacking plugin on top of plugin to simulate features Joomla simply includes.

The Bottom Line

WordPress is the world's most popular way to publish a blog. Joomla is a content management system built for organizations that need real permission structures, multilingual reach, and a smaller security footprint. If your site is more than a personal blog, that distinction is worth taking seriously before you build.

Not sure which platform is right for your business? Midnites helps companies choose and build the right foundation the first time, so you're not migrating platforms two years in. Get in touch and let's talk through what your site actually needs.