Joomla! vs. Umbraco CMS

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Joomla
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Joomla! is a free and open source content management system used to publish web content. Included features are page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, a search function, and support for language internationalization.N/A
Umbraco CMS
Score 6.7 out of 10
N/A
Umbraco is an open-source .NET Core CMS with over 700,000 active installs worldwide and with more than 200,000 active community members. It was first released on February 16th, 2005, and is still to this day an open-source project backed by a commercial company. To ensure Umbraco is always running the latest technology, the company has aligned with Microsoft's .NET release schedule to always have the Umbraco CMS…
$0
Pricing
Joomla!Umbraco CMS
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Umbraco Free
$0
Umbraco Starter
$53
per month
Umbraco Standard
$320
per month
Umbraco Professional
$860
per month
Umbraco Cloud Enterprise
Custom Pricing
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
JoomlaUmbraco CMS
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThe Umbraco CMS and all of its core features are the same across all plans.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Joomla!Umbraco CMS
Considered Both Products
Joomla
Chose Joomla
I think Joomla is on-par with Drupal and Umbraco and similar platforms, but WordPress does seem to be above it. WordPress has become so common that there are more and more features becoming available to it that exceed the Joomla platform and make it hard to compete with. WordPre…
Umbraco CMS
Chose Umbraco CMS
Umbraco's templating is far superior than WordPress, Drupal and Joomla, but it's update process is WAY behind those platforms. The release schedule of Umbraco is way to often and most releases are to fix something missed in the previous release and not an improvement or new …
Features
Joomla!Umbraco CMS
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Joomla!
9.6
Ratings
17% above category average
Umbraco CMS
9.0
Ratings
11% above category average
Role-based user permissions9.60 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Joomla!
7.8
Ratings
3% above category average
Umbraco CMS
8.5
Ratings
11% above category average
API6.10 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language9.50 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Joomla!
9.0
Ratings
15% above category average
Umbraco CMS
8.0
Ratings
4% above category average
WYSIWYG editor9.50 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness9.70 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Admin section10.00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Page templates6.10 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Library of website themes8.10 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design9.60 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Publishing workflow9.50 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Form generator9.50 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Joomla!
8.7
Ratings
17% above category average
Umbraco CMS
7.2
Ratings
2% below category average
Content taxonomy8.00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
SEO support9.60 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Bulk management9.20 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions7.10 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Community / comment management9.50 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Joomla!Umbraco CMS
Small Businesses
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 10.0 out of 10
ManageWP
ManageWP
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
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Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Joomla!Umbraco CMS
Likelihood to Recommend
9.5
(0 ratings)
6.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.9
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.8
(0 ratings)
3.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
2.0
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(0 ratings)
3.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.7
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.9
(0 ratings)
4.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Joomla!Umbraco CMS
Likelihood to Recommend
It seems with the release of Joomla! 4 that the weak areas have all been covered. Its always been good for the mid-level small to large business, the blogging was WP, and the large-scale enterprise was probably bespoke. But the new interface is so simple it seems pointless using WP when Joomla! is as easy and can then grow as big as you like. The Workflows feature which allows you to set up work pipelines easily is going to be a boom to any larger enterprise sites. Couples with the new API which I got to see at one of their user groups, is amazing. They were creating articles on one site then another site was taking the feed directly for just certain categories. Really blows your mind what you could do with that and the new workflows.
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Umbraco is well suited for websites that are looking to do a wide range of activities that require complex technoligies. An example of this is a company with several different products or services. Umbraco would be overkill for simple sites that are mostly static. It is also difficult to find developers who have Umbraco experience, as it's market share is not all that high
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Pros
  • We use Joomla to build our websites and web applications because of its incredible intuitiveness and tools to make everything more manageable.
  • Its working environment is quite comfortable for my development team, and its web design resources significantly speed up our work when carrying out web development projects.
  • It allows you to use blocks to create and visually manage websites and divide them into different categories without programming knowledge.
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  • Quick to learn. For most if cases, developer needs to know Razor coding.
  • Doesn't require back-end programming.
  • Has build in users management (developers, content managers) and members management consoles (users of the site).
  • Clear admin tool (especially in version 7)
  • Fast.
  • Creating code from scratch, so it is easier to create clean code.
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Cons
  • Updating was never as seamless/easy as it seems to be with Wordpress. Obviously we accounted for this with our own workflow/methods, but I remember whenever we did WordPress updates it always seemed a breeze compared to the time/energy involved with a Joomla update/upgrade.
  • For a while (I think this has changed some) Joomla left itself open to attacks when administrators were not as well versed as they should be. There were developer additions that did security checks/audits for you, but the CMS was the subject of a lot of attacks when left in the hands of our clients for a long time (who had changed permissions to make editing easier/convenient). Ideally the CMS would have been more restrictive on some of these things to prevent easy abuse. Obviously this is more the fault of the misinformed/human then the CMS, but it could have been more dummy-proof.
  • No native versioning. There are some community extensions that add this functionality, but they pale in comparison to the versioning plugins of other CMS's (WordPress specifically). Again this was some time ago and in our experience, it could have changed by now.
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  • Migration of data between servers. There are tools that you can pay for that help facilitate this, but like any CMS system, there are still some tricks to getting it to work correctly.
  • Running as a Web Project instead of a Web Site. Umbraco does not run compiled code, but instead compiles it on the fly. I find this to cause some performance issues that would otherwise be resolved with a compiled code base.
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Likelihood to Renew
I gave it a rating of 10 because I just love how Joomla! works, how it is set up and how it handles many users. Also it is very fast, and there is no overload on the MySQL database or servers ever.
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No answers on this topic
Usability
The user experience and interface are good, but sometimes it is down. Delayed in the loading speed. Workflows can be simplified, and understanding templates needs much time. It is user-friendly and with multi-language support. Users can be added to the groups, which is easier. User controls can also be created based on role-based permission.
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Umbraco CMS effectively addresses enterprise content management needs. It's quite mature .NET based CMS, standing out as a leader among its competitors. Websites built with Umbraco are blazing fast. Extensive customization capabilities, and user-friendly content publishing interface makes it an ideal choice for businesses looking for a mature CMS solution.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
Occasionally, errors will appear in the admin that make it impossible to work without developer support.
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Performance
Today's Modern Joomla performs very well and is robust and durable. The pages load faster than they ever did in the past and Modern Joomla's integration into other software or systems has become seamless. Modern Joomla sites will last long and will stay running forever.
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Working in the admin panel (adding / reviewing / editing content) is very slow. The public facing site speed is dependent on what the pages are doing and how well the code was written (whether it is optimized for speed).
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Support Rating
Between the core Joomla developers who are excellent at answering questions and providing support, you have a whole community of developers who work with Joomla and are happy to help fellow developers out answering questions and supporting the Joomla project. Out of the many communities I am involved in for open-source software, Joomla's community is by far the best.
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Support for Umbraco-owned paid plugins is nonexistent.
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Online Training
It is good if you know Joomla! if not it can get a bit confusing
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Online training is often based on older versions of the platform. So, you'll have to fill in the gaps on your own.
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Implementation Rating
Make sure that PHP.ini is set to at least 60 ms for computer priority, 60MB for maximum downloads and 128MB for uploads. This is the minimum. It is best to run Joomla on a business host if you are using a shared hosting environment so that there are fewer accounts on the server. Make sure you have access to the root on CPanel. Be sure to point the DNS to the host and set up all zones prior to implementation and run your new version in a sub-domain hidden from the live version until you are ready to cut over.
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Spend the time to wireframe the content structure prior to diving in. This helps speed the process of implementation and it serves as documentation for end users.
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Alternatives Considered
Joomla is a very stable and secure CMS platform that ranks about in the middle of the pack with the other 'modern day' CMS systems out there. It's not as complex and frustrating as Magento, but it's also not as easy or robust to work on as WordPress. Thankfully when we do utilize it, there's still an online community our we can bounce issues and ideas off of.
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We previously used WordPress, however this was not easy to use, it was a complicated system and was limited in what we could achieve, there was a big outlay in buying bolts on and ensuring the system was safe. We found we where spammed loads, we tried to make it work however after a year we decided to leave WordPress behind. The company did evaluated Adobe but the dev team decided that Umbraco was the best tool to meet our own needs.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
Without significant development, the product does not scale well.
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Return on Investment
  • Deploying Joomla! for clients has helped them discover the benefits of using Open Source software while helping them appreciate our expertise.
  • Because the Joomla! community is smaller than the WP community, we are able to reach a wide range of clients looking for experts in the software, boosting our bottom line.
  • Occasionally a client will find Joomla! too complicated and wish to move to a proprietary DIY CMS, which we do not support, so we have lost clients looking for that level of flexibility.
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  • CMS is free
  • Support form Umbraco HQ is not expensive, can include Courier or other functionality
  • For most cases does not need back end developer
  • For trained Umbraco developers (Razor coding, using admin tool), developing medium site, takes a few weeks max
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ScreenShots

Umbraco CMS Screenshots

Screenshot of Umbraco 8 backoffice UIScreenshot of Umbraco 8 side by side multilingual editingScreenshot of Umbraco 8 Content AppsScreenshot of Umbraco Cloud project overviewScreenshot of Umbraco Cloud environment overview