Joomla! vs. Kentico Xperience

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
Kentico Xperience
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Kentico is a web content management system for building websites, online stores, intranets, and Web 2.0 community sites. Kentico CMS uses ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server for development via its Portal Engine, using Visual Studio, or through Microsoft MVC.
$9,999
Subscription license
Pricing
Joomla!Kentico Xperience
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Kentico Xperience Business
$9,999 / year
Subscription license
Kentico Xperience Business
$14,999
Perpetual license
Kentico Xperience Enterprise
$17,999 / year
Subscription license
Kentico Xperience Enterprise
$29,999
Perpetual license
Kentico Xperience Corporate
Upon request
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
JoomlaKentico Xperience
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Joomla!Kentico Xperience
Considered Both Products
Joomla
Chose Joomla
Comparing to other Platform handling user management is easy with Joomla.
various extensions really helpful for core level applicatiion
Chose Joomla
Joomla! fits me better because it is flexible and simple enough to understand. WordPress is straightforward, but it can't handle bigger websites as efficiently. Drupal is powerful, but it can be more challenging to learn. Joomla! Offers a suitable mix of options that meet my …
Chose Joomla
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 …
Chose Joomla
Wordpress has to be preloaded with a stack of plugins and a cache just to match 'out of the box' Joomla! That's why we switched.
Chose Joomla
I don't believe Joomla compares to any other programs I have used. There are similar products, but none that are quite as easy.
Chose Joomla
At the starting of my career, I got Joomla! to work on, SO I learned about Joomla!. Initially, it was tough to learn component development but after [learning] something, I like to do it.
Chose Joomla
All the reviews I read are lazy. They all say the same old, WP is easy, Joomla! harder but good and Drupal security. But that's so old, as they were measuring a decade ago. Joomla! has moved ahead. Its got over 70 languages and has been multi-language from the start. [It] was …
Chose Joomla
Simpler and easy to visually understand elements and tools. We don't need to do any fancy coding or use too many plugins. çompared with Wordpress and Webflow, we believe Joomla! has a more accurate and easy interface that allows the user to finish tasks in less time than the …
Chose Joomla
We tested other platforms like Wordpress, Magento and some local CMS. 
But Joomla offered us better resources for generating content.
Joomla is a CMS suitable for many types of projects, especially if you have several people editing content at the same time. 
Chose Joomla
As a user, it is more than OK for those standard daily operations like publishing and editing or comment management. As a developer, I have a very different perspective. Joomla! is not my favorite platform. Only ready-to-use tools like Wix can be less friendly than having to …
Chose Joomla
There are many themes and other design assets for Joomla! we can use from paid and free libraries throughout the internet. WordPress on the other hand is also very good and useful, comparatively Joomla! offered more features and at a better price.
Chose Joomla
I like Joomla! a lot more than Wordpress, as I find this constrictive in the way that they have made it a one size fits all CMS. I also find that their vulnerabilities are far bigger than Joomla's.
Chose Joomla
Joomla is more of a developer's CMS. It is much more customizable than WordPress.
Chose Joomla
Part of Joomla core, which is what comes with Joomla when you install it, is it's Access Control Lists. It allows you to not only control which users can access what, but allows you to create custom groups and have unique access per group. WordPress can't do that without a …
Chose Joomla
Wordpress is designed in a way to make it fairly fool-proof for the admin, but in this approach, it handcuffs the user from having control or making it easy to do, in many cases, what are basic things (changing the title, URL segment, etc...). With the exception of the …
Chose Joomla
Wordpress is probably the most popular CMS, followed by Joomla! For me, I find Joomla! much more intuitive. Both use themes and can provide excellent results, however I prefer Joomla!
Chose Joomla
We chose Joomla! over Drupal or Wordpress because it's in the middle ground between those two systems. We needed something that can be extended down the road if we need it, but at the same time, it can't be too complex. We felt Drupal is too complex and Wordpress seems to be …
Chose Joomla
We selected Joomla because of the available extensions met are needs at the time.
Chose Joomla
Joomla! is the #2 Open Source CMS behind WordPress, which we also use, and ahead of Drupal, which we have evaluated but decided not to pursue. Joomla! generally performs better than WP for clients that need more complexity to their websites, including flexibility in templating, …
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. …
Chose Joomla
I have selected Joomla when I needed an easy content management platform for a team of beginners. It's not as easy to customize or optimize like WordPress or Wix sites, but it's a great introduction until you are ready for the more advanced features offered by these alternative …
Chose Joomla
Joomla has a more general and wide use, more documentation, forums and community that develops many templates and extensions for almost all purposes. It has a great web-based administration environment and, with the correct permissions setting, it can be prepared for a regular …
Chose Joomla
Joomla is one of the least intuitive options and has had some issues with updates in the past, as compared to WordPress. Magento has similar issues, but Joomla doesn't have as much flexibility as Magento (and of course, Joomla does not have e-commerce features built-in). …
Kentico Xperience
Chose Kentico Xperience
Kentico provided us with a far more robust and customizable platform than lower-cost alternatives such as Wix or Squarespace, and was available at a much lower cost of entry than Ektron. It required a lot fewer fiddly uses of extensions than Wordpress, though some custom …
Chose Kentico Xperience
We selected Kentico for our particular project to match up with another site we had and it was more financial wise for us than other solutions we looked into. A big thing for us was that we needed to have language management and Kentico being an international country was a good …
Chose Kentico Xperience
Sitefinity is behind Kentico in feature maturity. It lacks the level of tech support that Kentico has. Sitefinity can also be harder to upgrade.
Chose Kentico Xperience
Previously we used Microsoft SharePoint as a content management system and it was very limited, required a ton of support, and we encountered bugs on a weekly/monthly basis.

All of the negatives that we had associated with SharePoint went away when we switched to Kentico. It was …
Chose Kentico Xperience
I recently started learning Sitecore which resembles Kentico in some aspects, and I find Kentico to be more user-friendly and intuitive. Sitecore is a more robust system, but in my opinion it gives content administrators too many options, and has a way steeper learning curve. …
Chose Kentico Xperience
Kentico is a lot easier, more fluent and slicker than these products. It is easy to setup, use and teach others, so content can be managed by multiple users without any special training or skills i.e coding. It is definitely a lot more expensive so you are paying for a premium …
Chose Kentico Xperience
We researched .asp and .net platforms and for our company's needs (we do not do e-commerce) Kentico was the best overall fit and value.
Chose Kentico Xperience
Kentico 8 really is a drastic improvement over previous versions of Kentico - the whole system is light years faster, much more intuitive to use and nicer for all users involved.
Chose Kentico Xperience
When discussing Kentico with clients, I find myself uttering the same phrase repeatedly. "Kentico provides 95% of the functionality of high-dollar CMSs at a fifth of the price." This allows clients to use the dollars they would have previously put towards licencing into feature …
Chose Kentico Xperience
I've used SiteCore, Ektron, Joomla!, Wordpress, and SharePoint (if you want to count that as a competitor for CMS). Kentico 8 blows them all out of the water. Nothing is more intuitive in the way that content is created, the way the site is setup, and how efficient rollouts can …
Chose Kentico Xperience
When compared to the above solutions the value that Kentico offers is much higher when compared to the price of these other solutions. Kentico will do 90% of what Sitecore and Ektron and Adobe do, and those other solutions will do 90% of what Kentico does. In my opinion they …
Chose Kentico Xperience
Better than all of the above on almost every level. SiteFinity comes closest from a developer tool perspective and Umbraco from a flexibility perspective.
Chose Kentico Xperience
Out of these CMS systems I've worked in, Kentico is still hands down the easiest to build and manage.

Ingeniux was a failed project, it was too cumbersome to work in (MVC based), it was a nightmare to do any custom dev work in it, couldn't debug, and their own staff couldn't get …
Chose Kentico Xperience
Where all of these systems have their strengths and weaknesses, one of the reasons we tend to go to Kentico more than other systems is because of the:
  • The reasonable price point for clients
  • Constant innovation and partner communications with Kentico (letting the community really …
Chose Kentico Xperience
The competitive toolset and streamlined development process that Kentico provides allows for it to be a viable option at a fraction of the cost of other solutions.
Chose Kentico Xperience
It seems to have better organization and better extendability. In comparison to WordPress, the support that is offered by Kentico is incredible. When comparing to Sitecore, the price point makes it much more affordable for smaller to mid-size organizations that need a great CMS …
Chose Kentico Xperience
When deciding on Kentico we compared 2 other products, all vendors provided either provided 1 to 2 demos. Compared to the other vendors, the Kentico product worked as expected when demonstrating compared to the other two vendors that had a range of problems in their product …
Chose Kentico Xperience
WordPress - I do like WordPress, and we propose this CMS as an option to Kentico, but I firmly believe that unless everything happens to work perfectly, WordPress will cost more money to develop in the long run. Aside from that, WordPress has intrusive updates very regularly, …
Chose Kentico Xperience
Kentico is great when you need an MS / .NET based tool, but you don't want to pay so much for Sitecore.
Chose Kentico Xperience
The greatest thing about Kentico is its API-first development focus. What most people don't realize, but is the most telling item for developers, is that ALL of the Kentico UI is an API client using the publicly available API. If you can see it in Kentico, you can do it, or …
Chose Kentico Xperience
Kentico is to most full featured for large corporate sites needing multiple versions. WordPress may update more frequently, but Kentico has released 2 updates in the 2+ years I've been using it, which is fantastic.
Chose Kentico Xperience
At Bit-Wizards we have used many open source CMS tools like Word Press and Joomla as well as enterprise solutions like SiteCore and Ektron. The open source challenges are stability and security of the platform. Support for correcting those issues depends greatly on the …
Chose Kentico Xperience
Wordpress is much quicker and lighter, but not as robust and is suitable in different situations. Sitecore and Kentico offer similar functionality, but with a different approach to development. Sitecore has a much higher price point and similar functionality, so in my opinion …
Features
Joomla!Kentico Xperience
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Joomla!
9.6
Ratings
17% above category average
Kentico Xperience
7.1
Ratings
14% below category average
Role-based user permissions9.60 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Joomla!
7.8
Ratings
3% above category average
Kentico Xperience
7.5
Ratings
10% below category average
API6.10 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language9.50 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Joomla!
9.0
Ratings
15% above category average
Kentico Xperience
7.0
Ratings
9% below category average
WYSIWYG editor9.40 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness9.70 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Admin section10.00 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Page templates6.10 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Library of website themes8.10 Ratings5.80 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design9.60 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Publishing workflow9.50 Ratings6.20 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
Kentico Xperience
6.9
Ratings
4% below category average
Content taxonomy8.00 Ratings6.30 Ratings
SEO support9.60 Ratings7.20 Ratings
Bulk management9.20 Ratings5.10 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions7.10 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Community / comment management9.50 Ratings7.90 Ratings
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Joomla!Kentico Xperience
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Score 10.0 out of 10
Bloomreach - The Agentic Platform for Personalization
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Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
RWS Tridion Sites
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
Joomla!Kentico Xperience
Likelihood to Recommend
9.5
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.9
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.8
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.7
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.9
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Joomla!Kentico Xperience
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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Well suited for marketers that do not have in-house web programming or web designing resources available. Less appropriate for people that aren't computer savvy (i.e. don't know how to use basic programs like email, Excel, PowerPoint) or for those who are not detail-oriented because if you skip certain steps when adding/editing content, your webpage won't render correctly and/or create negative impact for search engine optimization without you knowing it.
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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.
Read full review
  • Ease of use for the developer, content authors, and internet marketers that use it. The user interface in Kentico 8 truly is amazing and easy to pick up with no training.
  • Strong customization and integration capabilities, including the built in REST service, Integration Bus, and elegant API. I love the fact that if there is anything not in the box we can use the system to extend it or connect it to any CRM, ERP, or other third party service very easily.
  • Large out of the box functionality. There is an extremely high level of value that the platform provides. Instead of having to build extra modules for things like Event Booking, Forums, Polls, or E-commerce, they are already there for us to use.
  • Ability to control the HTML output of the site at a very fine level. Creating HTML5 is very easy in Kentico and implementing any design, as responsive, is totally possible in the system.
  • The ability to get a very high level of insight into the visitors journey through the website and market back to them with the Contact management, Lead Scoring, and Marketing Automation modules is very impressive.
  • The scalablity of the system is impressive. Running a very highly trafficked web site is totally possible with Kentico and its strong caching and web farm capabilities.
  • The support that Kentico provides is top notch, 24/7 global support is included with any purchase, 7 day bug fix policy, and excellent documentation
  • The development community is engaged and ready to help if you are a developer learning Kentico, and the Kentico partner community is very strong as well.
Read full review
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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  • Their slogan - "Right First Time Technology" - I get what they mean, but some things may be lost in translation. This is a sentence fragment in English, and some clients may be turned off by it.
  • Easier to understand documentation - their official documentation could use an overhaul. All of the information is there, but most of their code examples need to be fleshed out a bit. This aspect of their product can be very hard to navigate for first-time Kentico developers.
  • Email Queue - this should be in the same section as Email Marketing; currently this is under Configuration
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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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We are locked into Kentico for the long haul. It provides us with an easy and flexible solution for a very non technical company to create a site and have the features they want, especially with the inclusion of EMS into our license. Now we have a true platform to build and grow our solutions.
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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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It seriously is one of the best interfaces I have ever used. I also love the fact that I can use UI personalization to secure any functionality by user or role that I don't want that role to have access to. The best part is the customization of the UI, I can add in any button, tab, or menu item I want through it, no code required.
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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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No answers on this topic
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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Their support staff is friendly, knowledgeable, and will work with you until your issue is fixed. This could take a few phone calls back and forth, but they are very diligent in helping you.
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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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No answers on this topic
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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The system provides many opportunities to integrate and enhance the platform and makes it easy to do so.
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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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Previously we used Microsoft SharePoint as a content management system and it was very limited, required a ton of support, and we encountered bugs on a weekly/monthly basis. All of the negatives that we had associated with SharePoint went away when we switched to Kentico. It was really night and day and Kentico has really helped us move forward and become much more efficient.
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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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  • Kentico has allowed us to deliver to clients more quickly, more cheaply, and with high quality to our clients. It's an inexpensive licensing model, an easy development platform, and powerful enough we can deliver amazing results to our clients.
  • Kentico's quick setup and deployment model has allowed me to very quickly ramp up new developers. This saves money and time.
  • We routinely see extraordinary returns in visits, time on page, and other critical metrics after rolling out Kentico-based systems/applications.
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ScreenShots

Kentico Xperience Screenshots

Screenshot of Application listScreenshot of Marketing AutomationScreenshot of Kentico DashboardScreenshot of Data ProtectionScreenshot of Persona InsightsScreenshot of Campaign Management