Quick guide to choosing a CMS
with the comparison of Drupal, WordPress, and Enpressa
Prepared by Boris Motusic and the United Experts team
Introduction
Your choice of CMS will have a profound impact on the success of your organization’s digital efforts.
Don’t make a mistake that has a profoundly negative impact
Most business relationships at United Experts start with troubleshooting web projects in trouble. Over 23 years we witnessed many projects gone horribly wrong, and all mostly due to a stunningly wrong selection of CMS. That’s why it’s crucially important that you do not get wooed by sales pitches or just go with a choice of technology that’s a default for your organisation. Instead, you should make and informed decision that best serves your objectives and steers your project to success. This is a non-technical guide that’s designed to give you the most relevant knowledge needed to make that decision and choose the right solution for your project.
Scope of information presented
This guide first presents general concepts and ideas related to CMS decision making. After that, we compare CMS platforms with which we have extensive experience as a digital consultancy, namely Drupal, WordPress, and Enpressa.
Who this guide is for
This guide has been written to help anyone involved, or likely to become involved, in a CMS buying decision for their organization. You may be an IT director, a developer and architect, a VP of digital marketing, a web content manager, or someone else entirely.
About the authors
Boris Motusic and the United Experts team have over 23 years of experience in CMS implementations for brands such as Microsoft, PwC, BNP Paribas, Best Western Hotels, Hitachi, and many others.
How to use this guide
We review all relevant concepts and share crucial insights in a very brief and straight to the point form. So, we strongly recommend that you read this short guide in full which will effectively help you to get on the right track with your digital project.
Executive summary
Nowadays, everyone involved, from customers to marketers and content editors expects a super-fast, effortless experience. Content management systems and the entire way that we develop and manage digital projects went through a seismic transformation in the past few years.
Two significant macro trends drive this change:
- Rising customer expectations
Spoiled by convenient, tailored experiences provided by tech giants, customers today expect the same from every digital interaction. They expect hassle reduction. They expect every digital interaction to be super-fast and effortless. - Operational efficiency and technology savings
To stay on top of the digital game, organizations have to adopt an entirely new way to deliver and manage their digital efforts. It is now more important than ever to publish content fast, experiment with variations, and implement functional changes with minimum cost, effort, and time. Thus, business users need to easily accomplish what was previously handled by a tech team.
Not too long ago, Drupal was a dominant force in the non-profit sector. Today the trends have changed dramatically and WordPress has become the most dominant CMS in the world, not just for non-profits, foundations, and social impact organizations but across every sector of the business world. However, the huge ecosystem, flexibility, and vast options with WordPress also create a lot of confusion and feeling of overwhelm when some organizations evaluate WordPress. Enpressa is an answer for organizations that love WordPress but wish to have an optimized platform and a defined package of functionality and services.
Drupal has not been able to stay competitive in the broader CMS space, and because of this, it has consciously moved towards being primarily an enterprise solution. From a technical perspective, Drupal continued to increase the complexity and weight of its codebase. This translates into an increased cost to develop and maintain websites and a level of infrastructure bloat that is unnecessary.
Drupal is not necessarily a bad platform from a code perspective, it’s just overly complicated, which means your organization will spend a lot of extra money building and managing it.
Drupal ecosystem and market share are much smaller compared to WordPress. This means that there are very few resources available in comparison to WordPress. Lacking ecosystem resources such as plugins and services mean inflexibility in customization and an additional cost for development and maintenance.
Most importantly, Drupal does not have a modern, easy to use editorial and marketing functionality like WordPress. Drupal interface looks dated, overly complicated, and will not empower content editors and marketers to easily manage their everyday work.
WordPress usability, extensibility, and mature, robust development platform make it a popular and secure choice for enterprises, such as CNN, USA Today, Sony, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, and Microsoft. For such large businesses, according to Forbes, WordPress is the “promised land — a standard, easy-to-use, multimedia-friendly platform — after a decade of lurching through clunky, expensive, jerry-rigged content management systems.”
WordPress has a huge ecosystem and a marketplace of over 50,000 extensions/plugins that expand its functionality. You can think of WordPress as an operating system of the web. Just like you get Windows or macOS and then you install applications that you need for your work and play, you do the same with WordPress; install WordPress and customize it with the kind of plugins that you need. Some of those plugins have a huge user base and big companies behind them. Elementor, for example, is a plugin for a streamlined creation of professional-grade content by non-coders and non-designers. It has 5,000,000 users and it gives you an alternative way to deal with your content. WordPress is all about choices.
WordPress being about choices means you get a super solid platform with great security, performance, and development features. You take that platform and you get a great opportunity to streamline your custom development or to take some of the plugins from the vast marketplace. However, this huge flexibility and choice with WordPress also create a lot of confusion and feeling of overwhelm when some organizations evaluate WordPress. Instead, those organizations would prefer to have a defined package of functionality and services. That’s exactly why at United Experts we created Enpressa.
Enpressa is a package of WordPress enhancements for high-end projects that brings additional functionality, streamlines development, and brings best-in-class support services. Developed by United Experts, Enpressa is an answer for organizations that love WordPress but wish to have a defined package of functionality and services.
Enpressa functionality includes marketing automation, personalization, omnichannel, AI-augmentation, A/B testing, advanced workflows, content staging, audit trial, multimarket, omnichannel, and more. Modern development platform supports MVC, dependency management, continuous delivery, and cross-platform development with PHP, C#, Vue, NuxtJS, Microsoft .Net, and Microsoft .Net Core!
Enpressa Professional Services offer simple to order packages for implementation, integrations, training, consulting, and best-in-class support.
Table of Contents
What is a CMS today?
Nowadays, everyone involved, from customers to marketers and content editors expects a super-fast, effortless experience. Fortunately, a new kind of CMS is here!
Content management systems and the entire way that we develop and manage digital projects went through a seismic transformation in the past few years.
Deliberately ignoring current industry buzzwords, we wish to highlight two significant macro trends driving this change:
Rising customer expectations
A nice design is no longer a differentiating factor. It’s a default expectation no one really talks about any longer. Whether you are making digital efforts for a business or public service, you will have to think way past design and usability.
Spoiled by convenient, tailored experiences provided by tech giants, customers today expect the same from every digital interaction. They expect hassle reduction. They expect every digital interaction to be super-fast and effortless.
For instance, when users open a website for an arts theatre, they expect to immediately see the play that they want to see, click and buy a ticket in a matter of seconds. This example is not wishful thinking for the future. It’s made possible by interconnected systems and smart software that do a lot of automation and personalization while dramatically reducing or completely eliminating the need of any user to do anything, to put any effort. What’s more, this technology is now widely available and affordable.
But we do need the right kind of CMS.
Operational efficiency and technology savings
To stay on top of the digital game, organizations have to adopt an entirely new way to deliver and manage their digital efforts. It is now more important than ever to publish content fast, experiment with variations, and implement functional changes with minimum cost, effort, and time. Thus, business users need to easily accomplish what was previously handled by a tech team.
Marketers and content editors wish to deliver the same amazing digital experiences as seen from tech giants. This cannot cost much and no one wants to wait for developers and their complex development and deployment procedures. Effortless system maintenance and updates are also expected. After all, that’s how we update our mobile apps 😉 Fortunately, the digital world moves fast, and we have a new kind of CMS that makes this possible, enjoyable, and safe.
Last but not least, the worldwide pandemic accelerated this change and catapulted us years forward into a new world where every organisation has to adapt or disappear.Let us show you around. Let us take you there.
Features you need in 2021
Every project has its own unique requirements. However, here we highlight some of the most important CMS features that apply to any project in 2021.
Great editorial functionality
As a minimum requirement, a suitable CMS should give you the tools to easily create, edit, and deliver content. Below are the most important editorial functionality requirements.
Comfortable user interface
Marketers and editors spend a lot of time in a CMS. You wish to make their experience productive but also pleasant and comfortable. By all means, a CMS should have a decluttered, intuitive user interface. Modern CMS will also feature an app like, a snappy interface that loads fast without reloading pages.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
Content block templates
Page templates are an assumption. However, look for a CMS that supports templating for individual content blocks, page sections, and everything else you need to publish. By having templates for individual elements, you help writers and editors create content faster and with fewer mistakes. Imagine just having a predefined template for an FAQ section, call for action section, pricing table, etc. A content editor would just fill in the actual content. It’s very important to demand a feature where a content editor can easily make adjustments to predefined templates.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
HOT: Visual content builder
Modern marketers simply demand more control over the content and prefer to avoid costly and slow implementations of changes by developers.
Visual content builders allow non-technical people to create a rich high-end content design in a quick and easy way without coding. Simply drag, drop and customize. Start with a ready template and if desired, have full control to easily change the layout, size, colors, animation effects, or any other content setting.
Visual content editors first emerged as a trend with small businesses and bloggers but it didn’t take long before those tools became a popular choice for convenient content creation in large teams and enterprise-grade websites.
However, beware, for enterprise-grade projects with page builders we need a proper, properly configured CMS which would make this approach performant and secure.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
Easy management of special content
This is where most content management systems fail although marketers are often desperate to quickly and easily add special content. Yes, we are talking about popups, cards, flip-boxes, sidebars, counters, charts, cool buttons, infoboxes, special sliders, etc. Usually, the way to get this done effortlessly by non-technical people is by using the above mentioned Visual content builders.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
Streamlined media management
A CMS should automatically resize images when uploaded by content editors. It should create multiple image sizes which will be loaded on different website parts and different devices. In terms of audio and video, you should look for easy and robust upload functionality. Video files can be large, so smooth and uninterrupted upload is essential. Support for media storage on a CDN (Content Delivery Network) will greatly improve website performance. If relevant to embed content from external providers such as YouTube and Vimeo, make sure that a CMS has an easy way to do this through a dedicated widget or similar.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
Full site editing
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
Responsive editing with content preview
Look for multiple preview modes for different devices. You want to be able to quickly preview how your content looks like on phones, tablets, and desktops. And if you plan on delivering personalized content, it will be handy for your content teams to see what specific audience profiles will experience.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
HOT: Copy Paste
Ability to quickly copy any element and paste it to a different place on the page, or to an entirely different page on your site is super convenient and time saving.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
Copy and paste formatting styles
Ability to copy the entire styling from a widget, column or page section and paste it to another element in the same or different page with just a click is also supper convenient and time saving.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
HOT: Save any content block as a template
You should be able to save any page, page section, widget, and any other element as a template and reuse it freely within your website.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
Layout editing
Content editors should be able to adjust layouts in a non-technical way. Change number of columns, column width and height, gap, margins, paddings, etc. Also, to set background images, videos, gradients, etc. All of that should of course be editable for multiple devices and screen sizes.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
In-line Editing
You should look for an in-line editing feature to type and edit directly on page that you are viewing.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
Content scheduling
Automated publishing and/or unpublishing is essential for most teams. Make sure that this functionality is available for all content types, not just for pages.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
Safe editing features
Revision history with ability to revert changes is a must. So is the “bin folder” functionality where you can see all deleted content before it’s permanently deleted. Undo function on page, widget, or any page element is a nice convenience. No more need to click save. Your work should continuously be saved and backed-up automatically.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
VIDEO: WordPress vs Drupal
WordPress and Enpressa are clear winners when it comes down to ease of use and overall editorial features. Drupal interface is overly complicated and it looks dated.
WordPress & Enpressa combined with Elementor plugin, feature a mind-blowing content editing experience. Producing professional-grade content is stunningly easy for non-coders and non-designers.
Rock solid security and performance
Your CMS project is likely not going to be successful if you omit almost any one of the suggested by this guide features. However, if you fail with security, we are not talking about a failure but a disaster. Performance in any respect is also a very significant success factor. Both security and performance depend significantly on system configuration and developer implementation. However, we outline the most desired CMS features that significantly improve security and performance.
OWASP Top 10 checklist
The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a community dedicated to web application security. The OWASP Top 10 list focuses on identifying the most serious application security risks for a broad array of organisations. The Top 10 items are selected and prioritized in combination with consensus estimates of exploitability, detectability, and impact estimates. Both Drupal and WordPress perform well with OWASP Top 10. See details for WordPress and Drupal.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
Dual factor authentication
Two-step or dual-factor authentication is a good and easy way to additionally protect your CMS admin area.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
HOT: Automatic background updates for security releases
Unless you are using WordPress, security patches cannot be automatically applied; they are time and resource consuming, and require complex development and deployment workflows. Applying a security patch is in most cases comparable as a procedure to a version update. However, the WordPress Security Team can identify, fix and push out automated security enhancements for WordPress without the site owner needing to do anything .The security update will be installed automatically. This is a huge deal for the reasons outlined below. In fact, it is so huge that many enterprises state this aspect as one of the main reasons for migrating to WordPress.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
Precompilation of static content
Every time a user opens a web page created in your CMS, that page gets generated dynamically and possibly combines data stored in the database, files, and programming code. That’s also an opportunity for hackers to intercept this process with malicious code. However, WordPress can also precompile (create) all or selected pages and store them as static HTML files. With static pages, your server doesn’t need to ‘render’ your site each time someone visits it. Instead, it just sends them simple HTML and CSS, so it’s harder to exploit your website. Apart from improved security, static pages generally load faster since your server doesn’t need to generate them on the fly. Drupal also has a form of content caching but not nearly as flexible and powerful as static page precompilation with WordPress and Enpressa.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
Separation of admin from public site
The most effective and dramatic way to secure your website is to completely separate your admin (backend) and public site (frontend). This way, any public, including potential hackers or malicious software will be completely cut from gaining control of your website. Generally speaking, any CMS that supports RESTful API and decoupled architecture could make this possible. However, to make it work the dev team would have to invest considerable time in custom development. Enpressa streamlines this configuration with the option of RESTful API-based architecture or sync between separate instances where one is only configured for frontend functionality.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
Compiled code
Another super powerful option for both security and performance is to compile your website code and make a deployment to your server without PHP source code. Enpressa makes this possible through the implementation of the powerful PeachPie compiler. Because all WordPress PHP code is compiled into a single Microsoft ASP.NET framework distributable, the architecture does not allow for unsafe practices, such as making changes to the code on the server. If one wants to modify the source code, it has to be re-compiled and re-deployed on the server. You’ll thank us later.
- Drupal
- WordPress
- Enpressa
COMPARISON: performance and security
Despite the widespread use of WordPress in the enterprise world, a common misconception that persists about the system is that it is insecure. To understand the origin of the misconception of WordPress’s insecurity, it is important to note that WordPress is the only large-scale software platform whose use spans from the consumer to the enterprise market. Consumer implementations are very different from professional implementations and they greatly contribute to the WordPress security myth. The consumer nature of the platform leads to frequent implementations by amateurs who do not follow even basic best practices in the area of security, which is of course completely unrelated to a professional setup.
A professionally implemented WordPress solution is considered to be one of the most secured setups in the world of CMS. WordPress does a great job in addressing OWASP Top 10 security risks. The WordPress Security Team is made up of approximately 50 experts including lead developers and security researchers. The team often collaborates with other security teams such as Google, Microsoft, and even Drupal. One such example was the vulnerability in the PHP XML parser where a resolution was a result of a joint effort by both WordPress and Drupal security teams.
The WordPress Security Team can identify, fix and push out automated security enhancements for WordPress without the site owner needing to do anything. The security update will be installed automatically. This is a huge deal as organizations avoid complex and time-consuming update procedures found with Drupal and most other CMS. In fact, it is so huge that many enterprises state this aspect as one of the main reasons for migrating to WordPress.
WHITEPAPER: Unparalleled Security with Enterprise WordPress
Enpressa is a package of WordPress enhancements for high-end projects that brings additional functionality, streamlines development, and brings best-in-class support services. Enpressa functionality includes marketing automation, personalization, omnichannel, AI-augmentation, A/B testing, advanced workflows, content staging, audit trial, multimarket, omnichannel, and much more.Enpressa builds on top of strong WordPress security to offer the ultimate protection for the most demanding, high-end setups. This is achieved by Enpressa options for the separation of admin and public site, and/or an option for compiled PHP code.
As outlined above, the most effective and dramatic way to secure your website is to completely separate your admin (backend) and public site (frontend). This way, any public, including potential hackers or malicious software will be completely cut from gaining control of your website.
Another super powerful option for both security and performance is to compile your website code and make a deployment to your server without PHP source code. Because all WordPress PHP code is compiled into a single Microsoft ASP.NET framework distributable, the architecture does not allow for unsafe practices, such as making changes to the code on the server.
Enpressa is 100% compatible with WordPress but entirely optimized for high-end projects in terms of functionality, technical framework, and support services. Developed by United Experts, Enpressa is an answer for organizations that love WordPress but wish to have a defined package of functionality and services.
Top-level overview of Enpressa architecture:
Drupal is mature, stable and designed with robust security in mind. In high security applications, Drupal can be configured for extremely strong database encryption. When whole-database encryption is not desired, very high granularity is available to protect more specific information: user accounts, specific forms, and even the values of specific fields can be encrypted in an otherwise plaintext database.
Drupal’s extensible cache layer comes pre-configured with basic page, Javascript, and CSS caches. The system supports deep integration with performance technologies such as Memcache, Redis, Varnish, and many popular CDN services.
Like WordPress, Drupal includes features that address all of the Open Web Application Security Project’s top ten security risks.
We are still working on this content!
We believe that great things are created with collaboration. As this guide is still in writing, we would love to hear about your ideas on what you would like to see here, change, or improve.
At the moment we are planning to add the following sections:
- Marketing functionality requirements
- Maintenance and development requirements
- Ecosystem requirements
- ROI and TCO guidelines