How to Pick a CMS for Your Association or Nonprofit Website
The Drupal vs WordPress vs Sitefinity Cage Match
SUMMARY
When it comes to how to pick a CMS, our clients often ask us for help due to the sheer volume of options out there. In this post, we rank the relative strengths and weaknesses of three of the most popular content management systems for associations and nonprofits: Drupal vs WordPress vs Sitefinity.
Table of Contents
- Why Do Organizations Choose an Open-Source CMS?
- Why Do Organizations Choose a Licensed CMS?
- What Are the Most Common CMSes?
- Why Do the Platform’s Product Roadmap and Market Share Matter to Me?
- What Should Organizations Consider When Comparing Drupal vs WordPress vs Sitefinity?
- TL;DR (In Summary)
Navigating content management system (CMS) options can feel daunting, especially with so many platforms in the market. As a team experienced in working across many platforms (Drupal, WordPress, Kentico, Sitefinity, and Sitecore) specifically for associations and nonprofits, we’ve gained valuable insights into their strengths and weaknesses.
One question we hear time and time again from clients is, “Which CMS is the right fit for us?” We break down the decision and evaluation process of how to pick a CMS into a few key steps.
The first question is: open-source or licensed? Often, an organization will have a bias towards one or the other.
Why Do Organizations Choose an Open-Source CMS?
- Open-source options are generally free of licensing fees, though they may be paired with a platform as a service or plugin options that do have costs.
- With open-source code, you have a limitless number of developers extending the functionality, identifying bugs and vulnerabilities, and innovating.
- You generally do not have one number to call or one company accountable for the core application. Instead, you work with the community of developers and users for maintenance.
Why Do Organizations Choose a Licensed CMS?
- Licensed solutions have more controlled, and often more predictable, development paths.
- You have one company accountable for the core application.
- The development of additional features can be constrained by what the application owner selects. With the trend toward cloud-hosted CMS subscriptions, you may also have less flexibility when changing hosting later.
What Are the Most Common CMSes?
Once we have established whether or not there’s a preference for open source or licensed, we dig into specific CMS options. For the purpose of this exercise, we’ll focus on one licensed option (Sitefinity) that’s been trending higher in popularity due to cost balanced with feature set, which means we’re comparing Drupal vs WordPress vs Sitefinity.
Sitefinity
Progress Sitefinity is a feature-rich CMS with a licensed model and robust personalization engine at a mid-price range relative to other .NET options.
WordPress
WordPress is the most used CMS and is accessible from both a content entry and development standpoint. Scale and customization are secondary considerations.
Drupal
Drupal is well-suited for sites with structured data and big content needs. It is built for scale, flexibility and reliability with a “framework” approach to the core application and a surgical approach to contributed modules.
Why Do the Platform’s Product Roadmap and Market Share Matter to Me?
When building a new website, you are generally making a considerable investment and multi-year commitment. It’s important to understand the product vision and universe of support as you make this commitment. Will this CMS be around for a long time with lots of good innovation?
- Sitefinity positions itself as “for IT heroes and marketing mavericks.” It has the smallest market share of the three but a critical mass of developers.
- WordPress positions itself as “for everyone” and is by far the most popular CMS.
- Drupal positions itself as “for ambitious site builders.” It’s in second place for CMS market share among the most highly trafficked sites.
What Should Organizations Consider When Comparing Drupal vs WordPress vs Sitefinity?
Each of the three CMSes we are looking at has its pros and cons. We’ve outlined a few of the criteria that come up most often with our clients when they ask for help with how to pick a CMS.
Extending with Plugins and Modules
While core functionality across most content management systems is remarkably similar, there are important differences when it comes to the availability of add-on functionality and the ways in which it is organized and managed. I mostly think in analogies, so if a CMS were how you get your food:
Sitefinity: The universe of meals and ingredients is limited. There are typically additional charges for add-ons. The quality and consistency is good.
WordPress: Everything comes packaged up, ready in minutes. If you’re after a calendar, there will be several plugins to choose from and they will come complete with all of the functionality and even look and feel that the plugin creators thought you would want. Quality varies widely.
Drupal: There is a wide variety, and you can buy precisely the ingredients you want to make the dish you envision. You’ll do better if you know how to cook.
| Sitefinity | WordPress | Drupal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Availability | 3rd | 1st | 2nd |
| Fees | Many add-ons have incremental costs | Some have freemium or paid options | Most are free and open-source |
| Approach | Beyond the primary focus on core plugins and modules provided by Sitefinity, additional commercial tools are built by Progress Software and third-party vendors. | Plugins often package backend functionality with frontend making them easier for non-technical users to implement but sometimes more difficult to integrate with custom websites. | Modules are more granular with backend and theme concerns separated. Development effort is required to install, configure and sometimes customize the related display. |
Content Administration
The quantity, skill and experience level of your content administrators is going to be one of the most important considerations, albeit largely subjective. In our experience, though, when considering content administration in Drupal vs WordPress vs Sitefinity, Sitefinity would come in last in any vote.
Many clients view WordPress as the easiest to use, but that is mostly because most people have had some exposure to it which makes it more familiar. How common it is also makes it “highly Googleable,” as one client put it, when you run into an issue.
Drupal can be new for many folks, but it tends to be fairly intuitive. Clients and staff alike also tend to prefer Drupal’s layout management tools.
| Sitefinity | WordPress | Drupal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ease of use for page creation and editing | 3rd | 1st | 2nd |
| Ability for content editors to create unique layouts with drag-and-drop tools | 3rd (Widgets) | 2nd (Blocks) | 1st (Layout Builder) |
| User permissions | Built-in roles created by default with default permission sets that can be customized | Plugins available for more robust permissions management | Core includes robust support for granular permissions management& |
| Handling of structured data and taxonomy | Built-in classifications for Tags (flat) and Categories (hierarchical). You can also create custom classifications. | Achievable with advanced custom fields and custom post types. Core application assumes pages and posts. | Built around fieldable entities and global taxonomies that can be leveraged for dynamic views (lists of content) and to drive custom displays. |
Integrations
You’ll want to assess anything baked in or available for your particular integration needs, but the table below provides an overview of how each system approaches API integrations.
| Sitefinity | WordPress | Drupal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| API data integration to consume data from other sites | Certain connectors are available (e.g. SSO with external authentication) for a fee. Other connections would require custom development. | Possible with ACF and supporting plug-ins (which can be vulnerable to conflicts) | Slight advantage due to the built-in handling of structured data and Drupal's surgical approach to contributed modules (more single-function) |
Security
Virtually every website owner cares about security. You will want to be prepared to invest in the resources needed to stay on top of the updates and patches required to keep your site secure and in good health.
| Sitefinity | WordPress | Drupal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Security | Good security but still requires attention | Vulnerable to attacks (in part because of its popularity), mitigated by plugin management and core updates | Highly secure but requires expertise to maintain |
Multisites and Microsites
Many organizations find the need for a microsite, usually when they need to serve a distinct target audience, promote a multi-day event, or provide a home for a closely affiliated organization.
Out-of-the-box solutions are easy if separate domains are not a hard requirement (i.e. if the site can live at yourwebsite.com/microsite-name versus needing to live at microsite-name.com).
For sites at separate domains looking to leverage aspects of the main site, your options vary.
| Sitefinity | WordPress | Drupal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Options for consolidating existing sites and/or creating new sites | Multisites are possible. Additional domains incur additional licensing costs. | For separate domains, you can use the "multisite" option or a "Custom Upstream" from Pantheon. | For separate domains, you can use the "multisite" option or Custom Upstream (Pantheon) or SiteFactory (Acquia). |
Cost
The top question we get when helping clients pick a CMS is, “How much will it cost me?” Pricing between Drupal vs WordPress vs Sitefinity is straightforward, as only one platform has a built-in cost.
| Sitefinity | WordPress | Drupal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licensing Fees | $XX,XXX/year - Pricing model is somewhat complex and will require a conversation | None | None |
Upgrades
Technical expertise is needed to apply regular security updates for all three platforms. It’s also important to find a system that is continually adding new features and using current, performant technology. Balance that with the cost needed to upgrade in place (or migrate to in some cases) the latest, supported version.
| Sitefinity | WordPress | Drupal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core release cycles | Centralized roadmap with major releases about every six months. Additionally, Progress builds Telerik and other major toolsets for .NET development, keeping Sitefinity in line with the use of those tools. |
Release approximately every 4 months. | Major core update releases every six months with full version releases every 2-3 years. Two versions are supported at any given time. Drupal 11 is available. Drupal 10 will be supported until Drupal 12 comes out. |
TL;DR (In Summary)
| Sitefinity | WordPress | Drupal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pros | Good option if you have .NET skills in-house and/or an organizational preference for licensed software | Best for ease of use for content administrators and DIY development | Best for structured content, taxonomy, permissions, management of layout, and security |
| Cons | Suboptimal content editor experience Recurring licensing fees Fixed development path and universe of plugins |
Some functional areas are not necessarily built for scale/enterprise, but this is somewhat offset by the size of the development community and number of high-profile sites driving development. The large market share makes it a popular target for security threats. |
Requires at least occasional involvement from Drupal developers Would likely be something new to learn for content administrators |
Which One Is Right for You?
This is certainly not an exhaustive list of the considerations for CMS selection (and not an exhaustive list of CMS options). Connect with us if you’d like to discuss your options further. We’re full of insights and would love to help you on your journey!
