Whenever we want to start a blog/website or a small business, a lot of thinking and hard work goes into it. It also signifies a dream venture in most of the cases. So, none of us want to ruin this for ourselves, and we want to be mindful before making choices. Choosing a CMS for your website is crucial, and we should be aware of what we're choosing. Because once you start your site and change your mind to shift to another CMS, it'll be a nightmare. Hence, making an informed choice is essential here. To do so, we should know what's out there! Let's compare some of the CMSs with the most popular one: WordPress.

WordPress vs. Joomla

In this age, we have many CMSs emerging; however, WordPress and Joomla undoubtedly stand out in the pack. One is renowned for ease of use, whereas the latter for flexible customization options. Below are some of the critical comparisons between the CMSs.

• WordPress, released in the year 2003, initially focused as a blogging service in the beginning years. And Joomla released in the year 2005 for more portal-like websites. However, both have evolved to contain all kinds of sites.
• WordPress holds 63% of the CMS market share, making it a popular choice, and Joomla makes up to 4.6% of the share, taking the second position next to WordPress.
• WordPress and Joomla are both built using PHP language. Joomla supports cross-platform, whereas WordPress supports UNIX-like and Windows platforms.
• Both are not standalone software and work when installed on a webserver. Often, the web host installs the WordPress software by default. Joomla, on the other hand, requires you to install and configure yourself. Hence, WordPress is most suited for beginners while Joomla for developers.
• WordPress is very user friendly and doesn't require any prerequisite to start working with. Joomla requires you to have basic coding skills and involves a learning curve.
• Joomla comes with a lot of built-in functionalities such as SEO optimization tools, back-up, and recovery, multilingual support. But WordPress is, however, minimalistic in this case and requires you to install plugins for added features.
• WordPress has tons of free themes and millions of premium ones to choose from. Joomla has somewhat less, which is still okay, but they lack a central pool of themes or templates as they call it (in Joomla).
• WordPress supports the use of third-party plugins, just like Joomla. But WordPress has a humongous number of plugins and a large plugin development community. On the other hand, Joomla has a lower collection of extensions (plugins) in the Joomla extension library.
• As far as flexibility is concerned, there's no doubt that Joomla allows customization compared to WordPress. WordPress is rather more rigid and has very few customization options.
• Security is a significant concern for anyone transacting over the web. Now, given the popularity and cult following, WordPress attracts a lot of hackers. As cited earlier, WordPress is exposed to a lot of third-party plugins and hence is prone to cyber-attacks. Third-party plugins are the primary point for advanced security features in WordPress. However, Joomla has the edge over WordPress when we talk of security. Joomla ships with SSL features and 2FA.

In our comparison of WordPress vs. Joomla, WordPress is most suitable for small to medium-sized businesses and beginners. On the other hand, Joomla is ideal for enterprises, complex sites, agencies, and expert web developers.

WordPress vs. DotNetNuke (DNN)

WordPress and DNN CMSs were both released in the year 2003. WordPress, compared to DNN, is easy to use, whereas DNN is a popular choice amongst developers. Both have their pros and cons; let's delve deeper into the comparison.

• One significant difference that sets both the CMSs apart is the technology stack that they use. WordPress is built on PHP and MySQL stack on a LINUX environment, whereas DNN uses the .NET framework and SQL on a Windows platform. 
• When it comes to themes/modules in DNN, both the CMSs have very different approaches. DNN's themes are restricted for styling purposes only. They have a user-friendly drag and drop feature to test themes from their theme library. WordPress, on the other hand, themes are not just restricted for styling purposes, but they also come with a lot of added functionality. No doubt, they have a vast collection of themes compared to DNN to choose from, but the fact that functionality comes coupled with styling might make a developer feel disabled but making it easy for a beginner at the same time.
• DNN provides a lot of flexibility for customizing your website, unlike WordPress. The same as mentioned earlier, DNN separates its style files from the functionality, making it easier for the developer to know where to look to customize a module. DNN is an ideal choice for C# developers to build their custom extensions and modules.
• The next important aspect is plugins or extensions in DNN. Both the CMSs have their library of collections of plugins. WordPress having a higher number of them, giving a choice of enhanced features to its users, given the broad community base. However, this also proves to be an open end for security vulnerabilities to WordPress. Security vulnerabilities in the case of DNN, on the other hand, is a bare minimum, because it has a smaller ecosystem of vendor modules.
• Site speed also comes a long way. According to a study, DNN performed well, considering the speed of the website, and WordPress was found on the bottom part of the graph.
• Administration and permissions are also quite diverging amongst these CMSs. Both come along with default roles and individual permissions; however, in WordPress, you'll have to install a third-party plugin for additional roles. In contrary to DNN, that ships with a rather rigid and closed administration along with granular level permissions. Like, you can control access of a role at module, folder, and page-level!

In our comparison of WordPress vs. DNN, after the points mentioned above, we can say that DNN is more towards a developer's choice given the flexibility, freedom of development, and is a suitable choice for enterprise websites compared to WordPress.

WordPress vs. Kentico

Kentico, an open-source CMS, was first released in the year 2004 and is less prevalent in the industry to WordPress. Kentico is a preferred choice for ASP.NET developers since the CMS uses the same.

• Kentico is known for its 'Headless CMS' offering, unlike WordPress, which offers both the front-end and back office. Headless CMS means that it doesn't have a default front-end framework, and it has just the body; that is the back office, which means that the front end/head could be anything! The back-office data can serve an app, a website, or a smartwatch, etc. The headless design reduces the load time rigorously, making the CMS lighter and faster.
• Kentico is easy to adapt to and learn similar to WordPress. Especially for trained ASP.NET developers. They have a user-friendly UI, overall making it an easy software to work with.
• Kentico offers excellent security and is reasonably scalable.
• Kentico is suitable for small to medium-sized companies and not for enterprise-level companies.
• Kentico is a bit on the higher-priced CMSs, they charge 10k USD for a business CMS tool, whereas WordPress is reasonably low priced.
• The main difference between WordPress and Kentico would be the language used. WordPress uses PHP and Kentico, Asp.NET. If you're looking for a CMS in ASP.NET, Kentico would be a good choice.

In our comparison between Kentico vs. WordPress, we know that language and architecture are two striking differences that could help us decide. Kentico's integration with Salesforce is a popular one.

WordPress vs. Sitefinity

Progress Sitefinity was released in the year 2002, a year before WordPress. Sitefinity can be a choice for any sized businesses, small to large.

• Sitefinity uses drag and drop feature for UI components in line with your website, making it easy to work and manage. On the other hand, WordPress has an admin panel to carry out any UI transactions.
• These CMSs differ in the language written WordPress uses PHP and Sitefinity .NET, making it an excellent choice for .NET developers. Sitefinity has a .NET community of developers too.
• Sitefinity is multilingual supportive, unlike WordPress, and has a caching concept, reducing the load time of your website.
• WordPress uses the Apache server, and Sitefinity uses Windows sever. Sitefinity works well with Microsoft technologies and is the best choice if you're using a Windows server.
• Another unique feature of Sitefinity is its Telerik support. Telerik offers tools for cross-platform application development. So, we could make use of Telerik controls in Sitefinity, which consists of 90+ advanced controls.
• However, Sitefinity comes with limited functionality concerning graphics. Any advanced changes would require the help of a developer. WordPress is also not so flexible with customizations. But it has a vast collection of themes and plugins which serve almost all needs.

In our comparison of WordPress vs. Sitefinity, we'd say Sitefinity is a robust and scalable CMS, fit to contain all kinds of websites. Support of Telerik is an added advantage.