A website can be an exceptional tool for reaching your audience and customers. That is a well-known fact. But, when you’re thinking about building a site, it can be less clear where to start. Sure, you can throw some HTML on a page, upload it to a hosting service, and call it a day. But building a site from scratch is undoubtedly the most time consuming and involved way to make your vision a reality. Fortunately, there are many alternative ways to avoid this path in the year 2021. 

Throughout the past twenty years, many new CMSs have appeared offering a variety of platforms which can be used as a foundation for a website. A CMS, or a Content Management System, offers an easier and more user-friendly experience for those who have little time to learn web development while still wanting to make changes to their site. However, not all CMSs are created equal, often going about similar functionality in different ways or providing a different range of functionality altogether. In this article, we’ll highlight some of the most prominent platforms we use to make sites and what goes into choosing the right CMS for the job. The three CMSs we’ll be highlighting are Drupal 8, Duda, and WordPress, all viable options for creating a website but rather different in their approaches. 

WordPress is undoubtedly the most popular platform used today with an estimated 61.8% of the market share of all CMSs while powering over 27 million active websites. That’s over 36% of all websites on the internet whether they use a CMS or not. Wordpress is a great option for someone who wants to get started quickly and without much of a headache or learning curve while offering a large selection of expandability options. However, it is important to mention early on that there are two separate ways to enjoy WordPress’s functionality.

Although it appears to be the better and more attractive option, we suggest forgoing WordPress.com in favor of WordPress.org. The primary difference between the two is the level of control you’ll have over your site. Although WordPress.com seems more accessible at first, allowing its users to go in and create a site for free, you will find major limitations in monetizing, hosting, and theming your site. Your website will also technically be a subdomain of WordPress.com and will be locked in to using WordPress’s hosting plans which can lock core features like Google Analytics behind a higher pay wall. Although WordPress.com might be better for more temporary site needs such as school projects, for our purposes today, we’ll be focusing on the .org solution as it really offers the better WordPress experience.

So what makes WordPress stand out among the competition? WordPress’s core strengths fall on its swift setup process and its easy accessibility. Getting started with WordPress is a breeze especially seeing as some web hosts (such as Hostgator) come with the built in functionality to setup a WordPress environment with one click. Once that is done, users can easily choose pre-built themes and add pages to their heart's content. Where it gets a bit trickier is when you want to expand the functionality and performance of your site.

To expand your site’s functionality, you must select plugins which can be varied in their presentation, price, and stability. There is a huge selection of tried-and-true solutions for common needs, but many plugins have been discontinued, and the rest may leave you with frequent updates that may add additional work for your team. WordPress’s plug-in system can be quite useful, but it is also sometimes hard to separate out the good from the bad and can sometimes lead to unexpected results. This plugin aspect can require a bit of research, but ultimately, they’re pretty easy to add to the site, and just as easy to remove if you find you would prefer something else.

Furthermore, because WordPress is so popular, that also makes it the biggest target for exploiters whether that means spam or a full site-wide hack. The latter is rare, but it's good to keep in mind that WordPress’s popularity can be a double-edged sword. Additionally, WordPress can be a tad heavy to load which results in slower page speeds and potential downtime. It also falls short in SEO functionality. Although its Search Engine Optimization methods are easy to use, the options available don’t allow as much potentiel for search engine dominance as some other site building methods might provide. All in all, the WordPress experience can be a solid choice if you want an easy to use and inexpensive website with a large range of improvements at your disposal. However, it is good to keep in mind that it can fall short in other important functions like fast page speed, search engine optimization, and advanced security measures.

Similarly, our second CMS, Duda, also boasts simplicity at the expense of depth and creative freedom. Duda is quite new compared to WordPress’s 17 year long run. Duda only released in 2019 but is quickly becoming one of the fastest ways to set up a website. 

Duda sets itself apart from WordPress with a streamlined drag-and-drop interface and preconfigured section layouts that allow users to quickly and easily create an attractive website at the expense of more complex customization options. That doesn’t mean Duda isn’t powerful though. Unlike similar drag-and-drop site builders like Weebly or Wix, Duda offers a range of advanced functionality that really puts it in a unique position. It boasts a more user-friendly interface with a less-steep learning curve than WordPress while lacking in an over-abundance of extended functionality options.

One of the essential differences for quick site-building comes from the fact that Duda doesn’t require a second webpage to view your changes, while WordPress does. This extra step of switching pages and refreshing to preview changes can add a lot of time when building out a website. Additionally, Duda and WP both offer similar functionality in the way of content blocks where you can add a preconfigured set of fields to a section in a defined layout. However, Duda’s widget system is better thought out for aesthetic and usability purposes and adds a lot of useful features from the get go. It also gives you access to create your own widgets in a way that isn’t as difficult or time consuming. This is possible by switching to Duda’s developer mode, which trades the Drag and Drop interface for a more customizable code-based layout.

One of the drawbacks of Duda, though, is its pricing model. While both WordPress.org and Drupal are open-source and allow you to use nearly any hosting service, Duda comes with a subscription plan starting at $14 a month. However, this gives you complimentary access to AWS (Amazon Web Services) hosting, which means you won’t have to pay for a hosting service to get your site online. AWS is among the top hosting options though, so the trade off may be worth it for the ease of use and time saved.

Marrying simplicity, efficiency, and potentiel functionality, Duda is quickly becoming an avid competitor with other top-name platforms. If you just need a simple site to display information and you aren’t a web developer, Duda should be a strong option to consider. This is not to say it can’t compete in terms of advanced functionality like payment gateways or email handling, but there will be less resources out there to assist you due largely to Duda’s “new kid on the block” nature.

Finally, we come to Drupal, another veteran of the CMS market. Drupal has been around since January of 2001 and has since seen a lot of success in building sites with more in-depth needs such as Nasa, Tesla, and the Australian Government who all use Drupal for their websites. If Duda is the king of simplicity, then Drupal gets the crown for functionality. Not only does it come out of the box with a light weight design that outperforms WordPress’s page speed and SEO needs, it also boasts many features such as Webforms that allow you to create easy Contact Us forms with a lot of customizable options through visual editors. Its streamlined menu system adds a range of easy-to-access customization without having to write any code. However, basic web coding knowledge is definitely recommended if you’re going to build a site with Drupal. It has a steeper learning curve, and is more geared towards developers as far as building the layout of the site.

Unlike the other two which come with pre-configured themes that make aesthetics easy, Drupal has more of a blank page approach to its visuals and allows the site editors to flesh out the details through traditional web development practices such as using CSS for styling. Drupal also has themes, but they are more of a base on which to build your own custom theme as opposed to a rigid structure that you must work within. Some themes come with simplified coding terms, such as UIkit, which takes common website needs (such as a sliding banner or image gallery) and makes them easier to code and customize. Drupal themes can be a double edged sword though, as you are given greater access to how the site functions while having to spend more time setting things up.

However, once your Drupal site is configured and looking good, content editors can easily go in and add content without much trouble. Drupal makes back-end editing complex while making front-end tasks seamless. It also takes a scalable approach to page content compared to Duda’s more rigid Widgets and Wordpress’s Blocks, which means non-developers won’t have to go in and change how things work just to add content or images. With Drupal, you can do functions like pulling content from other pages to display them in a section with a huge list of results programmatically. An example would be if you wanted to pull all blog photos into an image gallery, then you can do that. Drupal has a smarter-not-harder approach to web development that allows you to build your site in a way that is truly unique to your needs. Did we mention it was free?

Unlike Duda, there is no subscription fee to get a better product, and the Module system Drupal utilizes is also free and open-source. This means you’ll almost never have to worry about paying more to get expanded features. However, the difference may be limited by the time and knowledge it takes to build out the site properly. You may have to hire some developers at the offset, but, once the site is created, it's largely smooth sailing. Wordpress and Duda might be easier to build out of the box, but if you want a site done right and have a lot of specific ideas in mind for form and/or functionality, Drupal will definitely get you a lot closer than many other options (and will perform better doing it).


All in all, we recommend that you research these CMS options for yourself, as there isn’t really a one-size-fits-all solution to every need. Drupal will offer you functionality and creative freedom, while Duda will excel at simplicity and quicker build times. Wordpress is somewhat a blend of both options as it wields some of the simplicity of Duda but also harnesses some of the experience and extended functionality of Drupal. In a sense, they will all be able to fulfill most website needs, but there is a choice to be made between ease of use and complexity of customization. Ultimately, it is important to gauge what needs your site will have, so you can choose the option that is right for you.