Drupal vs Wordpress

[Velvis]

I have a client who needs some help on an eCommerce site. Their previous developer bailed without finishing it. It was started in Drupal.

I have Wordpress experience but nothing with commerce built in, and I have zero experience with Drupal.

Is there a strong argument for Drupal over Wordpress for this type of website?

Opinions?


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[HCHTech]

The opinion of the web folks I've had experience with seems to be unanimous: The talent pool of Wordpress developers is far, far greater than the talent pool of developers for other platforms like Drupal or Joomla. From a business-owner's standpoint, you are limiting yourself unnecessarily by choosing anything but Wordpress.

I have a good friend who's wife has a site that reviews books - their primary target market is book clubs. The site has thousands of pages now. It was originally done 10 or so years ago in Joomla, I think, and of course the developer bailed at some point, and now they are stuck with a string of folks who say they know Joomla, but a few months go by and they find out it's way too much work to keep this beast rolling, and they find a reason to bail. My friend got a few five-figure quotes for rewriting everything in Wordpress, but they know that would destroy their hard-earned SEO at least in the short term, and they just can't do it. It took years to build up enough traffic to monetize the thing, and I don't think they have the will to do it all again. So...they're stuck.

Learn from their failure - Wordpress won the war, use it or pay the consequences.

 

[Bryce W]

As @HCHTech said, Wordpress won the war with Drupal.
However, Wordpress is a blogging platform first, and I wouldnt recommend it for any major eCommerce. Simple single product delivery sure, but not multiple products. Yes, there are plugins that can make it handle it, but your client is far better off going with something like Shopify, which is to eCommerce what Wordpress is to blogging.

 

[trevm999]

See if they can make use of fulfil.io
If not then just go straight Shopify or hire a developer who builds ecommerce sites using a solid web framework (but with batteries included)

 

[Velvis]

So shopify is a whole web development platform but geared to online sales?

Can any hosting company host shopify sites or is that handled directly through shopify?

 

[Your PCMD]

You can convert Joomla or Drupal to Wordpress. Just a thought.

In regards to the OP, Wordpress is the way to go, even with eCommerce as there is a plethora of addons for such a thing, some even free.

 

[Bryce W]

So shopify is a whole web development platform but geared to online sales?

Can any hosting company host shopify sites or is that handled directly through shopify?

Shopify is a shopping cart platform. Its cloud hosted by them, you dont host it.

You can convert Joomla or Drupal to Wordpress. Just a thought.

In regards to the OP, Wordpress is the way to go, even with eCommerce as there is a plethora of addons for such a thing, some even free.

It depends on the clients needs. Whether it is single products, or an entire range. If its a range, I would definitely go Shopify.
As someone in this space, eCommerce can get real complex real fast. Go with one of the best, most supported platforms for $29 per month.
Yes, you dont "own" it like you would with self-hosting Wordpress. But when you own your Wordpress install, all the issues are yours, all the bugs, incompatibilities, downtime, are all your problem. Pay $29 per month to make it not your problem.

 

[rsarceno]

I think Drupal and Wordpress has it's own pros and cons.

If your main business is WebDesign, then you should be familiar and support both Drupal and Wordpress or whatever the client requested.

But in my case, I only get a handful of Webdesign project in a year.
So I decided I'm only going to support Wordpress.
And if it's a new site, I always recommend Avada Theme for most companies.
Avada comes with hundreds of features and plugin, including WooCommerce.
I feel mastering Wordpresss and one sophisticated theme like Avada will help you provide better and faster service.

This is how I sell it to potential clients and lower the cost (less research)

 

[Mick]

Just be warned that there are some things that (in my opinion) Wordpress is really bad at. You'd think you could email or mail-shot your users, right? Pretty basic. Not out the box, you can't. Requires plug-ins, add-ons etc and even then, it's not great. In fact, user- management all round is pretty poor. Natively, you can't even search for a user without going into the Admin UI.

 

[goldmercury]

I always thought Magento was the ecommerce platform of choice? I've never used it but it's the goto. The one I have used for a small ecommerce site is square space. - easy to setup, manage and hosted.

 

[urcomputech]

If you're looking for a highly scalable self hosted platform that is built from the top down for ecommerce and which has a plethora of support, not to mention books and video tutorials - I would suggest Magento.
Here's a fairly objective comparison between Magento and the aforementioned Shopify, which I believe has its own convincing set of positive attributes as Bryce alluded to.

https://ecommerce-platforms.com/com...mmunity-edition-ecommerce-platform-comparison

 

[Bryce W]

If you're looking for a highly scalable self hosted platform that is built from the top down for ecommerce and which has a plethora of support, not to mention books and video tutorials - I would suggest Magento.
Here's a fairly objective comparison between Magento and the aforementioned Shopify, which I believe has its own convincing set of positive attributes as Bryce alluded to.

https://ecommerce-platforms.com/com...mmunity-edition-ecommerce-platform-comparison

A key line in that article mentions what I was talking about

Magento, while free itself, requires you to purchase hosting and carry out all the software/system setup and installation procedures yourself – something that only fairly tech-savvy people (and not typical end-users) would be able to do.

As someone who is capable technically with website stuff, I still dont want to do it. I want to work ON the business, not IN the business. Tinkering wont make you money.

In light of this as well as some of the points discussed above, Shopify comes out a winner as an ecommerce platform for building your online store with maximum ease of use and powerful capabilities.

All that matters with eCommerce is selling, so you dont want to get tied up with tech. And Shopify is great for that, just get something setup in a few minutes and start selling, working on the Business, not the tech.

 

[Mick]

There are also some plug-ins for WordPress that help you integrate Shopify within it - if that's what you need. NOTE: I have not used these myself, so I can't speak either for or against them.

 

[seedubya]

Interestingly, everything that everyone has said in this thread is true!