A CMS can be easy to learn and still become difficult to manage.
Creating your first page may be simple. The real test comes later, when you want to customize the design, add more functionality, manage users and content, and keep everything running smoothly.
This is where the differences between WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and UltimateWB become much more noticeable.
WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla: How Easy Are They to Use?
WordPress
WordPress is relatively easy to get started with, which is one reason it became so widely used.
The experience can change considerably as a website becomes more sophisticated. WordPress has a huge ecosystem of plugins and themes, making it possible to add almost any type of functionality you need.
That flexibility can also mean managing a growing collection of third-party software.
A more complicated WordPress website can involve WordPress core, a theme, and numerous plugins, all of which can have their own updates, compatibility issues, bugs, and security vulnerabilities.
WordPress also does not include a general-purpose contact form builder in its core.
Its built-in SEO capabilities are limited as well. WordPress provides some basic search-engine-friendly features, but it does not provide dedicated SEO fields and controls for things such as SEO titles and meta descriptions in its core. That’s why SEO plugins are so common on WordPress websites.
So WordPress can be easy to start with while becoming considerably more involved to maintain as the website grows.
Drupal
Drupal takes a more technical approach.
Drupal includes substantial functionality in its core, including content management, custom fields, user accounts and permissions, media management, menus, search, taxonomy, content moderation, workflows, and Views for creating lists and displays of content. Its core also includes contact forms.
Drupal is designed to give you a high level of control over content structures, fields, permissions, workflows, and site architecture.
It can also be extended with additional modules when more functionality is needed. Drupal has contributed modules for SEO tasks such as metadata, XML sitemaps, redirects, structured data, and other search-engine optimization functions.
The issue with Drupal isn’t that it lacks functionality. It is that using and configuring all of that functionality can be more technical.
For someone comfortable with a technical CMS, that level of control can be useful. For someone who wants to build and manage a sophisticated website without dealing with as much technical configuration, Drupal has a steeper learning curve.
Joomla
Joomla also provides substantial functionality directly in its core.
It includes articles and categories, custom fields, user accounts and permissions, media management, menus, contacts and contact forms, search, multilingual functionality, tags, workflows, and other website-management features. Joomla also includes built-in search-engine-friendly URL and metadata controls.
Joomla’s contact functionality is more than just a basic contact page. It supports multiple contacts and contact forms, and custom fields can be added to contact forms using Joomla’s core functionality.
Joomla can also be extended when additional functionality is needed.
Like Drupal, Joomla gives you considerable control over how content and users are organized and managed. That can be useful for more complex websites, but it also means there is more to learn and configure than with a simpler website builder.
UltimateWB: User-Friendly Without Limiting What You Can Build
UltimateWB is designed for beginners as well as programmers and developers.
You can use the built-in tools to create and manage your website without needing to program everything yourself.
At the same time, you aren’t locked into a limited template system.
UltimateWB includes the Styles Manager for extensive design customization, and you can add your own HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, and other custom code.
That means someone who doesn’t want to code can use the built-in tools, while a developer can go much further.
User-friendly doesn’t have to mean limited.
We cover this in How to Choose a Website Builder That Works for Both Beginners and Developers? and
The Powerful Website Builder for Beginners and Coders
Built-In Functionality Makes a Difference
One of the biggest differences between UltimateWB and other CMS approaches is how much functionality is available directly within the website builder.
UltimateWB includes a broad range of built-in features.
Built-in functionality includes e-commerce, forums, classifieds and listings, membership features, forms and surveys, content management, articles, social networking features, photo and media sharing, mailing lists, rewards and points, and more.
This lets you build everything from a business or content website to a membership site, online store, community, directory, marketplace, or custom database-driven website without having to add separate software for each major capability.
These features can also be combined within the same website, making it easier to expand your website as your needs grow.
What About Customization?
A user-friendly CMS should make common design changes easy without preventing you from making more advanced changes when you need them.
UltimateWB is designed for both.
The Styles Manager lets you control the appearance of your website without having to manually edit every page.
You can customize fonts, colors, backgrounds, layouts, and other design settings.
For more advanced customization, you can work directly with your own code.
That gives you a wide range of possibilities without limiting you to whatever options happen to be included in a particular theme or template.
See Best Website Builder for Customization for more about UltimateWB’s customization capabilities.
What About Security?
Security is part of user-friendliness.
A website isn’t particularly user-friendly if keeping it secure requires constant monitoring, updates, troubleshooting, and repairs.
This is especially important with a CMS that uses third-party extensions.
WordPress itself regularly releases security updates, and WordPress recommends keeping WordPress, plugins, and themes updated. Security vulnerabilities are also regularly discovered in WordPress plugins and themes.
That creates an ongoing maintenance responsibility.
You aren’t just maintaining your website. You’re maintaining the collection of software that makes up your website.
WordPress has released security updates addressing vulnerabilities including cross-site scripting, SQL injection, authentication bypasses, path traversal, and other issues.
We’ve had people move their websites to UltimateWB because they were tired of the ongoing WordPress maintenance and security headaches.
We’ve also written about specific WordPress security problems, including malicious WordPress plugins, the WPForms and Rank Math backdoor vulnerabilities, and other WordPress vulnerabilities.
The point isn’t that WordPress is the only software that can have security issues. No website software can fully promise that.
The point is that security maintenance is maintenance.
Every additional component you depend on gives you another component to monitor, update, troubleshoot, and keep compatible.
Fewer third-party components means fewer separate pieces of software to maintain.
And that is directly relevant to user-friendliness.
UltimateWB takes a different approach by building a large amount of functionality directly into the website builder instead of requiring a long chain of unrelated third-party plugins.
What About Ongoing Maintenance?
User-friendliness also matters after the website is built.
As your website grows, you need to be able to make changes, try different approaches, and undo changes when necessary.
UltimateWB’s built-in Page History tool lets you save previous versions of your pages and restore them when needed.
That makes it easier to experiment with your website without worrying that a change is permanent.
Ongoing maintenance should not become a constant technical project. A user-friendly website builder should make it straightforward to update, change, and manage your website as it grows.
See What Makes UltimateWB Easier to Use Than WordPress? for more about the differences in day-to-day management.
What About Website Speed?
Speed isn’t the definition of user-friendliness, but a website builder shouldn’t make you work unnecessarily hard to achieve good performance.
UltimateWB generates clean, optimized code and doesn’t require a caching plugin just to make the website fast.
That is another benefit of having functionality built into the website builder instead of continually adding third-party components.
See What Is the Best Content Management System for Fast-Loading Websites? for more.
What About SEO?
The same principle applies to SEO.
If your website builder doesn’t provide the SEO controls you need, you have to add another tool to get them.
UltimateWB includes built-in SEO functionality such as SEO titles, meta descriptions, structured data, XML sitemaps, and other SEO controls, along with features that help with image and page performance.
You can manage your SEO directly within the website builder instead of installing a separate SEO plugin.
See What’s the Best Website Builder for SEO? for more.
More Than Just a Blog
WordPress became popular as a blogging platform, but it eventually grew into a general-purpose website platform.
We’ve used WordPress for the blogging section on some websites for exactly that reason. And it’s why we have an integrated WordPress blog option available in UltimateWB – of course, it’s a highly optimized, “pumped up” version.
But UltimateWB has continued to expand.
And now we’re migrating some of those WordPress blog sections to UltimateWB built-in apps, like the Scrapbooks app or the Articles app.
The advantage is having the functionality integrated into the same website.
Members can have accounts, interact with content, post comments, participate in communities, and, depending on the setup, submit and publish content. You can display a tag cloud, or related articles section.
You can build a website that goes far beyond static pages without having to bolt a separate system onto it.
See How to Make Your Website More Interactive for more ideas.
So, Which CMS Is User-Friendly?
The easiest CMS to use isn’t necessarily the one with the simplest first five minutes.
It’s the one that remains easy to work with as your website grows and your needs change.
If you’re looking for an alternative to WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla, UltimateWB offers a different approach to building and managing your website.
You can get a website up and running quickly, then keep customizing it as your needs change. Use the Templates Generator to create the basic structure of your website, then customize it further through the admin panel. You can change page layouts, reorganize sections, customize your design, add functionality, and control how different parts of your website work without writing any code at all.
You aren’t locked into the structure you started with, either. For example, you can switch a website between a one-page and multi-page layout with one click. You can also create different styles, layouts, headers, footers, and side sections and assign them where you want them.
UltimateWB also makes it easier to manage changes across a larger website. You can create reusable sections and update them in one place, centrally manage different parts of your website, and use Page History to restore previous versions when needed.
And you’re not limited to the built-in tools. When you want more control, you can add your own HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, and other custom code.
That’s what makes the approach different: you can build quickly without code, customize extensively without code, and still have the freedom to code when you want to go further.
User-friendly doesn’t have to mean limited.
UltimateWB vs. WordPress vs. Drupal vs. Joomla for User-Friendliness
| UltimateWB | WordPress | Drupal | Joomla | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Easy to get started | Yes | Yes | More technical | Yes |
| Easy to manage as site grows | Yes | Can become more complex | More technical | Can become more complex |
| Built-in CMS functionality | Extensive++ | Substantial | Extensive | Extensive |
| General-purpose contact forms | Built in | No | Built in | Built in |
| Forms & surveys builder | Built in | No | No general-purpose builder in core | No general-purpose builder in core |
| SEO titles and meta descriptions | Built in | No dedicated core SEO system | Additional modules commonly used | Built in |
| Structured data / schema controls | Built in | No dedicated core SEO system | Additional modules commonly used | Available through core/extensions depending on implementation |
| XML sitemap | Built in | No dedicated core SEO system | Additional module commonly used | Available through core/extensions depending on implementation |
| Design customization | Extensive | Extensive | Extensive | Extensive |
| Custom code | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| E-commerce | Built in | Commonly plugin-based | Additional modules available | Extensions available |
| Membership functionality | Built in | Commonly plugin-based | User accounts and permissions built in; additional functionality available | User accounts and permissions built in; additional functionality available |
| Forums/community functionality | Built in | Commonly plugin-based | Additional modules available | Extensions available |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Ongoing platform subscription required | No | Possibly for the plugins | Possibly for the modules | Possibly for the extensions |
Related articles:
What is the easiest WYSIWYG website builder?
What Are the Drawbacks of Using an Open-Source Website Builder?
Open Source vs. UltimateWB: Making the Right Choice for Your Website Builder
Looking for a user-friendly website builder to design & build your own website? Learn more about UltimateWB! We also offer web design packages if you would like your website designed and built for you.
Got a techy/website question? Whether it’s about UltimateWB or another website builder, web hosting, or other aspects of websites, just send in your question in the “Ask David!” form. We will email you when the answer is posted on the UltimateWB “Ask David!” section.