Craft CMS vs Joomla

We favor Craft CMS for a new business website that needs connected content and a focused editing experience. Joomla can run capable sites, but inherited extension stacks and a shrinking share of CMS usage deserve more scrutiny than a free license. The decision should reflect the people maintaining and publishing the website for years.

Start a Craft CMS Health Check Plan a Craft project

Choose Craft CMS when:

You need a content model built around the business.
Editors struggle with an inherited administrative interface.
A rebuild can reduce extension dependencies and clarify ownership.

Choose Joomla when:

Your current Joomla site is supported and effective.
Its access controls and extensions meet documented requirements.
A dependable Joomla team will maintain the application.

Where each one wins

Priority points

Craft CMS

Joomla

Craft CMS leads for this brief.

100 points allocated by business priority. Ties split the points.

We score websites built and supported by an agency, with editors working inside an approved design system. These are our recommendations for that brief, not product quality ratings.

How we score

Publishing and brand controlWinner: Craft CMS20-point priorityCraft gives us a cleaner starting point for a marketing team’s daily publishing tasks.

We use Matrix fields to offer approved page sections, useful labels, and predictable controls. Joomla has custom fields and access controls, but an inherited combination of components, menus, and templates can make routine work harder to understand. This is a delivery preference, not a claim that every Joomla interface is unusable.

Content architectureWinner: Craft CMS15-point priorityCraft is our preference for content relationships that cross pages and departments.

Craft entries let us define the organization’s services, locations, people, and resources directly. Joomla can be extended for these requirements. We prefer building the relationships into a consistent Craft model instead of making a collection of unrelated extensions the long-term content architecture.

Custom implementationWinner: Craft CMS15-point priorityCraft offers a more consistent custom implementation workflow for our team.

Twig, Project Config, and targeted application modules make changes easier for us to review and deploy. Joomla supports custom components and templates; the practical question is how much inherited behavior the next developer must understand. A rebuild should retire unnecessary dependencies rather than reproduce them.

Does Joomla need an extension for every schema feature?

No. Joomla introduced built-in Schema.org functionality in version 5. Specific structured-data requirements may still need configuration or additional development.

Security and supportTie15-point priorityA maintained implementation on either platform needs updates, testing, and recovery planning.

Current Joomla development and security releases deserve credit. Craft can be operated through Mostly Serious support, including hosting and application maintenance. Assess actual versions and extension support before comparing security. Neither a commercial license nor a smaller user base establishes that a site is safe.

Lifetime valueWinner: Craft CMS10-point priorityCraft is the better investment when it removes recurring editorial and extension friction.

Joomla’s free core does not make a custom implementation free to operate. Compare migration, development, QA, hosting, upgrades, and editor support with Craft pricing and the proposed Craft build. If a supported Joomla implementation already meets the brief, migration must earn its cost.

Ecosystem confidenceWinner: Craft CMS10-point priorityJoomla’s declining relative adoption adds a real extension-continuity question.

W3Techs shows Joomla’s share of known-CMS sites falling from 2.2% in January 2025 to 1.7% in September 2026. A site owner’s migration account also illustrates dependence on discontinued extensions. Neither proves all Joomla sites are failing. We favor Craft for a new engagement, while checking its smaller specialist ecosystem and plugin maintainers too.

AI enablementTie15-point priorityBoth have useful third-party AI tools; neither earns an automatic maturity advantage.

Joomla’s MCP Server and AI Content Assistant cover content operations and generation. Craft has Craft CMS MCP (Pro for content writes) for developer context and governed drafts, plus editorial and asset plugins. Compare actual maintained versions, permission boundaries, review steps, and provider costs. The available evidence does not establish a decisive overall AI winner.

Planning a migration

Map articles, categories, custom fields, languages, users, permissions, and menus. Inventory extension data separately. Redirect old routes where needed, and verify access restrictions and translated page relationships after migration.

Preserve useful URLs where possible. For changed paths, build and test a redirect map, transfer metadata, and monitor indexing and traffic after launch. Google's site-move guidance explains the process; search traffic can still fluctuate. Talk with us about planning a Craft project before committing.

Should an old Joomla site move or upgrade?

Start with an upgrade and extension audit. Compare the supported upgrade path with the scope and benefits of a new Craft implementation.

Know what your Craft website needs next.

A Craft CMS Health Check reviews your site’s performance, accessibility, technical SEO, code, and maintenance risks. You get findings and a prioritized plan before committing to fixes.