What is Joomla?
Key Takeaways
- Joomla is a capable open-source CMS but powers less than 2% of the web compared to WordPress at 40%+, which means fewer developers, fewer extensions, and a steeper learning curve for most business use cases.
- WordPress beats Joomla on eCommerce, SEO tooling, plugin ecosystem, and developer availability — making it the better long-term platform for businesses that need to grow.
- If you are on Joomla and finding it limiting, migrating to WordPress is straightforward with a proper migration process that preserves your content, URLs, and search rankings.
Joomla is an open-source content management system (CMS) used to build websites and online applications. It sits between WordPress and Drupal in terms of technical complexity: more flexible than WordPress out of the box, but significantly harder to use and maintain. For most businesses evaluating platforms today, understanding what Joomla is also means understanding why it has been losing ground to WordPress for over a decade.
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Is Joomla still relevant in 2026?
Joomla is still actively maintained and used, but its market share has declined significantly as WordPress has grown to dominate the CMS landscape. As of 2026, Joomla powers roughly 1.5–2% of all websites, down from its peak in the mid-2010s. WordPress powers over 40%. That gap matters beyond raw numbers: it determines how many developers you can hire, how much community support exists, and how quickly security vulnerabilities get patched.
Joomla is not dead, but it is no longer a mainstream first choice for new business websites. Most agencies and developers building sites for businesses in Singapore and Australia default to WordPress because the ecosystem, support, and growth path are simply stronger.
How does Joomla compare to WordPress?
WordPress is easier to use, better supported, and more extensible than Joomla for the vast majority of business websites. Joomla has historically appealed to developers who wanted more built-in flexibility without plugins, but that advantage has been eroded as WordPress’s plugin and block editor ecosystem has matured.
| Joomla | WordPress | |
|---|---|---|
| Market share | ~1.5–2% | ~40%+ |
| Extensions / plugins | ~6,000 | 60,000+ |
| Ease of use | Moderate to complex | Beginner-friendly once set up |
| Developer availability | Limited | Abundant globally |
| eCommerce | Limited (VirtueMart) | WooCommerce — industry standard |
| SEO tooling | Basic | SEOPress, Yoast — full control |
| Multilingual | Built-in | Requires plugin (Polylang, WPML) |
The one area where Joomla has a genuine edge is native multilingual support — it is built into the core without needing a plugin. For a business that needs a multilingual site and has developers familiar with Joomla, that is a real advantage. For almost every other use case, WordPress is the stronger choice.
What are the main advantages of Joomla?
Joomla’s main strengths are its built-in flexibility and its native multilingual capabilities. Unlike WordPress, which requires a plugin to manage multiple languages, Joomla handles multilingual content in its core. It also has a more granular user permission system built in, which suits organisations that need complex access control without custom development.
For developers comfortable with Joomla’s architecture, it offers more customisation out of the box than WordPress without needing to install and manage as many plugins. The extension library, while smaller than WordPress’s, covers most standard business requirements.
What are the limitations of Joomla?
Joomla’s biggest limitations are developer scarcity, a steeper learning curve, and a significantly smaller plugin ecosystem. Finding a skilled Joomla developer is harder and often more expensive than finding a WordPress developer. When something breaks or needs customisation, your options are more constrained.
eCommerce on Joomla is another weak point. VirtueMart, the primary Joomla eCommerce extension, does not come close to WooCommerce in terms of payment gateway support, extensions, or community backing. For businesses in Singapore wanting PayNow or GrabPay integration, or for any store that needs to scale, Joomla is not the right platform.
SEO is also more limited on Joomla. While basic meta fields and sitemaps are available, the advanced SEO configuration available through WordPress plugins like SEOPress — schema markup, redirect management, canonical URLs, breadcrumbs — requires more custom development on Joomla and never quite reaches the same depth.
Who should use Joomla?
Joomla suits organisations that already have in-house Joomla developers, need sophisticated user permission structures, or are building non-standard web applications where WordPress would require heavy customisation. It also works well for multilingual portals where the built-in language management is genuinely useful.
For most small to mid-sized businesses building a new site from scratch, Joomla is not the recommended starting point. The developer pool is smaller, the learning curve is steeper, and the long-term growth path is more constrained than WordPress. If your use case fits WordPress — a business website, a content-driven blog, or an eCommerce store — you are better served building on the platform with the larger ecosystem.
Is it worth migrating from Joomla to WordPress?
Migrating from Joomla to WordPress is worth it when your business needs better SEO performance, a larger pool of developers to work with, eCommerce capability that Joomla cannot deliver, or simply a platform with more active long-term support. For most growing businesses, the answer is yes.
The migration process involves exporting your Joomla content, rebuilding your site structure in WordPress, and implementing 301 redirects from your existing Joomla URLs to preserve search rankings. Done properly, a Joomla to WordPress migration transfers your domain authority and removes the platform constraints that limit your growth. Chillybin has managed this process for businesses across Singapore and Australia, with the typical project running two to four weeks.
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