Joomla vs Sitefinity

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Our analysts compared Joomla vs Sitefinity based on data from our 400+ point analysis of CMS Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Joomla Software Tool
Sitefinity Software Tool

Product Basics

Joomla is a free, open-source solution to manage and publish content online and design websites. Built on a model-view-controller (MVC) framework, it enables building a variety of websites like blogs, business websites, intranet, community forums and more. It comes with built-in templates with the option to change colors, fonts, layouts and features without the need to code. With a variety of publishing tools and a WYSIWYG editor, it includes content versioning and article management through a media manager.

Users can choose from more than 8,000 third-party extensions to set up reviews, run contests, allow post liking and additional functionality on their websites. It provides out-of-the-box SEO optimization with metadata and keywords, including support for SEF URLs. Available in more than 70 languages, it is maintained by a volunteer community of developers, support personnel and IT professionals.
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Sitefinity is a marketing solution that helps enterprises manage digital content and websites, as well as e-commerce, all from a unified interface. Developers can build and clone websites, pages and templates with robust APIs and out-of-the-box RESTful endpoints. It enables digital asset management with bulk operations and advanced media search by library, category, tag and URL. In addition to a content staging environment, it provides an inline editor to create and edit content directly on the webpage. It offers powerful forms, with marketing outreach optimization through A/B testing.

It comes with built-in SEO attributes like easy-to-understand URLs, meta tags, titles, description optimizers and more. Businesses can glean customer insights from multiple channels for real-time analysis through ML-based recommendations. The vendor offers a free trial.
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Product Assistance

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Product Insights

  • Flexible Content Management: Joomla allows users to easily create, edit, and manage content without needing extensive technical knowledge, making it ideal for businesses aiming to maintain dynamic websites.
  • Extensive Customization Options: With thousands of templates and extensions available, Joomla offers unparalleled customization, enabling businesses to tailor their websites to their unique branding and functionality requirements.
  • Robust User Management: Joomla provides a comprehensive user management system, allowing for detailed control over user roles, permissions, and access levels, ensuring secure and efficient management of website contributors and content.
  • SEO Friendly: Joomla is designed with SEO in mind, featuring options for meta tags, keywords, and SEF URLs, helping businesses improve their search engine rankings and online visibility.
  • Multilingual Support: Offering support for over 75 languages, Joomla enables businesses to create multilingual websites, reaching a broader audience and catering to global markets.
  • Strong Community Support: Joomla boasts a large, active community of developers and users who provide extensive support, tutorials, and forums, making it easier for businesses to find help and resources.
  • Highly Secure: With regular security updates and built-in features like two-factor authentication and CAPTCHA, Joomla prioritizes website security, protecting businesses from potential threats and vulnerabilities.
  • E-commerce Ready: Joomla supports a wide range of e-commerce extensions, allowing businesses to easily set up and manage online stores, complete with product catalogs, shopping carts, and secure payment systems.
  • Responsive Design: Joomla templates are generally designed to be responsive, ensuring that websites look great and function well on all devices, from desktops to smartphones, enhancing user experience and engagement.
  • Powerful Extensions: With over 8,000 extensions available, Joomla extends its core functionalities to include social networking, forums, galleries, and more, enabling businesses to add complex features without heavy custom coding.
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  • Experience Management: Increase conversions and generate more leads with 1:1 conversations with your customers. Create, preview and deliver personalized experiences at a massive scale with amazingly easy to use tools. Analyze and optimize the experience with the help of contextual analytics and A/B testing solutions.

  • Digital Commerce: Boost the revenue using an enhanced and personalized experience between the website and the online store. Manage price lists, shopping carts, product catalogs and the checkout process seamlessly. Access specific and actual tax and shipping prices. Enhance and automate inventory management, order attainment and overall customer support.

  • Digital Experience Channels: Connect with your customers and deliver consistent experiences across the web, email, mobile and social media. Make the most out of a multichannel, mobile-first world to win and retain customers who may start their journey on a mobile device, reading an email that leads them to a responsive landing page on your website.
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  • Extensions: Choose from over 80,000 extensions to personalize sites and create unlimited menus and menu items while maintaining site speed with caching capabilities.
  • Access Controls: Produce business sites, blogs, community websites and more with the free-to-use platform.Have full management capabilities over what customers can view and do with an access control list (ACL).
  • Multilingual: Create sites in over 70 different languages.
  • Web Design: Build custom designs and templates to control the website’s look and feel through customizable attributes such as color scheme, images and effects, fonts and more. Choose from external template frameworks and add them to the designated pages. Provide HTML from objects and an array of data. Produce responsive designs with LESS CSS and Bootstrap.
  • Content Editing and Publishing: Create content with a WYSIWYG editor tool, edit while browsing sites and add to content with one click. Manage articles, choose publishing start and finish dates and create new versions of the content every time a change is made while preserving the old ones. Drag and drop images directly from a computer and use the media management tool to upload and consolidate images and files.
  • Core Website Functionality: Enhance websites with banners and ads, contacts and departments, including contact forms and external news feeds.
  • Tags: Attach tags to various content types and create up to 15 custom fields to keep content, users and contacts organized for customer search.
  • Messaging: Communicate with administrators via private messaging on the site’s back-end.
  • Backend Management: Update core software and extensions with one click and install extensions and plug-ins from the site’s back end. Permit visitors to register and access additional resources on the site.
  • Development Tools: Access developer documentation and secure coding guidelines for assistance. Integrate microdata into extensions and sites, write web and command line applications and utilize Model-View-Controller design patterns. Runs on PHP support.
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  • Quality Content: Create and manage content that helps deliver highly engaging digital experiences using a feature-rich user interface. Help the development teams build, integrate and employ high-quality solutions. 
  • Design Security: Make use of SSO (Single Sign-On), HTTP security headers, cookie protection and granular permission by user and role. 
  • Omnichannel: Manage multilingual content from a single location and deliver digital experiences across different devices and platforms. Measure and collect customer data across various channels and obtain intelligence on cross-channel behaviors, thus enhancing the marketing processes. 
  • Easy Interface: Manage multiple sites from one place and efficiently create new design layouts using the drag-and-drop option. Empower users to create and update content on the fly. 
  • Decoupled CMS: Take the content that powers a website to any medium no matter what the front-end tech stack. Use a stand-alone application separated from the backend and content management for the presentation. 
  • Cloud CMS: Empower developers to create, test and release new functionalities with built-in CI/CD capabilities. Eliminate data silos and successfully deliver more effective marketing programs. Review code and collaborate with members. Gain high visibility into the development process via detailed reports centered around essential information. 
  • Data Protection: Enable highly secure data backups and allow the locating and deleting of personal data. Use secure APIs for integrated solutions and ask for customer consent before accessing customer data. 
  • E-Commerce: Provide unique customer experiences and forge customer relationships. Manage day-to-day operations seamlessly and efficiently handle complex orders using a built-in order management system, flow management and pricing and discount management. Enhance customer engagement across channels, streamline business processes and smoothly integrate the online store with any back-office system. 
  • Insight: Consolidate cross-channel visitor data to create 360-degree profiles of the visitors and scrutinize important touchpoints in the journey to identify personalization and optimization more effectively. Obtain smart insights via analytic reports and execute a marketing strategy that helps achieve business KPIs. 
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Product Ranking

#21

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CMS Software

#71

among all
CMS Software

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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 1429 reviews
Great User Sentiment 551 reviews
81%
of users recommend this product

Joomla has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 81% when considering 1429 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

80%
of users recommend this product

Sitefinity has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 80% when considering 551 user reviews from 6 recognized software review sites.

4.3 (14)
4.8 (15)
3.9 (321)
3.9 (365)
4.14 (516)
3.45 (29)
4.1 (453)
3.4 (25)
n/a
4.7 (3)
3.9 (125)
4.5 (114)

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Extensive Extensions: A vast library of extensions is available to expand Joomla's core functionality, catering to diverse needs such as e-commerce, social networking, and SEO optimization.
Multilingual Capabilities: Joomla's built-in multilingual support simplifies website creation and management in multiple languages, eliminating the need for extensions or complex workarounds.
Active Community: A large and active community of users and developers provides support, resources, and extensions, fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing.
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Intuitive Interface: Many users highlight Sitefinity's user-friendly interface, making it easy to navigate and manage website content without extensive technical expertise.
Customization Options: Sitefinity's flexible framework allows for extensive customization, enabling users to tailor the platform to their specific needs and preferences.
Strong Support: Users appreciate the responsive and helpful support provided by Sitefinity, ensuring they can get assistance when needed.
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Extensions Can Be Pricey: While Joomla offers a wide array of extensions, many of the most useful ones require a financial investment, which can be a deterrent for budget-conscious users or those just starting out.
Learning Curve: Joomla has a steeper learning curve compared to some other content management systems, especially for users without prior experience. The interface can feel overwhelming at first, and understanding the extension ecosystem takes time.
SEO Challenges: Optimizing a Joomla website for search engines can be more complex than with other platforms. Achieving good SEO often requires additional extensions and a deeper understanding of technical SEO principles.
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Steep Learning Curve: Sitefinity's interface can be overwhelming for beginners due to its complexity and numerous features. Mastering the platform often requires extensive training and experience.
Performance Issues: Some users report slow loading times and performance issues, especially with large or complex websites. Optimizations and caching strategies may be necessary to ensure smooth operation.
Cost: Sitefinity is a premium CMS with a higher price tag compared to some open-source alternatives. The licensing fees and potential additional costs for support and modules can be a significant investment for businesses.
Limited Community Support: While Sitefinity offers official support channels, the community and available resources are smaller compared to more widely used CMS platforms. Finding solutions or troubleshooting issues may require more effort.
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Joomla's open-source CMS platform has been making waves in the web development world, but what are users saying about it? Let's dive into the nitty-gritty of Joomla's strengths, weaknesses, and unique features based on recent user feedback. Joomla shines with its user-friendly interface and extensive customization options. Users appreciate the intuitive layout and ease of navigation, making it a great choice for beginners and experienced developers alike. The platform's flexibility allows for creating diverse websites, from simple blogs to complex e-commerce platforms, thanks to its vast library of extensions and templates. Joomla's multilingual capabilities also make it a popular choice for international audiences. However, some users find the abundance of options overwhelming and the learning curve steeper compared to simpler CMS platforms like Wix or Squarespace. One of Joomla's key strengths is its active and supportive community. Users can access numerous forums, tutorials, and documentation, making troubleshooting and learning a breeze. Additionally, Joomla's open-source nature fosters continuous development and improvement, ensuring the platform stays up-to-date with the latest web technologies. However, some users express concerns about security vulnerabilities and the need for regular updates to maintain a secure website. Compared to WordPress, Joomla offers more built-in features, reducing the reliance on third-party extensions, which can be a double-edged sword as it limits the platform's extensibility to some degree. So, who is Joomla best suited for? Joomla is an excellent choice for users who value flexibility, customization, and a supportive community. It's perfect for small to medium-sized businesses, non-profit organizations, and individuals who want to create professional-looking websites without extensive coding knowledge. However, for users seeking a simple drag-and-drop website builder or those with limited technical skills, simpler platforms might be a better fit. Ultimately, Joomla's versatility and powerful features make it a compelling option for those who want to take their web development game to the next level.

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Sitefinity has garnered a reputation as a user-friendly and versatile platform, empowering businesses to effortlessly craft and manage their online presence. Users frequently highlight its intuitive interface, making it a breeze to navigate even for those with limited technical expertise. The platform's flexibility shines through its ability to accommodate diverse content types, from simple web pages to multimedia-rich experiences and interactive forms. Sitefinity's scalability ensures it can grow alongside your business, adapting to evolving needs without breaking a sweat. However, some users point out that Sitefinity's extensive feature set can come at a premium price point, potentially posing a challenge for smaller businesses or startups with tighter budgets. Additionally, while Sitefinity offers a robust set of features, it may not boast the same level of depth in certain specialized areas as some of its competitors, such as those focusing solely on e-commerce or marketing automation. Sitefinity's sweet spot lies with mid-sized to large businesses seeking a comprehensive solution to manage their web presence effectively. Its user-friendly nature, scalability, and flexibility make it an ideal choice for organizations with diverse content needs and a desire for a platform that can evolve alongside their growth.

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