Choosing a platform is an integral part of the success of any online business.

This can be a real challenge because there are several great CMS, each with its own set of advantages.

In this article, I’ll talk about Drupal and TYPO3, and help you understand which platform best suits your needs, the benefits and challenges you are likely to face.

What about WordPress

Any discussion about CMS feels incomplete without mentioning WordPress, the elephant in the room.

WordPress is the unquestionable leader that dominates about 60 percent of the CMS market. Such numbers, however, do not inherently mean that WordPress is the best solution in all cases. WordPress is just the easiest option for small to medium websites and blogs, while Drupal and TYPO3 are more suitable for more complex enterprise websites.

Let’s see these two content management systems match up.

Open Source

Drupal and TYPO3 are both open-source, meaning they are free-to-use and highly customizable. Thousands of skilled programmers regularly contribute to debugging and adding new extensions to the core CMS, and the support for both Drupal and TYPO3 is great. There are extensive documentation, support forums, chat rooms, and community support groups where users can find the answers they are looking for.

Functionality and Usability

Drupal and TYPO3 both have good features and are highly scalable. Drupal has several thousand plugins, while TYPO3 has 60,000+ extensions. Plugins and extensions extend the platforms’ core functionalities and offer innovative solutions tailored to address the needs of individual users. In comparison to Drupal, TYPO3 also has an internal scripting language called TypoScript, which can be used to construct additional elements, including dynamic content.

The two CMSs are known for the wide range of content formats. Drupal, for example, allows text, blogs, videos, surveys, podcasts, and statistics to be embedded and managed within the platform posts. In addition to plain text, TYPO3 also supports images, tables, forms, and multimedia, thus enabling a lot of control over the page layout.

Management of User Rights

Another advantage, which is unique to the two CMSs, is the management of the rights of advanced users, while Drupal and TYPO3 have different management features. In Drupal, in particular, an administrator may grant users specific permission rights, including permission to control a particular part of a website.

On the other hand, TYPO3 may even have several users with an administrator function. All workflows are subject to stringent access control and the ability to grant granular privileges to user classes, such as editors or reviewers.

Localization

TYPO3 is renowned for its various options for localization and multi-language features. Nonetheless, TYPO3 itself is available in 50 languages, Drupal is available in as many as 181 languages, which is amazing given that even the most popular WordPress is available in 50 languages.

SEO

Both CMSs, which are classic business applications, integrate with CRM and ERP. Although TYPO3 offers strong SEO and social media interaction resources that encourage website listing and promote marketing activities, in terms of SEO, Drupal is still number one as it was originally designed to address major search engine ranking signals.

Scalability

With one base installation, both Drupal and TYPO3 allow multiple websites to be based on a single application core. In the case of Drupal, websites would have the same core code, modules, and themes, but different modules and themes and settings that are supported by the content. The core installation of TYPO3 also enables new websites to be built using the present one as a prototype and content and extensions to be shared between websites.

Security

Security is one of the reasons why, for large enterprise websites, both Drupal and TYPO3 come highly recommended, as both CMSs take security seriously.

Installation, Customization, and Cloud Hosting

Compared to WordPress or Joomla, it is more challenging to install and configure both Drupal and TYPO3. As such, setting up these CMS is certainly not a job for novices. Although Drupal and TYPO3 provide developers with sufficient opportunity to create customized solutions, there is a steep learning curve for the implementation, configuration, and administration of these platforms.

Eventually, learning TYPO3 may take even longer than Drupal, as a developer would have to master TypoScript, the system’s internal language. This implies that businesses would have to invest in the learning of their developers and website managers. In terms of TYPO3 hosting and Drupal hosting needs, both CMSs’ hosting requirements are high, which can burden smaller websites and blog owners with cloud hosting and management expenses.

Drupal & TYPO3 Are Not The Same

While several characteristics of Drupal and TYPO3 are comparable, note that the CMS also has unique features that distinguish them. For instance, Drupal is known for a not-so-user-friendly content management experience. However, developers can install additional modules and extensions to make the process more intuitive and user-friendly.

At the same time, Drupal is especially suitable for developing solutions for social groups and is therefore commonly used for websites focused on organizations, universities, and media outlets.

TYPO3, in particular, is noted for modularity. Its backend has drag-and-drop options for line up. The ability to adjust the arrangement of the page is another significant benefit, as there is no set sequence of blocks or lines.

Conclusion

When it comes to Drupal or TYPO3, the features are well suited to business websites because of well-tailored and secure solutions with great potential for scaling the platform as the business grows.

TYPO3 is perfect for creating complex websites for the corporate setting. Similarly, Drupal is a great option for creating a social network for websites and encouraging users to create content.

Share your experience with TYPO3 and Drupal in the comments section below.