Joomla vs Acquia

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Our analysts compared Joomla vs Acquia 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
Acquia 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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Acquia is a software-as-a-service that helps enterprises manage their digital assets through automated workflows and dynamic editing. Its Cloud IDE enables building websites through the low-code/no-code approach, with attributes for content authoring and omnichannel deployment. Creative professionals can upload and store assets in the centralized portal, with complete version control. Users can search for content through filters, metadata, tags and collection references, and edit content through its rich-text editor.

It enables comprehensive performance monitoring with a built-in global CDN to ensure content delivery at scale. Integrating with SSO, it provides multi-factor authentication and role-based access controls for data security. Its integration with New Relic APM Pro helps monitor app performance, health and resource utilization.
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$0 Open-Source
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$148 Monthly
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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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  • Enhanced Security: Acquia provides robust security measures that protect your digital experiences from potential threats, ensuring your data and customer information remain safe.
  • Scalability: With Acquia, your digital presence can grow seamlessly alongside your business. It effortlessly handles traffic spikes and expands as your content and user base increase.
  • Content Management Simplified: Acquia's intuitive content management system (CMS) allows for easy content creation, management, and deployment, enabling non-technical users to keep your site fresh and engaging.
  • Personalized Customer Experiences: Acquia enables the delivery of personalized content and experiences to users, improving engagement and conversion rates by catering to individual user preferences and behaviors.
  • Multi-Site Management: Manage multiple websites from a single platform with Acquia, streamlining operations and ensuring consistency across your digital ecosystem.
  • Cloud-Based Flexibility: Being cloud-based, Acquia offers flexibility and accessibility, allowing teams to work and collaborate from anywhere, at any time, without the need for on-premise infrastructure.
  • Comprehensive Analytics: Acquia provides detailed analytics and insights, helping you understand user behavior, measure performance, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your digital strategy.
  • Community and Support: Access to a vibrant community of developers and a robust support network ensures you can leverage collective knowledge and receive assistance when needed, maximizing your platform's potential.
  • Integration Capabilities: Acquia's platform is designed for easy integration with a wide range of marketing tools and applications, enabling a cohesive and efficient digital marketing ecosystem.
  • Future-Proof Technology: Acquia stays at the forefront of digital experience technology, ensuring your platform remains relevant and effective in the rapidly evolving digital landscape.
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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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  • Boost Engagement: Analyze and sift through data to generate insights for better engagement.  
  • Unified Data: Unify data into a single record, making it easier to access. Access the data via UI (User Interface) and API (Application Programming Interface) 
  • Accessible Data: Give teams access to unified CDP data, making it easier for members to switch between reports and queries. The CDP (Customer Data Platforms) can manage any amount of traffic hassle-free. 
  • Immediate Insights: Identify valuable patterns as soon as the unified and accurate data flows into the platform. 
  • Customer-centric Design: Use specialized tools to understand customer habits with the Campaign Studio. Empower designers to uphold consistency throughout the various design elements. 
  • Asset Library: Ensure that everything is organized with a centralized asset library. Save time spent on searching for resources in emails, hard drives and network drives. 
  • Shared Workspace: Help teams work together in an office space and remotely, cutting down on miscommunications and enhancing productivity. 
  • Cumulative Analysis: Give users a holistic view of how a company’s business performs at the global level in terms of content and campaigns with the Campaign Factory. 
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Product Ranking

#21

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CMS Software

#41

among all
CMS Software

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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 1429 reviews
Great User Sentiment 153 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.

83%
of users recommend this product

Acquia has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 83% when considering 153 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

4.3 (14)
4.3 (14)
3.9 (321)
4.1 (47)
4.14 (516)
n/a
4.1 (453)
4.6 (5)
n/a
4.3 (60)
3.9 (125)
3.8 (27)

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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Scalability and Performance: Acquia's cloud platform is built to handle large and complex Drupal websites, ensuring optimal performance and scalability as your business grows. Its content delivery network (CDN) further enhances speed and reliability for global audiences.
Security and Compliance: Acquia prioritizes security with features like web application firewalls, intrusion detection, and regular security updates. It also helps businesses meet compliance requirements with industry-specific certifications and data encryption.
Developer Tools and Support: Acquia provides developers with a comprehensive set of tools and resources, including Acquia Cloud IDE and Cloud API, to streamline development workflows. Additionally, Acquia offers expert support and training to assist with any challenges.
Marketing and Personalization: Acquia's marketing cloud tools, such as Acquia Lift and Journey, enable businesses to personalize customer experiences and optimize marketing campaigns. These tools leverage customer data and insights to deliver targeted content and improve engagement.
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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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Cost: Acquia's pricing structure can be prohibitive, especially for smaller organizations or those with limited budgets. The subscription fees and additional costs for features and support can quickly add up, making it a less attractive option compared to other CMS platforms with more transparent or affordable pricing models.
Complexity: Acquia's interface and features can have a steep learning curve, requiring significant time and effort to master. This complexity can be a barrier for users who are accustomed to more intuitive and user-friendly CMS platforms, potentially leading to frustration and decreased productivity.
Performance: Some users have reported performance issues with Acquia, such as slow loading times or occasional downtime. These performance concerns can negatively impact user experience and website effectiveness, especially for organizations that rely on their online presence for critical business functions.
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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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Making a splash in the CMS world, Acquia has been making waves with its user-friendly platform and robust features. Known for its scalability and security, Acquia has garnered positive reviews, particularly from enterprise-level businesses seeking a reliable CMS solution. Users frequently highlight Acquia's seamless integration with Drupal, a popular open-source platform, as a major advantage, allowing for greater flexibility and customization compared to competitors like WordPress or Joomla. Acquia's cloud-based infrastructure receives praise for its ability to handle high traffic volumes and deliver optimal performance, making it suitable for businesses with demanding website needs. However, some users note that Acquia's extensive features and functionalities can present a steeper learning curve for beginners. Additionally, the platform's pricing structure, which is often customized based on individual requirements, may be a concern for smaller businesses or those with budget constraints. Despite these drawbacks, Acquia's strengths in scalability, security, and Drupal integration make it a compelling choice for larger organizations or those with complex web development projects. Its ability to handle high traffic, provide a secure environment, and offer extensive customization options positions Acquia as a top contender in the CMS market, particularly for businesses seeking a robust and scalable solution to manage their online presence.

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