cms for real estate website

Real estate website. Which CMS to choose?

Posted by admin

December 17, 2014

Going to build a real estate site and lost in CMS choice? If you are a do-it-yourself guy, this post will help at least to start up.

WordPress, Joomla and Drupal are the most popular easy-to-use CMSs that you can use when building your real estate website. But which one is the best one - is a question. We've collected some facts about real estate software and are ready to share them with you.

Real Estate software* WordPress Joomla Drupal
plugins/extensions 16+ 17+ -
av. price for plugin free / $70 free / $150
themes/templates 165 + 90+ 50+
av. price for theme $50 $75

*figures are taken from the largest official directories of the top 10 search results.

It's obvious from the table above that WordPress offers more real estate apps and for a cheaper price. But is this the best CMS for a real estate website?

Let's check most important features in every CMS

Simplicity in use

Well-known that WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world and has the highest number of users due to its simplicity. It doesn't require any specific knowledge, its interface is intuitive and everyone can build a simple website with the help of documentation only.

Joomla is not as simple as WordPress but is also easy-to-understand. Besides Joomla Community does a really good job by providing lots of documentation, tutorials, seminars and helpful forums.

Drupal is known as the most complicated one and this is the best choice for developers or who wants to be the one.

Functional capabilities

Despite the great number of real estate extensions and plugins in every CMS, the core is more powerful and flexible in Drupal and Joomla than in WordPress.

Drupal suits best to large and complex real estate portals with tons of listings, agents and buyers that do not require anything special in design. It will be a challenge to run a WordPress site like that but still it is possible. Moreover, there are so many ready-to-use beautiful themes in WordPress that you really would like to give it a try.

Joomla with its enough high number of real estate components and templates is also a good solution for a real estate website.

SEO capabilities

Joomla is less SEO friendly than WordPress and Drupal. You need to spend more time to make your Joomla real estate website well SEO optimized in comparison with Drupal and WordPress sites. But thanks to a wide range of quickly growing number of Joomla SEO extensions, this lacking feature can be improved.

What shouldn't be missed

1. Real estate apps can considerably improve any CMS.

To be honest, when we look at real estate website and find it awesome in design and features, it doesn't matter which CMS it was build in, as we liked the extension/plugin that was used to make it. So first look through real estate plugins/extensions/themes that each CMS offers and not CMS itself.

2. Choice depends on developer's preference.

If you are going to pass work to developer, you have been working for a long time, listen what he will say. The best choice to him will be what he gets used to.

3. With time they become more similar.

These three CMSs compete with each other and every of them try to win this competition by adding new features.

To my personal opinion, I would recommend WordPress and Joomla for real estate websites that are not  complicated too much and Drupal to large real estate portals.