Joomla Review 2024: Pricing, Pros And Cons

Joomla offers an impressive set of features as part of the core code. In fact, combined with expansion capabilities, it’s powerful enough that even worldwide companies such as IKEA use it to power their websites.

Customization Features

Joomla offers nearly unlimited customization abilities. Strong baked-in core features, a large stable of extensions to expand capabilities and the ability to add custom code make Joomla stand out compared to other website builders and CMS offerings.

Themes

Joomla includes one preinstalled theme, Cassiopeia, which is great for playing around and learning the system, but most of us will want something more unique. To find more themes, you’ll have to do a web search for a free or paid theme that is compatible with your Joomla version (5.2.1 is the most recent version at the time of this article).

However, since Joomla is open source, there are a nearly unlimited number of themes available from independent developers. Look for themes that come with user guides for a smoother experience. Template compatibility with the look, feel and content of your site will depend heavily on what is included in the templates.

Extensions

With a global network of independent developers, Joomla’s list of extensions covers just about any function a user can imagine. As I’m writing this, there are 5,799 plugins to expand Joomla. Categories include but aren’t limited to, e-commerce, live chat, user and project management, marketing, SEO, industry-specific tools, security and migration. A huge number of those are free, but some are paid extensions.

Scalability

Because Joomla features a core program with easy expansion, scalability is limited only by hosting and budget. Joomla Live free sites can be easily migrated to run on full Joomla as well, meaning you can grow as your skills with the program grow instead of facing a daunting learning curve of jumping in the deep end as you’re just getting started.

Security Features

Hackers aren’t only going after big targets. A report from the Small Business Administration stated that half of small and medium businesses (SMBs) have been victimized by cybercrime and that 60% of those victims went out of business. Joomla helps level the playing field for small businesses who can’t afford internal security teams.

User Access Controls

Joomla includes robust user access controls. Even if you’re a solopreneur, you may need to add website access for social media contractors and guest bloggers. It also gives you a solid foundation for when your business and team grows in the future.

Being able to control what functions secondary users can access improves cybersecurity and limits accidental damage to website settings and design. Access controls also give you the ability to keep parts of your website private and password protected.

Strike Team

Open-source software can be vulnerable to bad actors inserting malicious code. Joomla meets that threat head-on with a dedicated strike team that works in the background to combat emerging threats to the Core code system.

However, it’s important to remember that the strike team isn’t managing the third-party extensions or your individual access. Secure passwords, access control, choosing a host with good security measures and doing your due diligence before installing extensions are vital.

Two-Factor Authentication

One of the first CMS to implement two-factor authentication (2FA), Joomla includes this security feature without needing plugins. While it is a simple feature, it is one of the most effective to stop damage from compromised passwords. However, it needs to be turned on from your dashboard and works with Google Authenticator and YubiKey.

SEO Features

Joomla includes more built-in SEO features than most builders, but it isn’t always easy to access. Some features require extension installation or jumping back and forth between different screens.

Robots Settings

If you’ve only used drag-and-drop builders, you might never have seen robots settings. Google and other search engines use automated programs called crawlers to find and list webpages. Joomla lets you customize the instructions to those automated programs to help get your site indexed better and faster. You can also override global settings for each article.

Sitemaps

Several Joomla extensions add sitemap capability to the core system. However, without those extensions, you could have trouble ranking well with Google.

Metadata

Joomla includes basic metadata and keywords without the need for add-on tools. Metadata such as the description and keywords are easily entered in the publishing menu for each article. Robots instructions can also be overridden from global settings at the same time, which speeds up customizing your content for search indexing.