Rubix StudiosRubix Studios
Vincent is the founder and director of Rubix Studios, with over 20 years of experience in branding, marketing, film, photography, and web development. He is a certified partner with industry leaders including Google, Microsoft, AWS, and HubSpot. Vincent also serves as a member of the Maribyrnong City Council Business and Innovation Board and is undertaking an Executive MBA at RMIT University.
WordPress and Drupal are mature, open-source CMS platforms that excel in different scenarios. WordPress offers rapid time-to-value for marketing sites and content teams, supported by a very large plugin ecosystem and frequent performance gains in recent releases. Drupal favors complex information architectures, granular access control, and enterprise integration patterns.
Current releases are WordPress 6.8.3 and Drupal 11, both actively maintained.
WordPress powers a vast majority of CMS-identified sites worldwide, while Drupal serves a small but steady share, often for organizations with complex requirements. This reflects community size, extension availability, and cost to operate.
Choose WordPress for content-led growth, frequent publishing, and marketing agility. The Block Editor enables non-technical teams to create modular pages with reusable patterns. Drupal suits multi-site networks, advanced workflows, and structured content where editors, developers, and governance teams collaborate across roles. WordPress emphasizes editorial velocity and extensibility through plugins. Drupal emphasizes schema control, strict permissions, and long-term maintainability through configuration management.
| Platform | Market share | Key strength |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress | ~60.5% | Dominant ecosystem and user adoption |
| Shopify | ~6.8% | eCommerce SaaS |
| Wix / Squarespace | ~5.7% | Design-led website builders |
| Joomla | ~1.2% | Legacy open-source CMS |
| Drupal | ~1.1% | Enterprise and government use |
| PayloadCMS | <0.1% | Rapid growth among developers |
In recent years, PayloadCMS has gained significant traction among developers and forward-looking agencies. Its code-first, Next.js-native approach, strong TypeScript support, and emerging case studies reflect growing confidence in the platform for bespoke content applications.
The platform’s recent acquisition by Figma further reinforces its momentum, signalling broader recognition of its technical maturity and potential to bridge design systems with structured content delivery.
WordPress favors a plugin-first approach with thousands of extensions. This accelerates delivery but increases third-party dependency risk and update overhead, which must be managed through curation and staging. Drupal encourages building capabilities via core modules and site configuration, with Composer-managed dependencies and predictable release cycles in Drupal 11. Both support headless builds; pick based on team skills and the need for strict content models versus rapid theming.
WordPress Block Editor (Gutenberg) provides block-based authoring, pattern libraries, and design controls so marketers can iterate quickly with minimal developer input. Drupal’s Layout Builder offers drag-and-drop page composition while preserving content type structure and display variants for consistency at scale. Each supports role-based permissions; Drupal’s model is typically more granular out of the box.
Recent WordPress core releases focused on database queries, script loading, and editor responsiveness, delivering measurable gains for both front-end and admin users. With proper hosting and caching, WordPress scales reliably for high-traffic publishing. Drupal’s render caching, dynamic page cache, and Twig templating support strong performance for structured content and complex view combinations. For either platform, results depend on disciplined theme development, asset budgets, and cache strategy.
Security outcomes are determined by process. WordPress core is actively maintained, but the extensive plugin ecosystem introduces variable risk. Enterprises should limit plugins to vetted vendors, maintain patch cadence, and monitor advisories.
Recent plugin CVEs reinforce the need for strict update pipelines and least-privilege policies. Drupal provides robust core security practices and documentation, with a reputation for conservative changes and strong access control patterns. Both projects publish hardening guidance that teams should adopt during build and run.
| Platform | Core CVE (2025) | Severity (CVSS) | Vulnerability | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drupal | CVE-2025-3057 - XSS in core (March 2025); CVE-2025-31675 - Input sanitization flaw in core | 6.1 - 7.5 (Medium → High) | Cross-site scripting, improper input validation | Both required patching core Drupal 10 & 11; publicly disclosed by Drupal Security Team. |
| WordPress | CVE-2025-2235 - Privilege escalation via core REST API; CVE-2025-3041 - Stored XSS in block editor | 5.9 - 7.8 (Medium → High) | Access control, sanitization | WordPress patched within days; issues limited in scope. |
| PayloadCMS | CVE-2025-4643 - JWT reuse after logout; CVE-2025-4644 - Session fixation (core auth) | 6.3 - 7.1 (Medium → High) | Session handling, authentication control | Affected Payload ≤ 3.44.0; patched within 72 hours. |
Drupal typically releases security fixes during its scheduled security windows, meaning the response time can vary from a few days to several weeks depending on disclosure timing.
WordPress core updates are generally pushed within 48–72 hours through its automated update system.
PayloadCMS has demonstrated a rapid turnaround, addressing recent vulnerabilities within three days of disclosure.
Both platforms can meet privacy and sector obligations when implemented correctly. Key controls include role separation, audit trails, data retention, consent management, and regional hosting. Drupal’s configuration and permissions model supports fine-grained segregation of duties. WordPress meets compliance needs through curated plugins and platform controls, provided updates and logging are enforced. For regulated sites, establish a change-management workflow and documented patch windows aligned to vendor releases.
| Platform | Developers | Learning | Maturity | Skillset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress | Extremely high | Low | Mature | PHP, HTML/CSS, REST |
| Drupal | Shrinking, niche | High | Mature but aging | PHP, Symfony, YAML |
| PayloadCMS | Rapidly growing | Medium | Young, modern | TypeScript, React, Next.js |
The size and quality of the developer pool remain a decisive factor. WordPress benefits from the largest global community and broad contractor availability, while Drupal’s developer base has contracted sharply, making skilled talent costly and harder to source.
PayloadCMS, by contrast, is growing rapidly within the JavaScript ecosystem, attracting modern full-stack developers experienced in React and TypeScript, which directly influences project cost, hiring flexibility, and long-term maintainability.
Total cost includes build, hosting, extensions, security tooling, and internal support. WordPress typically yields lower initial build costs for marketing sites due to available themes and plugins, plus a larger contractor market. Drupal projects often allocate more to discovery, content modeling, and integration but can reduce long-term cost through reuse of structured content across channels. Market share dynamics also influence recruitment and training budgets.
| Factor | WordPress | Drupal | PayloadCMS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Initial Build | Low - themes and plugins accelerate setup | High - extensive configuration and discovery | Moderate - developer-led architecture |
| Hosting | AUD $30 - $150 / month | AUD $150 - $750 / month (managed enterprise) | AUD $15 - $80 / month (serverless or VPS) |
| Maintenance | Low - Medium | High (Composer, Drush, dependency updates) | Low (Git-based CI/CD and schema migrations) |
| Developer Rates (AU) | AUD $60 - $180 per hour | AUD $180 - $350 per hour | AUD $90 - $220 per hour |
| Upgrade Stability | Strong backward compatibility | Historically disruptive between major versions | Incremental and predictable through controlled migrations |
WordPress provides the lowest total cost of ownership, driven by affordable hosting and a broad, readily available developer base. Drupal remains the most expensive option, reflecting its complexity, configuration demands, and limited talent pool.
PayloadCMS offers modern cost efficiency, while requiring more technical setup initially, it delivers lower long-term expenses through automation, type-safe schemas, and streamlined DevOps workflows.
Having worked with Drupal 4, and modern releases, one of the most important considerations is how version transitions have historically introduced breaking changes.
Earlier releases required near-total rebuilds between versions due to architectural shifts, dependency rewrites, and incompatible module structures. This meant upgrades were costly in time and budget, often forcing organizations to remain on unsupported versions.
While Drupal 9-11 has improved with composer, semantic versioning, and structured migrations, teams must still plan version transitions carefully and validate module compatibility.
By contrast, WordPress maintains strong backward compatibility, with most updates remaining non-breaking even across major versions, a key advantage in lifecycle cost and operational predictability.
Moving from one CMS to the other requires mapping content types, taxonomies, media, SEO metadata, redirects, and user roles. WordPress migrations benefit from exporter plugins and REST endpoints. Drupal migrations leverage its Migrate API and Composer-based dependency control for repeatable processes.
For either, run a staged content freeze, automated redirect testing, and parallel SEO monitoring for 4-6 weeks post-launch.
When evaluated across cost, developer availability, and long-term maintainability, WordPress and PayloadCMS are strategically safer choices, offering broad talent access, flexibility, and predictable upkeep.
Drupal, while suited to complex or regulated environments, carries greater operational risk due to its shrinking developer pool and higher vendor lock-in, where specialised expertise and hosting dependencies can limit agility and increase long-term support costs.
Select WordPress when rapid publishing, broad editor autonomy, and a rich plugin catalog are top priorities. Select Drupal when content structure, complex permissions, and multi-site governance drive the requirements. Both can scale and comply when engineered with clear standards, staged releases, and security ownership.
At Rubix Studios, we are WordPress developers who have extended our core capabilities across to PayloadCMS, with Drupal and other CMS platforms maintained as secondary environments for specialised projects.
PayloadCMS offers the strongest security posture among the three but requires a higher technical baseline to configure and maintain correctly. Its code-first, type-safe architecture limits exposure to plugin-related vulnerabilities and enforces explicit control over authentication, permissions, and deployment.
This makes it inherently safer for experienced developers while less accessible to low-code teams or non-technical users.
Vincent is the founder and director of Rubix Studios, with over 20 years of experience in branding, marketing, film, photography, and web development. He is a certified partner with industry leaders including Google, Microsoft, AWS, and HubSpot. Vincent also serves as a member of the Maribyrnong City Council Business and Innovation Board and is undertaking an Executive MBA at RMIT University.