For developing ecommerce websites for online stores, there are a number of free and open-source content management frameworks that are widely used and preferred by web developers in all corners of the world. When it comes to making a new ecommerce website, modifying a website or optimizing an existing website, WordPress, osCommerce, Shopify, ZenCart, VirtueMart, etc. Drupal, Joomla and Magento are considered as the most popular CMS for crafting and developing highly interactive, communicative and user-oriented ecommerce website as they render specialized ecommerce solutions. While selecting a CMS for online store development, you need to consider website’s functionality, usability, navigation functions, marketing tools, order and transaction history, analytics, reporting and SEO.

If you need a simple static website describing products, services and having some short-time internet initiative, you can have it with any CMS. For having specialized e-commerce solutions supported by product catalogs, search options, customer support, deals, multilingual support, feedback options, product features, visual content, purchasing and payment options, you need to consider Drupal, Joomla or Magento for reasonable e-commerce solutions. For having a website that can guide, direct, entertain, educate and solve online shopping intricacies amicably, then you need to have a website developed with Drupal, Joomla and Magento. Let’s compare all three of them and check their utility for sellers as well as buyers. With huge quantity of features, extensions and plug-ins, Joomla is translated into 64, Magento into 60 and Drupal into 110 different languages. But all of them have some pros and cons.

Magento allows sellers some key features that include greater catalog management, marketing tools, advanced shipping support, SEO, analytics and reporting tools. For buyers Magento is useful as it allows them to filter product categories, effective and fast search results, product comparisons and reviews, one-page checkout capability and extensive shipping options. It is large, complex, costly and time consuming.

Joomla has comparatively little costs for website development and maintenance. It has a user friendly administrative interface with a high level of security. Being SEO and SEM optimized, it is good for mobile accessibility, flexibility and simple file sharing and document management. The CMS has some drawbacks too. It takes a lot of configurations to install and manage URLs. Its customization requires knowledge of web designing and it is difficult for adding categories. Moreover, its API gets changed often.

Drupal is SEO-friendly, secure application framework, versatile and powerful CMS. Drupal is easily scalable with a clear plan and knowledge. Drupal has a growing community of developers as it works better only with expert web developers. It includes a lot of functionality, content types, pages, plug-ins, support and graphic to the website. But, it is not easy to use for all. It is not compatible with older systems and it is behind many CMS in terms of scalability and efficiency.

Although all mentioned-above CMS frameworks are effective and useful for developing an online store website with some pros and cons, yet final decision concerning the selection of CMS strongly depends on your business needs, marketing goals, and budget.