Joomla

Volunteer, community-governed open-source project; legal and financial support via Open Source Matters, Inc.

Joomla 1.0 released September 22, 2005, forked from Mambo.

Self-hosted PHP/MySQL CMS installed on a web server; no official managed-hosting arm.

GNU General Public License v2.

Based on Joomla's documented core strengths: native multilingual, granular ACL, workflow, custom fields.

Joomla software itself is free; there is no vendor pricing page since Joomla does not sell hosting or plans.

Joomla core software is free and open source; cost is hosting only.

Joomla itself is free; figure reflects market-typical entry-level shared hosting with a custom domain (e.g., Bluehost/SiteGround intro shared plans, ~$2-4/mo before renewal). Not a Joomla vendor price.

Market-typical mid-tier shared/managed hosting suitable for a small Joomla business site. Not a Joomla vendor price; Joomla has no tiers.

No single official figure: ecommerce cost depends on which third-party extension (VirtueMart is free; HikaShop Essential is a one-time ~€50 license) plus hosting. Cannot state a defensible single number without guessing.

Joomla software has no renewal pricing since it is free; only third-party hosting/extensions may have renewal price increases, which is a hosting-market fact, not a Joomla one.

Not applicable; Joomla software is free, not purchased, so there is no money-back window.

Admin-panel content editor (TinyMCE-based) with modules/positions and template overrides; not a freeform visual canvas, not pure code-first.

Core Joomla editing is form/field-based (TinyMCE article editor, modules assigned to template positions); no native drag-and-drop page building. Third-party page-builder extensions (e.g., SP Page Builder) add this.

No native front-end click-to-edit; editing happens in the back-end administrator panel.

Native content versioning (Content History) since Joomla 3.2; view, compare, and restore prior article versions.

No confirmed native autosave for the article editor; Joomla instead relies on explicit Save/Save & Close plus version history. Could not verify a true autosave-while-typing feature in official docs.

No official first-party Joomla mobile app for content editing. Admin panel is responsive/usable in a mobile browser; dedicated editing apps are third-party (e.g., JAM!).

Switching templates in Joomla generally requires re-assigning module positions and can break layout since content is not stored in a template-agnostic block format; not a guaranteed safe switch.

Editorial judgment: Joomla's ACL, workflow states, module/position system, and template structure require more up-front learning than hosted builders or WordPress' simpler post/page model.

No single official count found; Joomla Extensions Directory templates category spans many pages without a stated total, and core installs ship with only one default front-end template (Cassiopeia). Declining to guess a number.

Custom fonts can be added via template CSS/customization; not restricted by core software.

Cassiopeia and custom templates are built on Bootstrap 5 with full CSS/HTML control over responsive breakpoints via template overrides.

Full custom CSS via template overrides/customization, no plan restrictions since it's self-hosted software.

Full custom JavaScript support via templates and custom HTML modules; no plan gating.

No native visual animation/interaction builder in core; animation requires custom CSS/JS or third-party extensions.

Template-level style settings and Cassiopeia's customizer expose some global design tokens (colors, layout options), though not a full design-token system.

Editorial judgment: as self-hosted, open-source software with full template/CSS/JS access, design is not constrained by the vendor, though it requires more developer effort to achieve than page-builder platforms.

Joomla is self-hosted software; no official managed hosting is bundled or sold by the Joomla project.

Self-hosting is the only deployment model; requires PHP 8.1+ and MySQL 8.0.13+/MariaDB 10.4+/PostgreSQL 12+ on a compatible web server.

Self-hosted PHP/MySQL software; the site owner or host is responsible for core and extension updates, beyond Joomla's own optional automatic-update feature for minor core versions.

No CDN bundled with the software; CDN must be configured separately via hosting provider or a third-party service/extension.

Joomla core does not provide SSL; SSL depends entirely on the hosting provider (most modern hosts include free Let's Encrypt SSL, but this is a hosting-market fact, not a Joomla feature).

Joomla is a dynamic PHP/database-driven CMS; no native static site export in core (third-party extensions exist for static caching/export but this is not a core feature).

May 2026 CrUX data via HTTP Archive CWV Technology Report API: 58.8% of 147,826 origins with good CWV (desktop 59.0%, mobile 58.7%). Report technology name: 'Joomla'.

Core ships a Media Action - Resize system plugin, but it ships with blank width/height fields and does nothing until an admin manually configures dimensions, and even then only resizes rather than compressing or converting formats. AVIF is supported for manual upload in the Media Manager since Joomla 5.0, not auto-converted. No meaningful optimization is active out of the box; real optimization needs a third-party extension.

Core does not auto-generate srcset/sizes attributes; a GitHub feature request for responsive image fields was declined by the core team, who pointed to third-party plugins (Econa, XT Adaptive Images) instead. No native LQIP/blur-up support.

Native lazy-loading plugin (Content - Lazy Loading Images) sets loading=lazy on images automatically since Joomla 4.

Native page/conservative caching options and cache plugin controls are exposed to the site owner in Global Configuration.

No native analytics dashboard in Joomla core; the extensions directory's analytics category is entirely third-party (Google Analytics Dashboard, JStats, JRealtime, ExtraWatch).

Follows from analytics.builtin being none; no native analytics module exists to have a privacy-first design either way.

No core or native session replay; only available via marketplace extensions (Hitsteps, JRealtime) or third-party SaaS integrations (Mouseflow), not built into Joomla.

Same as session replay: heatmap functionality is available only via marketplace extensions (Hitsteps, JRealtime, ExtraWatch) or third-party SaaS, not native to core.

Every article/category/menu item has editable page title and meta description fields natively.

Article/category aliases (slugs) are editable per item.

Native Redirect component (com_redirect) plus System - Redirect plugin creates 301 redirects and logs 404s for mapping.

Joomla natively outputs canonical tags and allows per-page canonical URL control.

robots.txt ships in the site root and is fully editable, but only via direct file edit (FTP/hosting file manager), not from within the Joomla admin UI.

No native XML sitemap generator in core; requires a third-party extension (most commonly OSMap).

Since Joomla 5.0, core automatically generates JSON-LD schema.org markup (Article, BlogPosting, Book, Event, Organization, Person, Recipe, JobPosting) via a modular plugin architecture, no extension required for these types.

The core Language Filter plugin has an 'Add alternate meta tags' option that automatically outputs hreflang alternate links for multilingual content; no extension required.

Open Graph and social meta tags can be set via template/meta fields; full control available though not always a single dedicated native UI field for every OG property without customization.

Per-menu-item / per-article robots meta (index/noindex, follow/nofollow) is a native field.

Alt text is editable natively in the Media Manager and image insert dialog.

Core com_content includes native article/blog functionality with category blog layouts.

Native custom fields (com_fields) attach structured custom data to articles, categories, contacts, and other core content objects; 16 field types, no extension required for basic custom content structuring.

Native nested categories and tags (com_tags) for cross-cutting taxonomy.

Native Start/Finish Publishing date fields on articles for scheduled publish and expiry.

Native Content History versioning with view/compare/restore, enabled by default since Joomla 3.2.

Native multi-user accounts with author assignment per article and granular ACL by user group.

Native RSS/Atom syndication via com_syndicate and the Syndication Feeds module, supporting RSS 0.91/1.0/2.0, Atom, and OPML.

Native Web Services / REST API (JSON:API-based) supports authenticated GET/POST/PATCH for core content objects like articles.

The core Contact component (com_contact) ships with Joomla, no install required, and provides web-to-email contact forms out of the box; it is limited to a single contact-form type with no submission storage or conditional logic, so power users reach for extensions (RSForm, Convert Forms) for general-purpose form building, but a genuine native form capability exists.

No native membership/paywall component. Core Access Control List (user groups and access levels) supplies the underlying access-restriction primitives, but subscription/paywall behavior (recurring billing, auto-add/remove-on-expiry) requires a marketplace extension (e.g., Akeeba Subscriptions, Membership Pro) layered on top, so the membership logic itself is entirely extension-provided.

No ecommerce in core; requires a third-party component such as VirtueMart, HikaShop, or J2Store.

Not a Joomla core capability; depends on the third-party ecommerce extension chosen.

Not native to Joomla core; recurring billing is a feature of specific ecommerce/membership extensions (e.g., paid HikaShop tiers), not core software.

Not native to Joomla core; multi-currency depends on the chosen ecommerce extension.

No native or common point-of-sale capability found for Joomla core or its leading ecommerce extensions in official sources.

Not a core Joomla feature; depends entirely on the third-party ecommerce extension.

Direct database access (MySQL/PostgreSQL export) plus native Web Services API give full access to all content; self-hosted software has no vendor lock on export.

Templates are plain PHP/HTML/CSS files on the file system, fully portable to any compatible PHP/MySQL host.

Domain is registered independently of Joomla; fully portable since Joomla has no domain lock-in.

Self-hosted PHP/MySQL software; runs on any compliant host (Apache/Nginx/IIS), not tied to a single vendor's infrastructure.

Native Web Services REST API plus direct database access give full content access.

Editorial judgment: self-hosted, GPL-licensed, portable across any compliant host with full database/file access; structurally low lock-in versus hosted, proprietary platforms.

Figure varies by source and date; directory totals fluctuate as listings are added/removed.

Native RESTful Web Services API since Joomla 4.

No native webhook system in Joomla core; webhook functionality requires third-party extensions (e.g., Content Sharing - Webhooks, form-plugin webhook integrations).

Custom HTML modules and template overrides allow arbitrary code embeds with no plan gating (self-hosted software).

Native Joomla Console (CLI application, joomla.phar) for command-line administration tasks since Joomla 4.

No official native Zapier or Make integration; connections happen via third-party extensions using webhooks or the core REST API.

No native AI site-generation feature in Joomla core as of 5.x/6.x. Joomla introduced a provider-agnostic AI Framework (2025) that lets extensions integrate OpenAI/Anthropic/Ollama, but this is developer infrastructure, not an end-user site generator.

No native AI writing assistant in core; AI content generation is provided only by third-party extensions (e.g., AI Content Assistant, JoomAI) built atop the new AI Framework.

No native AI image generation/editing tools in core; requires third-party extensions.

No native AI-driven SEO assistance in core.

Editorial judgment: self-hosted Joomla renders full server-side HTML with complete robots.txt control, plus Joomla 5 ships 7 schema.org JSON-LD plugins (Article, Book, Event, Organization, Person, Recipe, JobPosting) enabled by default with no extension or manual coding required, a genuine structural advantage for AI-crawler comprehension versus CMSs that need a plugin for structured data.

No core or official Joomla feature generates llms.txt; the only implementation found is a third-party paid extension (JSitemap Pro), not an official Joomla product.

robots.txt ships in the site root and is fully editable, but only via direct file edit (FTP/hosting file manager); no admin UI exists for structured or per-bot crawler rules.

No shipped official MCP server. A group of Joomla core contributors ran a January 2026 discovery sprint producing a working proof-of-concept (backend UI plus an MCP endpoint with one demo plugin), publicly documented in Joomla Community Magazine, targeting eventual core integration, but explicitly not production-ready.

Native Access Control List (ACL) with customizable user groups, access levels, and per-component/category/article permission inheritance; one of Joomla's most granular core systems.

No native one-account-multiple-sites feature akin to WordPress Multisite. Official docs describe only a workaround, one Joomla installation and database serving multiple domains via distinct Home menu items and templates, not separately managed sites; each true separate site requires its own install.

Joomla uses item checkout/locking (an article is checked out to one editor at a time) rather than real-time concurrent co-editing.

Native Workflow feature (since Joomla 4.0) supports custom publishing states, transitions, and notifications for content approval; no extension required.

No native staging environment in core; achieving staging/preview requires a third-party extension (e.g., StageIt) or a manually maintained separate install. Unpublished content status offers a limited form of pre-publish preview but not a full staging environment.

No native in-editor commenting/collaboration feature; front-end comment systems (for articles) require third-party extensions.

Native User Actions Log (com_actionlogs) records admin and content actions since Joomla 3.9.

No official 24/7 support channel; community forum and documentation are volunteer-staffed with no guaranteed response time. Paid third-party agencies may offer SLA-backed support independently of the Joomla project.

Editorial judgment: official documentation is extensive (docs.joomla.org, manual.joomla.org, new guide.joomla.org) but fragmented across old wiki pages, a newer restructured guide, and version-specific pages, which can be confusing to navigate; solid depth, mixed organization.

Market share has been in slow decline since a ~9% peak around 2012.

No native backup/restore in core; the de facto standard is the third-party (though widely bundled/recommended) Akeeba Backup extension.

Joomla can run a fully multilingual site natively; content languages, per-language menus, and the Language Filter plugin; with no third-party extension required. This is a genuine, well-documented core strength.

Native Multilingual Associations (com_associations) link translated versions of the same content item across languages for management and front-end language switching.

Per-language menus produce per-locale URLs natively, and the Language Filter plugin's 'Add alternate meta tags' option outputs hreflang automatically; both native, no extension required.

Both default templates (Cassiopeia front end, Atum admin) fully support RTL languages via an automatically-loaded template-rtl.min.css variant.