CMS selection: which system fits your company?
Drupal, TYPO3, or a headless system after all? Choosing the right content management system determines the maintenance, scalability, and costs of your website. An honest overview for SMBs in Upper Austria.
The same website, two backends: on the left, the cluttered WordPress dashboard with plugin warnings and update notices; on the right, the tidy Drupal backend - compared directly in a silent short video.
The choice of CMS is one of the most important technical decisions in a website project – and it is too often made by the provider, not the customer. Yet the CMS should fit your own requirements: Who maintains the website? How often is content updated? How complex is the structure? Do you need multilingual capabilities or interfaces to other systems?
WordPress: The market leader – and why we don't offer it
WordPress powers over 40% of all websites worldwide – and this very prevalence is its biggest problem: no system is attacked more frequently, and hardly any installation gets by without dozens of third-party plugins.
Why we advise against it: Plugin sprawl makes maintenance and security a constant issue, updates regularly break features, and the backend becomes more cluttered with every extension. What seems cheap at first becomes expensive in operation.
Our position: We deliberately do not offer WordPress – for reasons of maintenance, security, and usability. Customers who come to us with WordPress are guided onto a more stable foundation.
Drupal: For complex requirements
Drupal is the CMS of choice when projects get complex: multilingualism, complex content types, fine-grained permissions, high scalability. It is used by universities, governments, and large organizations – but also by SMBs that want to build on a solid technical foundation from the start.
Best suited for: Companies with complex content structures, multilingual needs, high security requirements, or planned scaling. Drupal 11 is the current version with a long-term support horizon.
Drawbacks: Higher entry and development costs, a steeper learning curve for editors, a smaller developer ecosystem than mass-market systems.
TYPO3: the enterprise alternative
TYPO3 is especially widespread in the German-speaking region (DACH) and is often used by mid-sized to large companies. Solid, long-lived, with a good permissions system. However, it's comparatively slow to evolve and comes with high license and development costs.
Headless CMS: for modern setups
Headless systems (like Contentful, Sanity, or Storyblok) completely separate content management and frontend. This enables maximum flexibility and performance — but is significantly more complex to implement and is better suited to larger projects or companies with their own development capacity.
Decision guide: which CMS for whom?
- Small corporate website, easy maintenance: Drupal – set up lean
- Complex structure, multilingual, scaling: Drupal
- Large company, DACH focus: TYPO3
- Maximum performance, modern architecture: Headless CMS
You make the best decision together with an agency that knows all the systems and has no vested interest in a particular CMS. MOREMEDIA® advises honestly – and clearly tells you what we advise against. We implement the system that fits your requirements for the long term.
Frequently asked questions
What is a CMS?
A content management system (CMS) is software that lets you manage and update website content (texts, images, pages) – without programming knowledge. Well-known systems include Drupal, TYPO3, and WordPress – although for maintenance and security reasons we rely exclusively on Drupal.
WordPress or Drupal – which is better for SMEs?
WordPress lures with a low entry barrier but claws the costs back through maintenance, security updates, and plugin problems. Drupal is more scalable, more secure, and easier to maintain in the long run – even for simple SME websites. That is why we rely exclusively on Drupal and advise against WordPress.
Can I switch the CMS myself after launch?
A CMS migration is technically possible but laborious and expensive – it is de facto a relaunch. That is why it pays to make the choice carefully from the start.
What does a CMS like Drupal cost?
The software itself is open source and free. The costs lie in implementation, theme/design, plugins or modules, hosting, and maintenance. A cleanly set up Drupal pays for itself through significantly lower follow-up costs in ongoing operation.
Is WordPress secure enough for a company website?
Only with considerable ongoing maintenance effort: most security incidents trace back to outdated plugins and poor hosting environments — a structural risk of the plugin ecosystem. That is why we recommend Drupal: one of the most secure open-source CMSs, used by governments and corporations.
What is a headless CMS?
With a headless CMS, the editorial part (content) is separated from the visual part (frontend). This enables high performance and flexibility but requires more development effort. For most SMEs, a classic CMS like Drupal is the better choice.
