Drupal vs WordPress: Total cost of ownership for enterprises

Both Drupal and WordPress are open-source platforms, meaning there are no direct software licensing fees. The real Drupal vs WordPress TCO discussion is about the expenses related to infrastructure, implementation, maintenance, scalability, and talent sourcing. Additionally, there are hidden costs to consider. Let’s take a closer look at how Drupal and WordPress compare on TCO.

Infrastructure costs: hosting and performance considerations

In the Drupal vs WordPress TCO comparison, each CMS’s architecture determines its resource requirements, influencing overall costs. Let’s look at Drupal first.

To ensure performance for enterprise-level sites, Drupal typically requires a ”resource-intensive architecture.” This would typically involve setting up clusters of servers or using specialized hosting providers. And as a result, enterprises face higher upfront and ongoing hosting costs for managed solutions or on-premise data centers. Drupal’s infrastructure is generally expensive because:

• For high-traffic sites, Drupal often relies on multiple layers of caching (such as page, block, and data caching) to improve performance. However, each layer requires careful tuning and substantial resources to ensure it functions efficiently.  
• Drupal is also highly reliant on its database for storing content, configuration, and other system information. As the system grows with more complex features and custom modules, the database has to do more work, necessitating database optimization, further driving infrastructure costs. Database optimization would be far simpler for WordPress in a comparable scenario.
• Custom modules in Drupal, while extremely powerful, often increase complexity. These modules can create interdependencies, making it difficult to upgrade, maintain, or scale the platform without significant effort. Each additional module can add extra load to the system and demand more resources from both the server and database, which can increase overall costs.

WordPress, on the other hand, uses a resource-efficient architecture where setting up a comparable WordPress stack takes less resources. Enterprise WordPress hosting providers also offer enterprise-ready solutions for faster deployments.

For Drupal, similar solutions are available through providers like Acquia, but these options tend to be more expensive than many of WordPress’s enterprise hosting offerings.

Implementation costs

When evaluating implementation costs, Drupal vs WordPress presents clear differences, with Drupal’s highly modular architecture necessitating extensive custom development, leading to higher upfront implementation costs. Core functionalities often require bespoke development, and its complex templating system (Twig) and configuration management tools demand expertise. Drupal also uses a more rigid entity-based content architecture, which, while powerful, requires custom development for flexibility. (Skip to the talent acquisition section to learn more about the “Drupal tech stack.”)

WordPress, in contrast, provides an easy-to-extend core, official native integrations with third-party solutions, and developer-friendly frameworks that reduce development time and cost. You can put together your enterprise stack with considerably less reliance on custom development that Drupal often demands. 

Maintenance costs

Drupal vs WordPress TCO comparisons reveal that maintenance expenses can vary significantly across both CMSs, with Drupal requiring more effort for updates due to its complexity.

Drupal’s update cycle often requires manual intervention, particularly when upgrading between major versions. Unlike WordPress, which prioritizes backward compatibility, Drupal’s architecture often forces enterprises to rebuild significant parts of their platform when moving from one major version to another (e.g., Drupal 7 to Drupal 9/10). These migrations require extensive development effort, regression testing, and reconfiguration, leading to high maintenance costs.

WordPress automates core updates, security patches, and plugin compatibility testing, significantly reducing the burden on IT teams. Enterprise solutions like WordPress VIP include proactive security monitoring, automatic scaling, and compliance measures, ensuring long-term stability without expensive manual interventions.

Again, with providers like Acquia, a lot of these will be taken care of, but Acquia is generally more expensive and requires more specialized management. This is particularly true when compared to WordPress’s enterprise solutions, which are often more streamlined and cost-effective.

Scalability costs

In the Drupal vs WordPress TCO evaluation, scalability costs also differ greatly, with WordPress offering easier scaling. 

Drupal’s performance at scale relies heavily on server-side caching mechanisms like Varnish, Memcached, and Redis, often requiring custom tuning to prevent performance bottlenecks. Enterprises frequently need DevOps expertise to manage infrastructure scaling, leading to higher operational costs. Drupal often requires custom infrastructure planning too, which also drives up costs.

While managed Drupal hosting solutions like Acquia offer powerful scaling capabilities, they typically come with higher price tags compared to WordPress solutions. Acquia, for example, provides managed solutions with built-in scalability, but its pricing tends to be more expensive due to the level of customization and infrastructure management required. This makes Drupal hosting a more costly option for enterprises looking to scale efficiently. 

Managed WordPress hosting solutions like WordPress VIP, Pantheon, and Pagely come with built-in scaling, performance monitoring, and CDN integrations. By leveraging containerized infrastructure and dynamic resource allocation, they reduce the need for custom tuning and DevOps intervention—delivering cost-effective, scalable performance for your site.

Costs associated with sourcing talent

Drupal developers are highly specialized, making talent acquisition more expensive and project timelines longer. 

Drupal demands specialized skills, which makes hiring and upskilling developers more expensive. In contrast, WordPress’s straightforward PHP-based ecosystem enables developers to ramp up quickly, while Drupal requires deep expertise in:

• The Drupal-specific hook system for extending functionality. (WordPress also uses hooks, but its philosophy of simplicity reflects in its implementation, making them easier to work with.)
• Symfony components (For complex or custom Drupal configurations, developers need proficiency in Symfony development.)
• Twig templating for theming. (Twig is Drupal’s theming system, whereas WordPress theming is more straightforward.)
• Drush and YAML configuration management. (Drush is a command-line interface specifically for Drupal, requiring familiarity with its syntax and workflows.)

All these add to your costs of sourcing, hiring, and upskilling costs. In fact, enterprises often need to source talent through specialized agencies or contract developers at premium rates. Many large organizations also require Acquia-certified developers, further limiting options and driving up costs.

In contrast, WordPress benefits from a wider developer ecosystem, a faster learning curve, and a lower total cost of hiring and retention. It supports a broader range of skill levels, from junior developers to experienced enterprise engineers, ensuring project scalability without the heavy overhead associated with Drupal talent acquisition.

Hidden costs

The Drupal vs WordPress TCO analysis must account for “hidden costs” too.

One such cost comes from vendor dependencies. Take security, for instance. Drupal often requires third-party enterprise support contracts for ongoing security and compliance management. While it has a strong security framework, its reliance on contributed and custom modules for security policies can introduce long-term maintenance overhead, especially during major upgrades.

WordPress, with its extensive ecosystem of managed security solutions, enterprise hosting providers, and modular architecture, helps reduce these hidden costs. Managed WordPress platforms like WordPress VIP include security certifications, automatic updates, and built-in governance tools, allowing enterprises to maintain compliance with minimal additional overhead.

Outside of third-party vendor dependencies too, you could be looking at more expenses.

• Technical debt: Over time, maintaining heavily customized Drupal implementations can lead to technical debt, requiring expensive refactoring.
• Version upgrades and migration costs: Drupal’s major version upgrades often require substantial redevelopment, whereas WordPress follows a more iterative upgrade path with backward compatibility.
• Compliance and security audits: Enterprises handling sensitive data may need frequent security audits, which can be more resource-intensive in Drupal due to its modular nature and customization complexity.
• Performance optimization: Drupal often requires additional infrastructure tuning (caching layers, database optimization, etc.), while WordPress has enterprise-grade managed hosting solutions that handle this out of the box. WordPress’s managed hosting solutions, like WordPress VIP, package all these features into predictable plans, simplifying the process for enterprises. In contrast, Acquia, a WordPress VIP alternative for Drupal, tends to be more expensive and requires more specialized management, making it less cost-effective for some organizations compared to WordPress’s streamlined offerings.
• Long-term plugin and module dependencies: Some third-party modules in Drupal require ongoing maintenance or custom development to stay compatible with new core versions, adding long-term costs. (This would be true for WordPress too, but, again, upgrading would be less resource-intensive.)
• Change management and training: Drupal’s steeper learning curve can result in higher training costs, especially for non-technical teams adapting to its structured workflows.
• Third-party licensing fees: While the core CMS is open source, enterprise Drupal implementations often rely on proprietary middleware, API gateways, or integrations that introduce additional licensing fees. This would hold for WordPress too, but you’ll find that WordPress’s ecosystem offers more cost-effective alternatives. Many essential integrations have well-maintained open-source plugins or officially supported connectors, reducing the reliance on proprietary solutions.

Training costs

When comparing Drupal vs WordPress, training costs are another important TCO factor.

Drupal’s steep learning curve necessitates ongoing training for content teams, developers, and IT staff. Its complex interface and rigid content architecture require formal onboarding and continued education, increasing long-term training costs. The technical nature of its backend can also slow adoption and increase reliance on dev resources, further adding to the TCO.

WordPress’s intuitive block editor, content modeling capabilities via plugins like ACF, and user-friendly workflows significantly reduce training costs. Marketing and content teams can operate independently, allowing IT and developers to focus on the technical side of things.

At rtCamp, many of our clients request learning materials or training sessions for their in-house teams as we hand over the project. We’ve seen that even a quick program gets all stakeholders up to speed with the CMS efficiently.

The bottom line: The Drupal vs WordPress TCO comparison 

When evaluating Drupal and WordPress in an enterprise setting, WordPress consistently delivers a more cost-efficient model across every stage of the CMS lifecycle.

With lower implementation and maintenance costs, a broader talent pool, and a more predictable scaling structure, enterprises can allocate resources more strategically. Additionally, Drupal’s upgrades look like costly replatforming efforts, making it a high-maintenance choice in the long term. With WordPress, enterprises benefit from seamless updates, backward compatibility, and an ecosystem that prioritizes long-term stability.

While Drupal remains a viable option for highly specialized use cases, WordPress is a comparable, enterprise-friendly alternative with a lower total cost of ownership for most enterprise scenarios.