A lot of clients have asked us why is TYPO3 better than Joomla, as these two both aim for the title of the best PHP open-source CMS. If you try to "google" the answer you can mostly find just Joomla developers writing that TYPO3 is indeed more advanced but way more complex to set up - but without detailed comparison.

As we don't offer any services on Joomla, I have invested some time in researching the differences between these two. For this article I have used information provided on the CMS Matrix web site as well as the list of Joomla flaws stated in the book Professional Joomla! by Dan Rahmel.

Document version control

Joomla completely lacks document version control. TYPO3 on other hand has great version control - you can control absolutely every record and content element in the page tree - you can undo changes, browse history etc. When creating custom record type, adding version control features is as easy as clicking on the "Enable versioning" check box in the Kickstarter.

Workflow feature

Joomla completely lacks workflow as well. For example, if you have many editors who write articles, it won't be possible to allow chief editor to make decision what will be published and what will be returned for revision.

TYPO3 has great feature called "Task center" where you can define tasks for each user and workflow. For example:

• a chief editor can create a task for editor to create a news article
• once editor writes the article it passes it for review
• once the chief editor reviews the article he can publish the article to the news archive, censor the article or he can return it to the editor for revision.

While the workflow system in TYPO3 certainly needs improvement, what is currently present is a great advantage over Joomla.

Import/Export of the content

Joomla lacks export functionality. In order to transfer content from one website to another you would have to dig into MySQL tables directly and manually copy all the files using FTP.

TYPO3 has built-in import/export functionality. You can export and import content using TYPO3's native .t3d archives. These archives can contain both records and content elements from the database and files stored on a server's file system. While this feature can be a little tricky on a complex web sites when you try to use it on just one part of the page tree, it certainly helps a lot in manipulating data and is very easy to use in most of the cases.

Security and authentication features

Joomla has only eight predefined user groups which you cannot change (though there is an extension which can extend this functionality). Furthermore, you cannot set security level with high level of granularity for users groups in Joomla - for example, you cannot specify that an user can change only one type of records in certain categories.

Also, Joomla lacks Kerberos, NIS, NTLM and SMB authentication.

In this field, TYPO3 has great advantage over Joomla:

• you can create unlimited number of front-end and back-end user groups
• user groups can be nested
• for each front-end group you can define what content element it can access. For example, a single page can have different output based on a group logged-in user belongs to
• for each back-end user group you can define what folders/pages/extensions users can access
• there is a support for Kerberos, NIS, NTLM and SMB authentication through additional extension. Furthermore, you can easily create any other custom authentication.

Load balancing and replication

Load balancing is something that both Joomla and TYPO3 lack out of the box. Generic replication of file system and MySQL databases can be done on the  absolutely same way both these systems.

A common way to deploying high-speed TYPO3 web site is by creating static HTML files and serve them on a load-balanced web servers, and use private web server for content editing. There is noting faster than this when serving web sites where no interaction with the users is needed, but in cases when users can collaborate on the web sites, it makes this procedure very tricky.

One more very powerful option is included in the core installation of TYPO3 (but not documented for now) - ability to cache SQL results on distributed cache servers using memcached. This technique is used by many high-traffic web sites (FaceBook, Wikipedia, SourceForge and Slashdot to name the few). In order to use distributed caching in TYPO3 you would have to setup your database connection using the dbal and adodb system extension and of course install memcached on at least one server.

Given all that, I would also dare to grade TYPO3 much higher in terms of load-balancing.

Back-end editing capabilities

A subjective impression of anyone who is used to work with TYPO3 BE is that Joomla BE is very simple and feature poor. In TYPO3 all records and content elements are organized in very structural way in a page tree which consists out of pages and folders. I have found the Joomla BE to be not structurally organized and very limited in many situations.

Conclusion

These are just comparisons of some important features which Joomla lacks. I haven't had time to dig more into comparing features which already exist in both systems, but the outcome of that is very predictable. Joomla is a very simplified CMS which can accommodate only needs of very small web-sites and organizations. For everybody else, I would recommend going for TYPO3 - the advantages are enormous and even if on the first look you might find that you don't need all the functionalities TYPO3 has, it is just a matter of time when you will change your mind. The transition will be then more painful and expensive then choosing TYPO3 at start.

DISCLAIMER: Essential Dots is not specialized in development of Joomla web sites. Please take this comparison only as our subjective view of these two systems.

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13 Responses to “TYPO3: TYPO3 vs. Joomla - The definite answer”

Comment from Michael Cannon

on Tuesday, 17-02-09 02:48

There's definitely a place and time to use Joomla over TYPO3.

Generally though, that time seems to be more when you're first starting out building sites and just want to have something up now.

After working through the TYPO3 learning curve these past 6 years, I shudder at building a site in something other than TYPO3 unless I want a simple blog that'll never grow beyond being a blog, then it'll be WordPress.

We at Acqal try to best match the solution to a clients needs in any case. That's what the X vs Y folks really should be looking at, is what's best for the client with some focus on building up a reliable core competency for your own agency.

Thank you for sharing these TYPO3 and Joomla comparisons.

Comment from Mike Fatica

on Monday, 16-02-09 19:38

Joomla does have a free add-on for Version Control, we released it under GPL:
http://www.fatica.net/downloads/simple-content-versioning.html

Comment from Gerry

on Saturday, 15-11-08 07:57

Out of the box- side by side for the novice Joomla Towers over Typo3 - end of story!

Comment from Grommit

on Wednesday, 12-11-08 10:14

Having tried both systems, the comparion is easy for me.
Joomla - quick and dirty, but inflexible and useless for large sites, because of the very unintuitive record management system (doesn't reflect how users understand 'pages' and 'subpages')
Typo3 - takes some patience to learn, but is thoroughly worth the effort - incredibly flexible, adaptable, reliable and easy to use. I run 2 huge websites that between them cover 1400 pages, and they are dead easy to run with Typo3.
Typoscript is not really a language so much as a massive set of configuration settings. Once you've read the tutorials, it makes much more sense and you can see the power of the system = infinite flexibility. You just need to flip your thinking round a bit and then it's easy. Build a few blocks of Typoscript code, save them as records and then reuse them over and over again. Not a problem. Just the same as installing plugins to any other system, except that these ones are customised to your own particular needs.
If you're in a hurry and not ambitious, try Joomla, but be ready to be frustrated. Learn Typo3 and you can build *anything*. Fantastic user community too, who are friendly and helpful.

Comment from Nikola

on Thursday, 06-11-08 08:27

Our latest experiences confirm that Joomla can be hell to administer. Even though it has much simplified back-end editing, it is sometimes very hard to find what you are looking for.

Regarding the learning curve difference between TYPO3 and Joomla, I can say only one thing - if you are going to build just one simple web-site, than sure go for Joomla, if you are going to build a complex web-site or more than one web-site, well, in that case, TYPO3 is the choice to go with.

This blog is oriented more towards professional web developers and their clients. If you are not a professional web developer and you want to build the web-site on your own, this indeed might not be the definite answer for you :)

Comment from Jayden

on Thursday, 06-11-08 03:27

Yeah - this is not the definitive answer. If someone wrote a similar artice on why Joomla is better than T3, then I'm sure there would be many good arguments. A better article may be:

"When you should use Typo3, and when you should use Joomla".

I'm needing a very quick and easy CMS for a small project, and from my research Joomla wins out. And, from the above comments I see that you need to learn "Typoscript"... no thanks.

Comment from mark jansson

on Monday, 20-10-08 02:05

Joomla is a "playful background" where developers make experiments that never end. I have used Joomla for years and all I learneds that to use joomla for a week ya need to spend two weeks of hardwork, until the next problem arises. Templates provided are ugly and the majority of the components provided are a self advertising strategy to show ho many components are daily provided where instead only one component out of hundreds really works. Furthermore: joomla gives no opportunities to change graphics and once you want to bring some refining to your graphics be ready to spend weeks to modify a corner of your web site. That is why am mocing to typo3 after watching it in action.

Comment from Gary

on Wednesday, 27-08-08 22:07

Biased.

"The transition will be then more painful and expensive then choosing TYPO3 at start." - So you are assuming that learning Typoscript, a propriety language based on and used by nothing else other than the Typo3 system is a nontrivial, non expensive use of developer time?

To be fair this is not a comparison of the 2 top PHP based CMS'. This is a comparison of one PHP-based CMS and a PHP+Typoscript based CMS.

Comment from Marko

on Tuesday, 15-07-08 19:23

I don't agree that knowing both solutions can bring you any good (as a client). You cannot know everything, it is better to use only the better solution - that way you have greater flexibility in future. I think that the comparison was very good and helpful as it is oriented towards clients and not web developers. At the end, the clients decide what they are going to use, not web developers.

Comment from Marcus Biesioroff

on Monday, 24-03-08 01:53

NOT exactly great comparision. ;)
You wrote not comparision but article wchich should be named: 'Why is T3 better than Joomla!'. I would rather say that these CMS systems are claimed to 2 different groups of users. Joomla is much better for fast CMS-based portal otherwise T3 is much more flexible. So there's NO DEFINITE answer - it's best idea to know both of solutions and use them accordingly to the situation.

Comment from Ridcully

on Tuesday, 11-03-08 13:34

Thanks for the comparision, it was very helpful

Comment from David

on Monday, 03-03-08 18:34

Thanks for that. As a confirmed Typo3 fan, who also looked closely at Joomla for comparison, it's good to see someone else coming to the same conclusions. I found Joomla to be downright illogical and difficult for a novice to understand, whereas a configured Typo3 back end screen is dead easy for my customers to use.

Comment from Tim

on Monday, 03-03-08 10:23

Great comparison. Thanks