Joomla! is one of the most popular website software solutions.
It is 'open source' which means it is freely available to everyone, reducing the cost of licensing for site owners.
Joomla! is very powerful and flexible.
There is a large community of developers who have built extensions and plug-ins for Joomla! that enable all sorts of functionality. While it's true many are available for free, the better one's are not - but they are very affordable.
We use Joomla! for most of our sites because of the power and flexibility of the system, and the size of the user community - this gives our clients many more options at a much more affordable price.
Joomla! vs other CMS's
One advantage of a CMS that belongs to a particular company (known as a proprietary system) is that they will spend time and effort maintaining it, upgrading and developing it.
This comes at a cost that is passed on to their customers - and sometimes the price is quite high. It can be very expensive if custom development is needed. And you get what the company decides is a priority.
There are many other open source solutions like Wordpress (which we do use for blogs). We prefer Joomla! because it is more flexible and powerful out of the box, but doesn't come with the complexity of systems used to create highly customisable functionality, like Drupal.
Joomla's large developer and user community means a huge range of speciality add-ons to suit whatever need. And a site owner is not constrained by what a provider thinks they need!
Many sites developed using Joomla! are handed over to business owners to look after on their own. But like any system, Joomla! needs on-going care and maintenance, especially to ensure that security is maintained. Bug fixes need to be applied and the code has to be kept up to date and in line with standards. We provide this support as part of our Website Management.
Essentee Web Design is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Joomla! Project or Open Source Matters. The Joomla! logo is used under a limited license granted by Open Source Matters the trademark holder in the United States and other countries.