Choosing a platform is choosing who can change the site

WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Shopify, Magento. The differences that matter are rarely technical.

The question people ask is which platform is best. It has no answer. The question with an answer is who is going to change this site, how often, and what happens when they leave.

A platform that a member of your staff can update is worth more than a technically superior one that requires a developer for every comma. The reverse is also true: if nobody in the building will ever touch it, paying for an easy editor is paying for nothing.

Volume of change matters more than volume of traffic. A brochure site that changes twice a year and a catalogue that changes twice a day want different things, and the second one wants structure - proper fields for price, stock and variant - rather than a page somebody retypes.

Commerce adds its own question: whether you want the shop to be part of the site or a service the site talks to. Shopify is a good answer to the second. Magento and the older carts are answers to the first, and they cost accordingly.

And the honest constraint nobody mentions: what the site is on now. Moving platforms is a real cost. It is worth paying when the current one blocks something you need. It is not worth paying because a newer thing exists.