WordPress, Laravel, Drupal or Next.js?

The honest answer is that all four can run almost any website. The better question is: what do you want your evenings to look like? Here's the short version we give friends.

Pick WordPress if…

…you want to write, publish and install features without writing code. Blogs, brochure sites, small shops and portfolios all fit neatly. The trade-off is plugins: wonderful, occasionally fragile, and worth keeping to a short list.

Pick Laravel if…

…you're comfortable with PHP and want a proper application: logins, subscriptions, dashboards, queues. Laravel gives you batteries included, and the code stays readable six months later. You'll write more code than with WordPress, and you'll fight less with plugins.

Pick Drupal if…

…you're building content-heavy, structured sites — a university, a government page, a big editorial archive. Drupal's data modelling is superb. It's also the most opinionated about servers, which is exactly why we tune that stack for you.

Pick React or Next.js if…

…you already think in components, or you want an app-like front end with fast page loads. Next.js gives you routing, server rendering and a great developer experience. It expects you to be comfortable with npm, so it's the least “click and go” of the four — which is why our deploy flow does the boring parts.

What they have in common on Sling

One dashboard, automatic SSL, daily backups, security updates, staging sites and a human to ask. The stack changes what you build. It shouldn't change how much server admin you have to learn.