Any perceivable differences are limited to a few specific traits. For some there is the cost factor which could deter many potential purchasers from buying the commercial products. While there are a few open source products that have low costs the commercial software products tend to be much higher.

Many proponents of the commercial CMS software suggest the product is a better choice once installed, primarily because of the post sale support such as training and stability associated with security experiences with the software.

Since most of the open source CMS developers are largely volunteers the issue could appear to be a potentially formidable challenge. This is where Joomla, for one, works very hard to capitalize on several factors that are currently feeding the product's success.

An example of Joomla's out-of-the-box approach to creating a trouble free product is a recently held "Doc Camp." This international get-together was a follow-up to a weekend Joomla "bug squashing event." The company promoted the events with the goal of increasing the viability and functionality of the product while focusing on cleaning us any inconsistencies in its operational functions.

Reports indicate literally thousands of volunteer developers were on the project. Industry observers state Joomla has a strong commitment to timely upgrades and new releases. Credit is given to the marshalling of volunteers and their exuberant, as well as technologically strong support.

Comparisons tend to favor open source CMS options due to several features:

Consumer friendly free downloads

Strong documentation.

Reliable training.

Ongoing support and development

The Players

In addition to Joomla other open source CMS's are Mambo, Drupal, PHPNuke, Post Nuke, Plone, TYPO3, e107, Open CMS, MODx CMS, WordPress, XOOPS and Zope.

The commercial entrants in the field are Vignette, Alfresco, RedDot CMS, Interwoven Teamsite, Tridion, Microsoft CMS, Oracle portal, Immediacy CMS, GOSS iCM, Hot Banana and Fatwire Content Server.

Can Joomla Hold On To The Top Spot?

Joomla tends to meet the strictest parameters expected of companies that would like to be considered leaders in the field. The competing team at Mambo also renders a build quality and application strength that keep them squarely in Joomla's sights.

The remainder of the group provide add-on features like, job posting, guest books, and chat to name a few of the most popular features.

Once thing all open source CMS have in common is they are distributed under GNU GPL and tend to work well with most operating environments. Joomla gets the higher marks mainly because of the strengths of its largely volunteer developer family.

When looking more closely through the list of commercial CMS contenders we find the licensing differs greatly. Additionally databases and related servers in addition to programming languages are similar but created specific differences depending on the applications.

Overall, when comparing features like, building applications, operability, performance and user friendliness, Joomla out ranks 99.9% of all comers in every category. It must be hard to be humble when you're that good and Joomla's legion of fans is expanding more rapidly at every download.