DonkeyCMS vs WordPress

WordPress builds whole websites and has run a good part of the internet for twenty years. DonkeyCMS does one thing: it adds a blog to a website built some other way, one that is already online or one still being designed. So this page compares them as blogs, and it is honest about where WordPress is the better pick.

Checked on 11 October 2026 against WordPress’s own website. How we checked

The short answer

Choose WordPress if you are building the whole website and want one system for pages, shop and blog, with a theme or plugin for nearly everything.

Choose DonkeyCMS if the website already exists, or you are building it your own way, and it needs a blog that looks like it was always part of the site.

DonkeyCMS and WordPress, side by side

DonkeyCMS compared with WordPress, fact by fact
The basics
	DonkeyCMS	WordPress
What it is	A blog for a website built some other way	A system for whole websites
Design	Your site’s own header, menu and footer	A theme: it “represents the design of your website”
Price	Free for one site, paid plans from €6 a month	Free software. Many plugins and themes sell paid versions
License	Commercial	Open source (GPL)
Hosting	PHP 8.1 or newer, MySQL	PHP 8.3 or newer recommended, MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.11
Making it yours
Themes	None needed	8,683 free in the official directory, and paid ones from theme shops
Adding features	Built in, nothing to install. No plugins	Through plugins. Popular ones keep some features for a paid version
Content	Blog posts, categories and tags	Posts, pages and custom types
Looking after it
Backups	Built in on every plan, Free included, on a schedule	Not in WordPress itself: your host, by hand, or a plugin
Updates	One click, backed up first, undone if it fails	One click; security updates install themselves
Search and AI	Sitemap, structured data and RSS built in	Ready “out of the box”, more with SEO plugins
Writing with others
Comments	Pro and up	Built in
Team roles	Custom roles on Business	Five roles built in
Post revisions	No	Yes
Languages	Admin in 7, blog in any	More than 70
Moving in	Imports from WordPress, on Pro and up	Imports from Blogger, Tumblr, WordPress and others

Where WordPress wins

It builds the whole website

Pages, a shop, a portfolio, a blog: one system for all of it. DonkeyCMS only does the blog. If you do not have a website yet and do not want to build one yourself, WordPress gets you there and we do not.

It is free and open source

The software costs nothing and the code is open under the GPL. Our Free plan is free too, but it covers one site and adds a small credit, and DonkeyCMS is not open source.

There is a plugin for that

Whatever “that” is. Thousands of plugins and more than 8,000 free themes. We have neither, on purpose, but if you need a booking form, a forum and a recipe calculator by Friday, WordPress has them. Budget for a few: the popular ones often keep their best features for a paid version.

Everybody knows it

WordPress says it runs over 43% of all sites. We run slightly fewer. That size means tutorials for every question and a freelancer in every town who has done it before.

Comments, team roles and revisions come free

Comments and five team roles are built in at no cost, and WordPress keeps earlier versions of each post. With us, comments and team seats start on Pro, and post revisions do not exist yet.

Where DonkeyCMS wins

Your design stays your design

Point Frame Setup at your homepage and the blog wears your header, menu and footer. Nobody converts your website into a theme, because there is no theme. Visitors cannot tell where the site ends and the blog begins.

Your own pages are left alone

DonkeyCMS lives in its own folder. The pages you built, or are still building, stay exactly where and how they are. Adding a blog should not start with “first, rebuild everything”.

The basics are already in the box

Full backups, structured data for search and AI tools, FAQ blocks, lighter pictures and a share picture in the right shape come with every plan, Free included. On WordPress these arrive as plugins, and well-known ones keep features for a paid version: UpdraftPlus sells backups before updates, Yoast SEO sells its AI tools, and Akismet spam protection is free for personal blogs only.

One thing to update

One product, one update button. It backs up first and puts everything back by itself if something goes wrong.

Small on purpose

It is a blog, so the admin panel has blog things in it. A client who only writes posts finds “New Post” without a guided tour.

Who should choose which

Choose WordPress if…

You are starting from zero and want one system for the entire website.
You need a shop, memberships, bookings or anything else that lives in a plugin.
Open source is a requirement for you.
You want a ready-made theme instead of a website of your own.
Your budget is zero and you need comments or several writers.

Choose DonkeyCMS if…

Your website is not on WordPress: hand-coded, Tailwind, Bootstrap, a template, or one an AI built last week.
You are building a new site your own way and want the blog to follow its design.
You build sites for clients and want to hand over a simple blog, not a second platform to look after.
You want backups, updates and the search basics handled without choosing plugins.
You only need a blog. A good one.

Try DonkeyCMS free One site, no card, no time limit.

DonkeyCMS vs WordPress: questions, answered

Still deciding? Ask us. We will tell you if WordPress is the better fit.

For the blog, yes. For the whole website, no. WordPress builds entire sites; DonkeyCMS adds a blog to a site built another way, years old or brand new. If your website is not on WordPress and all you are missing is a blog, you do not need to move the house to add a room.

Probably not. WordPress already gives you a blog, and it is a good one. DonkeyCMS makes sense when the website itself is leaving WordPress, or never was on it.

Yes. On Pro and up, DonkeyCMS imports your posts, pages, categories, tags and images from the standard export file WordPress makes. Your old posts arrive with their pictures.

The software is, and so are the themes and plugins in its official directories. In practice many sites pay for extras: popular plugins such as UpdraftPlus and Yoast SEO keep features for a paid version, Akismet asks businesses for a subscription, and WordPress lists dozens of shops selling themes. You pay for hosting either way. DonkeyCMS has a Free plan for one site with no time limit; paid plans start at €6 a month and include everything in the plan, with nothing sold separately.

Both produce pages that search engines and AI tools can read. WordPress is ready out of the box and goes further with SEO plugins. DonkeyCMS includes the sitemap, Article and FAQ structured data, share tags and RSS on every plan. Either way, what you write matters more than what you write it in.

Yes. Both need PHP and a MySQL database, which nearly every hosting plan has. DonkeyCMS asks for PHP 8.1 or newer; WordPress recommends PHP 8.3 or newer.

How we checked

Everything this page says about WordPress was read on WordPress’s own website on 11 October 2026. Words in quotation marks are theirs. What it says about DonkeyCMS matches our full feature list.

Software changes faster than web pages do. If something here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.

WordPress is a trademark of the WordPress Foundation. DonkeyCMS is not affiliated with it.