Spending the last 3 days at VivaTech 2025 with AI at almost every booth and in most conversations, one could forget there is anything else today. With thousands of AI tools showcased - from oncology to climate solutions - it’s easy to assume traditional systems like CMSes are unnecessary or possibly even obsolete. Yet this assumption misses a critical point: AI and CMSes like Joomla (celebrating its 20th year in 2025) serve complementary roles, and the latter remains indispensable!

While AI offers obvious and potentially transformative results - especially in specific applications such as  medical diagnostics and others - it’s not a blanket replacement for everything such as foundational tools like Joomla! - something which is easily forgotten when you are confronted every day with the massive number of AI tools that exist (over 19,086 have been catalogued to date 😱).

What AI doesn't bring

What is clear is that Joomla’s maturity, accessibility, extendability, and open-source eco-system address needs that AI alone cannot and will not solve:

• Stability vs Experimentation: AI tools, particularly LLM based models, still grapple with reliability issues (i.e., a high level of hallucinations). Joomla, on the other hand, provides battle-tested infrastructure for content, workflows, and security (and more).
  
  
• Flexibility via Integration: Joomla’s compatibility with no-code platforms such as Make.com as well as existing API endpoints allows for potential 'partnerships' with AI when beneficial, avoiding having to make an 'either / or' choice.

I have no doubt that you will (if you haven't already) start to incorporate more and more AI solutions, tools or steps into your workflows but don't misinterpret the arrival of a slew of new tools as a sign that tried and true solutions such as CMSs like Joomla need to be replaced by some AI wunderkid - none of those are about to replace Joomla anytime soon, if ever.

So, if AI isn't replacing Joomla anytime soon 😌, how do you get clients to think Joomla or to entertain it as the right choice for them?

A solution for various kinds of customers

I truly believe that Joomla has a real place in the website landscape. And not just for one single type of customer but for a wide breadth of customers and various needs.

While I work currently mostly with small to medium sized customers (the type of customers that are typically not so web or tech savvy), I have also worked with state and local governments, and larger clients and more than 95% of the time, I have been able to show Joomla! to be the right choice.

Why choose Joomla or something else for that matter, has a lot to do with the approach, the project itself and, let's be honest, also the budget.

The Joomla First Approach

Similarly to the industry recommendation of the last few years to have a Mobile First approach, I choose to have a Joomla First approach, and as a result, only end up recommending or building something other than Joomla ~1% of the time. One could argue that by putting myself in this mindset, it is more difficult, but I have rarely found that to be the case, instead it lets me focus and be creative around ALL of the infinite possibilities that Joomla offers - from the feature-rich core to its large quantity of quality 3rd party extensions that exist.

So why and how to think Joomla First and how to get your clients to think Joomla?

For one thing, it makes my life easier - focusing on Joomla (while keeping tabs on other technologies, of course) lets me stay around the same principles, methodologies, habits, mechanisms...

For another thing, it lets me be quite creative - if something initially doesn't jump out at me on how to do it out of the box - I enjoy the challenge and the satisfaction of finding a 'clever' and hopefully smart solution for my customer.

For me, Joomla is one very wide playground of capabilities, as of version 4 and even more so Joomla 5, the limit of what one can do with Joomla feels limitless - especially thanks to newer capabilities like Scheduled Task plugins and no-code platform integrations such as Make.com etc...

Unlimited possibilities

With Joomla's strong and ever evolving core and capabilities, it is quite easy to build anything from a simple 3-5 page website to a multi-thousand page news portal, or intranet, etc. And beyond simpler websites, when you need to build an eCommerce or an event booking or one of another 100 different concepts, there's a great 3rd party extension that can help you get your project done. And for the more knowledgeable, you can always build your own component, module or plugin depending on what you need to achieve. 

And if ever you're stuck, need a bit of advice or help, there's a great active community on Mattermost, for example, to guide you get whatever you need done.

When presenting Joomla to customers, I never talk about limitations because I don't feel there are any that can't be surmounted. Plus I feel that it is my job as a designer/integrator to bridge the gap between the customer's need(s), technology and their online presence. 

Features that stand out

Instead, I often talk about how it strikes a great balance between simplicity of use and flexibility and powerful capabilities. Depending on the client's project, I mention advanced user management (ACL, access levels),  multi-lingual capabilities, better out of the box security and accessibility than many other even popular solutions. For others, I'll mention flexible content structures (powerful custom fields among others), and the fact that the built-in core does more out of the box than many other platforms thereby reducing the cost and need for 3rd party extensions for most sites and yet for others, simply that it can get the job done easily, reliably and perform well.

So for your next website project, try Joomla 5 and 🚀.