[Drupal 7] CKEditor vs. CKEditor 4 LTS vs. Editor vs. WYSIWYG

Note: This present documentation applies only to Drupal 7. In Drupal 8, none of this is necessary.

Overview

This guide is intended to help compare and contrast the four CKEditor integration modules available for Drupal 7:

• CKEditor - Enables comprehensive support for the CKEditor rich text editor.
• CKEditor 4 LTS (Long Term Support) - An official fork of the CKEditor module which allows for the use of a commercial version of CKEditor 4 that is supported past its end of life.
• Editor - A backport of the Drupal 8+ core Editor and CKEditor modules that includes a variety of features from the latest version of Drupal.
• WYSIWYG - Provides an abstraction layer which supports a variety of rich text editors.

CKEditor support

CKEditor support varies by project. The chart below outlines the current state of module vs. editor support:

Module	CKEditor 4	CKEditor 4 LTS	CKEditor 5
CKEditor
CKEditor 4 LTS
Editor
WYSIWYG

 CKEditor 4 has reached end of life and is no longer supported. The editor has known security vulnerabilities and should be avoided.

 CKEditor 4 LTS (Long Term Support) is supported but requires a commercial license key.

 CKEditor 5 is supported but is only available as a commercial product.

Library installation

CKEditor support modules either include the CKEditor library itself, allow site visitors to automatically download it from the CKEditor CDN or require the library to be downloaded from ckeditor.com and installed manually.

Multi-format and Multi-editor support

The CKEditor and CKEditor 4 LTS modules support CKEditor specifically while Editor and WYSIWYG are designed to support a variety of editors.

Editor	Configurable per text format	Supports multiple WYSIWYG editors
CKEditor
CKEditor 4 LTS
Editor
WYSIWYG

Setup and configuration

Read the README files for each module to make sure everything is set-up correctly.