Overview
What is Drupal?
Drupal is a free, open-source content management system written in PHP that competes primarily with Joomla and Plone. The standard release of Drupal, known as Drupal core, contains basic features such as account and menu management, RSS feeds, page layout…
Drupal! You beauty!
- To develop content oriented and transaction oriented sites
- Non technical users can easily build sites using Drupal
- Drupal 8 and above have …
Drupal, a hidden gem in the sea of the content management systems out there, a framework of it's own that goes beyond a common CMS
An open source CMS with excellent tools!
Drupal is a great open source CMS
Drupal for enterprise-level website in azure/devops context
It is used by both marketing and IT department :
The …
Capable Contextual CMS
A solid open-source CMS with solid security and extensibility
- Our own website runs on Drupal
- We implement clients' websites, and depending on the scope and …
Really powerful tool to build websites with great themes and templates
Need a Content Collaboration Website at Low Cost. Try Drupal!
Drupal is Powerful at Scale
An all-powerful CMS with a steep learning curve
Drupal, the CMS for large, data-rich websites
Customizable, scalable and professional content manager.
Trusted large scale content management system
Drupal has many advantages for small and large businesses
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Popular Features
- Page templates (67)9.595%
- Admin section (68)9.595%
- Code quality / cleanliness (66)9.191%
- Publishing workflow (67)9.191%
Pricing
What is Drupal?
Drupal is a free, open-source content management system written in PHP that competes primarily with Joomla and Plone. The standard release of Drupal, known as Drupal core, contains basic features such as account and menu management, RSS feeds, page layout customization, and system administration.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Alternatives Pricing
What is Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)?
Adobe Business Catalyst was a cloud-hosted system for building and managing web content and online stores with a built-in CRM framework in addition to sales, service, and marketing features including eCommerce and Email Marketing tools. It has been end of life (EOL) since 2020.
What is UENI?
Small business owners don’t have much time to build their online presence, don’t have much money to spend on digital advertising, and don’t want to navigate the complexity of what it means to be online today. So UENI presents a solution built specifically for them. Unlike DIY website builders or…
Product Demos
Drupal Glazed Theme Tutorial 1: Basic Drag and Drop Controls
Drupal Demo
Drupal Paragraph Blocks Demo
JSON:API demo
Drupal Link Intelligence Getting Started Demo
Drupal Content Optimizer SEO Module Demo Video
Features
Security
This component helps a company minimize the security risks by controlling access to the software and its data, and encouraging best practices among users.
- 10Role-based user permissions(65) Ratings
Permissions to perform actions or access or modify data are assigned to roles, which are then assigned to users, reducing complexity of administration.
Platform & Infrastructure
Features related to platform-wide settings and structure, such as permissions, languages, integrations, customizations, etc.
- 9.1API(58) Ratings
An API (application programming interface) provides a standard programming interface for connecting third-party systems to the software for data creation, access, updating and/or deletion.
- 10Internationalization / multi-language(53) Ratings
The software supports multiple languages, countries, currencies, etc.
Web Content Creation
Features that support the creation of website content.
- 9.1WYSIWYG editor(61) Ratings
What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get editing tool allows users to build pages without writing code.
- 9.1Code quality / cleanliness(66) Ratings
Code generated by WYSIWYG editor is clean and validates according to W3C standards.
- 9.5Admin section(68) Ratings
The admin page is easy to navigate and use.
- 9.5Page templates(67) Ratings
The CMS has standard webpage templates or types of web pages (e.g. homepage, article page, interior page, blog page, etc.); users can also build custom templates.
- 8.7Library of website themes(58) Ratings
A library of website frameworks or themes is available as a starting point for building a website.
- 10Mobile optimization / responsive design(63) Ratings
The CMS helps users build webpages that work well on mobile devices – whether m-dot pages or responsively designed pages.
- 9.1Publishing workflow(67) Ratings
The software allows users to set up a custom workflow for updating the website, including approval processes.
- 10Form generator(63) Ratings
Users can build website forms for visitors to fill out.
Web Content Management
Features for managing website content
- 10Content taxonomy(63) Ratings
Users can create multiple levels and types of content categories including tags.
- 10SEO support(62) Ratings
The CMS helps users create the right website infrastructure (pagination, page headers, titles, meta tags, url structure, etc.) to increase the site’s visibility in search engine results.
- 10Bulk management(59) Ratings
Users can change an attribute on a group of documents or sites all at once through features such as global search and replace, making bulk changes easier.
- 8.7Availability / breadth of extensions(61) Ratings
There is a broad library of extensions, plug-ins, modules or add-ons that allow users to easily customize their websites without building custom code.
- 9.1Community / comment management(61) Ratings
Users can put post/page comments through an approval process, auto-approve commenters based on their email addresses, block commenters by IP address, delete comments, etc.
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Drupal?
Drupal is a free and open source content management system written in PHP that competes primarily with Joomla and Plone. The standard release of Drupal, known as Drupal core, contains basic features common to content management systems. These include a dashboard with a menu management system, RSS feeds, page layout customization and themes to aid this, and system administration tools. Drupal offers access statistics, more advanced search features, caching and feature throttling (to improve performance if needed), descriptive URLs, multiple users with controllable privileges, access control and restrictions, and workflow tools (triggers). There are over 30,000 addons or modules to expand Drupal's functionality.
Drupal Video
Drupal Integrations
Drupal Competitors
- Joomla!
- Kentico Xperience
- Plone
- Magnolia (V5 and later versions)
Drupal Technical Details
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
---|---|
Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(378)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
Drupal has been widely used in a variety of industries and situations, proving itself as a robust and extensible platform that can fulfill specific needs. For example, Ericsson is leveraging Drupal to develop an internal application for accessing company policies and documents, including a news and events section. This showcases Drupal's capability to serve as an efficient tool for knowledge management within organizations. Similarly, Commercial Progression takes advantage of Drupal's integration capabilities with CRM and ERP systems to develop websites for various industries, demonstrating its flexibility in meeting diverse business requirements.
Another key use case for Drupal is creating uniform intranet sites across different operating units, enabling organizations to convey their identity and provide basic information consistently. This allows companies to maintain a cohesive brand image while providing essential resources to their employees. Additionally, non-technical staff can easily create and manage content using Drupal, addressing marketing web presence needs efficiently without extensive coding knowledge. This user-friendly aspect of Drupal makes it accessible to a wide range of users within an organization.
Furthermore, Drupal proves invaluable in the realm of website development, offering a quick and flexible solution for building test sites or serving as a content management system for clients who require rapid website development with built-in control. Its ability to handle large volumes of content makes it suitable for managing customer service articles, translation services, and industry-standard features like views and revisioning. The platform is also chosen by developers specializing in Drupal due to its ease of use in quickly getting sites up and running for clients.
In the educational sector, the University of Edinburgh's Web Interfaces team has utilized Drupal to develop bespoke web solutions with a focus on security and scalability. This use case highlights Drupal's suitability for academic institutions seeking reliable and customizable solutions for their web development needs. Moreover, Drupal has proven its worth in the online education space, with approximately 95% of websites designed to market and recruit online degree programs being built with this platform.
Overall, Drupal offers a versatile range of use cases, from powering corporate intranets to supporting website development across various industries. Its capacity for customization and its ability to handle diverse content needs make it a compelling choice for organizations of all sizes.
Extensibility and Customization: Users highly appreciate the extensibility and customization options provided by Drupal's wide range of contributed modules. Many reviewers have stated that this flexibility allows them to tailor the software to their specific needs, enhancing the overall value of the platform.
Cost-effectiveness: The open-source nature of Drupal is seen as a major advantage by users, with many stating that it eliminates ongoing licensing costs. Reviewers mention that this cost-effectiveness makes Drupal an attractive option for those on a tight budget.
Strong Community Support: Users highly value the fantastic open-source community surrounding Drupal. Several reviewers have mentioned that they appreciate the community's readiness to help and provide solutions to any problems encountered. This support system is seen as invaluable, ensuring users have necessary assistance and resources to overcome challenges while using the software.
Intuitive User Interface: Some users have mentioned that the user interface of Drupal is not intuitive and requires technical expertise to use effectively. They feel that the platform lacks a WYSIWYG text editor, making it necessary to have a basic understanding of HTML and CSS style sheets to customize the site.
Complicated Development Process: Several users have found the development process in Drupal to be complicated and difficult to learn, even for experienced developers. They express that development is hard to learn and complicated, which can be challenging for those with prior experience in web development.
Time-Consuming Maintenance: Users have expressed that maintaining Drupal websites can be time-consuming due to frequent updates and patches that need to be installed. The continuous need for maintenance can become burdensome as it requires allocating additional time towards keeping the website up-to-date.
Security Concerns with Plugins: Some users have raised concerns about the security of Drupal websites, attributing it to the large number of plugins available from numerous developers. They find it harder to ensure site security due to this vast variety of plugins, often requiring careful vetting and monitoring.
Resource-Intensive Infrastructure Requirement: Users mention that compared to other content management systems (CMSs), Drupal requires a more powerful infrastructure. This makes it more resource-intensive in terms of hardware requirements, potentially increasing costs for hosting and server resources.
Steep Learning Curve with Drupal 8: The learning curve associated with Drupal has been highlighted by users as a challenge, particularly concerning its eighth version. They perceive Drupal 8 as significantly different from previous versions, complicating the learning process further.
Confusing Back-end User Interface: Some users find the back-end user interface of Drupal confusing and clunky. They express difficulties navigating through menus or locating specific settings within the interface, leading them to consider it less user-friendly than desired.
Configuration Changes Hidden in Menus: Users mention encountering certain configuration changes hidden within menus where they may not expect them. This can make it challenging for users to locate and modify specific settings, potentially causing frustration or inefficiencies.
Time-Consuming Setup and Configuration: The process of setting up and configuring Drupal has been mentioned as time-consuming by users. They express that it requires technical skills and knowledge, making the initial setup a potential pain point. Additionally, some changes may require IT assistance and might not be applied immediately.
Limited Ease of Use: While Drupal is generally considered relatively easy to use, some users note that it still requires development skills. They advise that installation and upgrading processes should be handled by someone with technical expertise to avoid potential troubles during these procedures.
Users have made several recommendations based on their experiences with Drupal. Here are the three most common recommendations:
- Start with a theme if you don't have much time to learn the system.
- Avoid using too many plugins and have someone on-site for day-to-day maintenance.
- Consider other options for CRM or shopping cart functionality.
Overall, users believe Drupal is a robust CMS platform but recommend starting with a theme for quicker setup, limiting plugin usage, and considering alternative options for CRM and shopping cart functionality. These recommendations aim to optimize the user experience and ensure efficient management of websites built on Drupal.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-4 of 4)Great tool if set up properly
- Easy to manage users, access, etc.
- Simple to use (for regular users)
- Fast platform if set properly
- Development for it takes time
- Initial setup can be pain
- Editing sometimes may not be applied immediately and requires IT assistance
- WYSIWYG editor
- 100%10.0
- Code quality / cleanliness
- 90%9.0
- Admin section
- 60%6.0
- Page templates
- 100%10.0
- Library of website themes
- 100%10.0
- Mobile optimization / responsive design
- 70%7.0
- Publishing workflow
- N/AN/A
- Form generator
- 60%6.0
- Content taxonomy
- 100%10.0
- SEO support
- 100%10.0
- Bulk management
- 100%10.0
- Availability / breadth of extensions
- 100%10.0
- Community / comment management
- 100%10.0
- Internationalization / multi-language
- 80%8.0
- Role-based user permissions
- 100%10.0
- Over our previous CMS, Drupal is like 10 steps up. Users are able to set content easily, mobile responsiveness is great, the whole backend is simple for everyday user
- Developer spent good portion of its time to set up appropriately in order to run smoothly
- It has achieved what we wanted, produced good quality website that is used as our marketing tool
- Main marketing tool
- Allow end user to change information in a timely manner
- Roles and permissions
- SEO
- Social media implementation
- Performance tunning
- Connect with our EMS
- Implement with Blackboard
- Connect with sharepoint
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Prior Experience with the Product
- Implemented in-house
Install Apache with PHP
Install additional apache modules for better performance
Install WordPress
- Plugin setup, not all plugins worked in the beginning
- Cashing issues (sometimes would not publish content until cache was refreshed)
- Users setup
- Content publishing
- User permissions
- LDAP authentication
- Setting up apache cache modules
Solid and Advanced Content Management with Drupal
- Enabled rapid feature development due to a mature community offering free extension modules. The scope of plugins is well balanced for focused purpose without bloat.
- Carefully configured permission/role structure allows people to manage content and publish live, keeping marketing fast paced.
- A suite of solutions allows deployment of code and configuration safely.
- Advanced staff is able to make changes via UI that might require developers in other systems.
- The platform is written in PHP, which is a ubiquitous/commodity service for web servers administrators and hosting providers.
- Native features like taxonomy vocabularies, content types, field structures, and permissions architecture are very mature.
- Admin user interfaces for installed modules are created by a wide-array of open-source developers. These can therefor be less cohesive than if they were all developed together.
- The Drupal platform allows live editing and configuration, so in order to be performant several layers of caching are required. These exist within Drupal but take time/expertise to setup properly.
- Drupal is free, extensions are free, even community help/bug fixing is free as long as your positive and constructive. The Drupal development/theming community is large so hiring is also not a challenge.
- Content involved employees can enjoy self-driven control, team authoring, and easy content management. Provided your system is configured well.
- Drupal has provided an easy framework for systems integration for numerous services around lead conversation optimization, acquisition, and analysis.
- Marketing content publishing platform
- Lead acquisition through web forms.
- Event and webinar registration, trial downloads.
- Training video platform.
- Single sign on integration.
- Custom webforms.
- Data source for external analysis tools.
- Support, knowledge base system.
- User profile management.
- Sales contact/opportunity management.
Drupal: Climb the Learning Cliff - It's Worth It
- Excellent content management system, with a lot of room for customizing, especially due to the wealth of contributed modules. Extensibility is also enhanced by a very good API for creating your own modules
- Completely open-source, so you're only paying for the time needed to develop and maintain your site. No ongoing costs for licenses, etc.
- Fantastic open-source community, with experts all over the world sharing their knowledge. If you have a problem, someone out there can help you with it.
- Security. Another advantage of the strong community is ongoing maintenance and improvements of the software, so it's easy to keep your system up-to-date and secure.
- VERY steep learning curve for both developers and designers, half jokingly referred to as a learning cliff. If you're going to build something, you need to do a lot of planning and research to ensure that you're following best practices.
- Difficult to set up a system making it easy for non-technical end users to enter complexly styled content. If the content managers are responsible for layout of individual pieces of content, there is an additional steep learning curve. Alternatively, a reasonable amount of training is required to ensure that content managers know how to use the system.
- Written documentation for many modules, including some of the most commonly used ones, is often piss-poor or completely lacking. Some UI aspects can seem completely arcane as a result, adding to the difficulties of learning how to use the system.
Although it is highly extensible and has been labelled by some as a framework, Drupal is still, at its heart a CMS, and as such, falls short in situations where complex business logic needs to be implemented whenever content is created or modified. It is usable in those situations, but you're better off using a true framework in those cases.
If you're dealing with very non-technical people who may need to have extensive control over layout without a steep learning curve, Drupal may be overkill.
- WYSIWYG editor
- 70%7.0
- Code quality / cleanliness
- 80%8.0
- Admin section
- 90%9.0
- Page templates
- 80%8.0
- Library of website themes
- N/AN/A
- Mobile optimization / responsive design
- 90%9.0
- Publishing workflow
- 50%5.0
- Form generator
- 100%10.0
- Content taxonomy
- 90%9.0
- SEO support
- 80%8.0
- Bulk management
- 50%5.0
- Availability / breadth of extensions
- 100%10.0
- Community / comment management
- 90%9.0
- API
- 90%9.0
- Internationalization / multi-language
- 70%7.0
- Role-based user permissions
- 100%10.0
- Quick ramp-up of multiple sites based on a common core, improving efficiency in management of these sites
- Extensibility/Customizability improved user interface of internal intranet, as another enhancer of employee efficiency for disseminating information across the organization.
- Saved money on licensing fees and need for outside maintenance, as we were able to move all development and maintenance in-house.
- Similarly, because Drupal allowed moving development and maintenance in-house, we saved turn-around time on updates, changes, and enhancements.
- WordPress,Symfony,Laravel,PHP
Symfony, Laravel, and other frameworks are better if you need to implement a lot of complex business logic every time someone enters or alters content. The advantages of having Drupal's wealth of contributed modules at your disposal will likely be outweighed by the difficulties associated with shoehorning Drupal's defined content structures into such a custom workflow.
If you're looking for an incredibly extensible system for a few or many users to enter well-defined pieces of content for dissemination, or a basic eCommerce site, Drupal is certainly fit the bill.
Raw PHP is only appropriate these days for very simple projects. If you're building anything complex, use some sort of system; it will ease maintenance, portability and sanity for your future developers.
- Dissemination of critical information company-wide, such as contact information for employees, benefits providers, upcoming events, and other such news items.
- Sharing and review of information among group members.
- Interface for other, external systems from a common jump-off point.
- Community word game site, where people post responses to a prompt and then vote on their favorites. (Not in my current job)
- Small scale eCommerce, selling books and other tangible goods, or subscriptions to access digital content. (Not in my current job)
- Collection and tracking of donations for a school fund-raising site. (Not in my current job)
- Replace existing WordPress brochure site.
- Replace an existing WordPress site used by our clients (job-seekers) to create resumes, access job-training materials, and search for positions.
- Update and enhance our intranet to provide valuable information to our employees
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Prior Experience with the Product
- Implemented in-house
- Tracking configuration changes made through the UI and stored in the database during development, so that they could be duplicated in production.
- For all changes, not just initial implementation, making sure that nontechnical stakeholders are aware of how the system will work for them and how best to use it.
- General knowledge of any new modules being used, so that developers are using the right ones in the right way.
- Self-taught
I started with some books (I recall one being from O'Reilly), and online documentation.
Drupal is a very difficult system to learn, no two bones about it. I don't know of any dedicated training centers/courses, although there are purveyors of video tutorials, which have a good reputations.
It is very helpful to be involved with the community to ease the learning curve.
- Extending content types with contributed modules to store and retrieve specific type of data, such as addresses, emails, product information, or other custom details.
- Displaying collections of data. The Views module is a tour de force not present in any other system to my knowledge. While not necessarily easy to learn at first, its power and elegance quickly make it indispensable for building a good site.
- Making modifications on-the-fly. Additions of new functionality and even updates to the core system can often be done with little to no downtime. need to add a new content type and a page displaying a list based on those entries? No problem! The work needed to do this can be done on a live system with no interruptions to active users.
- Setting up an easy-to-use interface for non-tech types can be a challenge. Basic content entry, while done with straightforward web forms, can be a bit daunting if editors are responsible for full layout control.
- Initial learning curve. If you're building your first site, this is going to be rough. The "Drupal way" is not always the most obvious to newcomers, and it's easy to go down wrong paths in effort to get something to work without understanding how the system works.
- Migrating changes and additions through a typical development->staging->production flow can be difficult. Because everything is in the database, both content and configuration, it takes some forethought, and/or a dedicated hosting provider, such as Acquia or Pantheon, to deal with content changes, if there's an expectation that everything go through this typical process.
- Canvas Learning Management System - using a RESTful API
- Proprietary MSSQL/ASP.Net database application - using PHP's built-in SOAP client
- External PayPal payment system - custom code based on PayPal's API
- Authorize.net and Stripe payment gateways - contributed Drupal modules
- I don't have any planned integrations with outside systems at this time
- File import/export
- Single Signon
- API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
- Javascript widgets
Our current implementation uses an LDAP Single Signon system, but I didn't implement it.
I've uses both REST & SOAP based communication with external systems with great success.
Some Javascript widgets are available with contributed wrapper modules. Others will require custom implementations.
Some Javascript integrations can be difficult to manage based on the way that Drupal handles Javascript. (Like the old Camel commercials said, "Experience is the best teacher.")
If you're doing complex Javascript integrations, read a lot of the available online documentation, and be prepared to make mistakes and learn from them.
- Enhanced stability
- Security updates
- Additional functionality added
- Keeping up with latest coding standards
- Easier maintenance mechanisms
- Additional extensions to functionality
Future of Drupal
- High-Performance, Scalability and Reliability
- Huge OpenSource Community
- A great tool for Developers, Site-Builders and Content Managers
- Use of Object-oriented programming practices (fixed in Drupal 8)
- Improve front-end with clean markup and mobile friendly (fixed in Drupal 8)
- Easy Multilingual support (fixed in Drupal 8)
- Improve UX and content editing (fixed in Drupal 8)
- Easy configuration deploy from development to live (fixed in Drupal 8)
- Migration tool for older Drupal versions and other content management systems (fixed in Drupal 8)
- Drupal offers free knowledge and training of best programming practices in most actual technologies.
- Drupal has hundreds of thousands developers around the world working in security issues and improvements for free, because it's OpenSource.
- You can find free support about Drupal in different ways, like drupal.org, IRC, stackoverflow.com even in social networks like Twitter.
- Content Management
- Content Search
- Knowledge database
- Content migration
- Centralized users
- Third-party systems integration
- Migrate old platforms
- Product Features
- Product Reputation
- Implemented in-house
- Deployment
- Performance
- Third-party systems integration
- Site building
- Content management
- Extend drupal features using contrib modules
- Back-end development
- Multilingual support (fixed in Drupal 8)