dotCMS vs. Drupal

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
dotCMS
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
dotCMS is a Java open-source content management system for companies that demand performance in web operations and content management. With dotCMS, companies can create value and deliver dynamic user experiences across multiple channels. The solution is built on open standards: JSON, XML, REST, Spring, OSGI and CMIS. The vendor says it is extensible and massively scalable, and can help companies rapidly deliver personalized, engaging content across devices, channels, second screens…
$0
Drupal
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
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.N/A
Pricing
dotCMSDrupal
Editions & Modules
Community
$0
Standard
$0
Professional
$0
Prime
$0
Standard
$0
Professional
$0
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
dotCMSDrupal
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing is per server. One server equals one JVM. There is no limit on users, seats, or web sites.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
dotCMSDrupal
Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Features
dotCMSDrupal
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
dotCMS
-
Ratings
Drupal
10.0
65 Ratings
22% above category average
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings10.065 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
dotCMS
-
Ratings
Drupal
9.5
62 Ratings
21% above category average
API00 Ratings9.158 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language00 Ratings10.053 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
dotCMS
-
Ratings
Drupal
9.4
68 Ratings
21% above category average
WYSIWYG editor00 Ratings9.161 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness00 Ratings9.166 Ratings
Admin section00 Ratings9.568 Ratings
Page templates00 Ratings9.567 Ratings
Library of website themes00 Ratings8.658 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design00 Ratings10.063 Ratings
Publishing workflow00 Ratings9.167 Ratings
Form generator00 Ratings10.063 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
dotCMS
-
Ratings
Drupal
9.5
67 Ratings
26% above category average
Content taxonomy00 Ratings10.063 Ratings
SEO support00 Ratings10.062 Ratings
Bulk management00 Ratings10.059 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions00 Ratings8.661 Ratings
Community / comment management00 Ratings9.161 Ratings
Best Alternatives
dotCMSDrupal
Small Businesses
Divi
Divi
Score 9.8 out of 10
Divi
Divi
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
dotCMSDrupal
Likelihood to Recommend
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(77 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(18 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(9 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.7
(3 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
5.0
(4 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
6.0
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
5.1
(4 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
dotCMSDrupal
Likelihood to Recommend
dotCMS
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
Well, I'm definitely biased, I've been working with Drupal for 12+ years, and I can say it's appropriate for any size/scale of a project, whether it's a small catalog website or a huge corporation. If I want to dial it down to a specific use case, Drupal is best what most customers/clients that have high-security standards, and need to have extensive editorial experience and control over their website's architecture. Due to its core design, Drupal can connect with each part of its own and any external third-party resources quite easily. For a less-suited scenario, I might say that if you don't have enough budget to get proper work done, sometimes just using WordPress with a pre-designed theme might sound better to you, but if you have the budget and the time, always go with Drupal
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Pros
dotCMS
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
  • Content Types... these are amazing. Whereas a more simplistic CMS like Wordpress will basically allow you to make posts and build pages, Drupal 8 gives you the ability to define different types of content that behave differently, and are served up differently in different areas of the website.
  • Extensibility... it scales, ohhhh does it scale. They've really figured out server-side caching, and it makes all the difference. Once a page has been cached, it's available instantly to all users worldwide; and when coupled with AWS, global redundancy and localization mean that no matter where you're accessing the site, it always loads fast and crisp.
  • Workflows... you have the ability to define very specific roles and/or user-based editorial workflows, allowing for as many touchpoints and reviews between content creation and publication as you'll require.
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Cons
dotCMS
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
  • Security and new release notifications are a hassle as they happen too often
  • Allowing them to write PHP modules is a big advantage, but sometimes integrating them is a small challenge due to the version the developer is working on.
  • Steep learning curve, but worth it
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Likelihood to Renew
dotCMS
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
The time and money invested into this platform were too great to discontinue it at this point. I'm sure it will be in use for a while. We have also spent time training many employees how to use it. All of these things add up to quite an investment in the product. Lastly, it basically fulfills what we need our intranet site to do.
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Usability
dotCMS
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
It's a great CMS platform and there are a ton of plugins to add some serious functionality, but the security updates are too complex to implement and considering the complexity of the platform, security updates are a must. I don't want my site breached because they make it too difficult to keep it up to date.
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Reliability and Availability
dotCMS
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
Drupal itself does not tend to have bugs that cause sporadic outages. When deployed on a well-configured LAMP stack, deployment and maintenance problems are minimal, and in general no exotic tuning or configuration is required. For highest uptime, putting a caching proxy like Varnish in front of Drupal (or a CDN that supports dynamic applications).
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Performance
dotCMS
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
Drupal page loads can be slow, as a great many database calls may be required to generate a page. It is highly recommended to use caching systems, both built-in and external to lessen such database loads and improve performance. I haven't had any problems with behind-the-scenes integrations with external systems.
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Support Rating
dotCMS
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
As noted earlier, the support of the community can be rather variable, with some modules attracting more attraction and action in their issue queues, but overall, the development community for Drupal is second to none. It probably the single greatest aspect of being involved in this open-source project.
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In-Person Training
dotCMS
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
I was part of the team that conducted the training. Our training was fine, but we could have been better informed on Drupal before we started providing it. If we did not have answers to tough questions, we had more technical staff we could consult with. We did provide hands-on practice time for the learners, which I would always recommend. That is where the best learning occurred.
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Online Training
dotCMS
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
The on-line training was not as ideal as the face-to-face training. It was done remotely and only allowed for the trainers to present information to the learners and demonstrate the platform online. There was not a good way to allow for the learners to practice, ask questions and have them answered all in the same session.
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Implementation Rating
dotCMS
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
Plan ahead as much you can. You really need to know how to build what you want with the modules available to you, or that you might need to code yourself, in order to make the best use of Drupal. I recommend you analyze the most technically difficult workflows and other aspects of your implementation, and try building some test versions of those first. Get feedback from stakeholders early and often, because you can easily find yourself in a situation where your implementation does 90% of what you want, but, due to something you didn't plan for, foresee, or know about, there's no feasible way to get past the last 10%
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Alternatives Considered
dotCMS
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
Drupal is community-backed making it more accessible and growing at a faster rate than Sitefinity which is a proprietary product built on .NET. Drupal is PHP-based using some but not all Symphony codebase. Updates for Drupal are frequent and so are feature adds.
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Scalability
dotCMS
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
Drupal is well known to be scalable, although it requires solid knowledge of MySQL best practices, caching mechanisms, and other server-level best practices. I have never personally dealt with an especially large site, so I can speak well to the issues associated with Drupal scaling.
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Return on Investment
dotCMS
No answers on this topic
Drupal.org
  • Drupal has allowed us to build up a library of code and base sites we can reuse to save time which has increased our efficiency and thus had a positive financial impact.
  • Drupal has allowed us to take on projects we otherwise would not have been able to, having a further impact.
  • Drupal has allowed us to build great solutions for our clients which give them an excellent ROI.
Read full review
ScreenShots

dotCMS Screenshots

Screenshot of Custom WorkflowsScreenshot of HTML5 and CSS3 templating with full support for responsive design.Screenshot of Auto clustering servers allows customers to quickly scale environments.Screenshot of Mobile development framework with full support for responsive design.