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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Drupal

    Score7.1 out of 10
    N/ADrupal 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

    Higher Logic Thrive

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/AHigher Logic Thrive is a private community platform that empowers members, customers, support and product teams to create and manage meaningful, engaging online communities. The solution is designed to keep users coming back. They can find support, best practices, peer-to-peer connections, resources, events, and networking, all in one destination.N/A
    Pricing
    DrupalHigher Logic Thrive
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    DrupalHigher Logic Thrive
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeRequired
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    DrupalHigher Logic Thrive
    Considered Both Products
    Open Source
    No answer on this topic
    Higher Logic
    Chose Higher Logic Thrive
    Higher Logic had an integration with iMIS, which was the CRM of choice at the time. It also interfaced well with our server infrastructure and technology for single sign-on development. Overall, the features of Higher Logic were more comprehensive than those of its competitor, …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    76%
    Would buy again
    13 Answers
    80%
    Would buy again
    4 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    88%
    Delivers good value for the price
    14 Answers
    80%
    Delivers good value for the price
    4 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    76%
    Happy with the feature set
    13 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    5 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    92%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    12 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    87%
    Implementation went as expected
    13 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    DrupalHigher Logic Thrive
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Drupal and Higher Logic Thrive
    Feature
    Drupal
    8.3
    74 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Higher Logic Thrive
    -
    Ratings
    Role-based user permissions8.374 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Drupal and Higher Logic Thrive
    Feature
    Drupal
    7.8
    69 Ratings
    0% below category average
    Higher Logic Thrive
    -
    Ratings
    API7.364 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language8.260 Ratings00 Ratings
    Web Content Creation
    Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Drupal and Higher Logic Thrive
    Feature
    Drupal
    6.5
    78 Ratings
    19% below category average
    Higher Logic Thrive
    -
    Ratings
    WYSIWYG editor6.371 Ratings00 Ratings
    Code quality / cleanliness8.275 Ratings00 Ratings
    Admin section7.078 Ratings00 Ratings
    Page templates5.677 Ratings00 Ratings
    Library of website themes5.568 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile optimization / responsive design6.572 Ratings00 Ratings
    Publishing workflow6.776 Ratings00 Ratings
    Form generator6.672 Ratings00 Ratings
    Web Content Management
    Comparison of Web Content Management features of Drupal and Higher Logic Thrive
    Feature
    Drupal
    6.6
    77 Ratings
    13% below category average
    Higher Logic Thrive
    -
    Ratings
    Content taxonomy6.971 Ratings00 Ratings
    SEO support6.472 Ratings00 Ratings
    Bulk management6.467 Ratings00 Ratings
    Availability / breadth of extensions6.670 Ratings00 Ratings
    Community / comment management6.869 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    DrupalHigher Logic Thrive
    Small Businesses
    Umbraco CMS
    Score7 out of 10
    UUKI
    Score7.6 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Square Online
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Higher Logic Vanilla
    Score5.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    RWS Tridion Sites
    Score9 out of 10
    Verint Community
    Score10 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    DrupalHigher Logic Thrive
    Likelihood to Recommend
    6.8
    (87 ratings)
    9.0
    (18 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    1.0
    (19 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    6.9
    (20 ratings)
    6.0
    (3 ratings)
    Availability
    9.7
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    8.9
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    1.0
    (5 ratings)
    9.8
    (2 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    6.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    5.1
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    DrupalHigher Logic Thrive
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Open Source
    If you want to set up a basic Not For Profit (NFP) Membership system and content base, Word Press is easier than Drupal. However, if you have specific needs that require a fair bit of customisation then Drupal is the best CRM available. If the webmaster is confident with PHP and SQL, Drupal allows a lot of creativity.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Higher Logic
    Higher Logic works very well for our business purposes. We can very easily create new communities when we need to (and this is often!). Our association isn't as concerned with driving engagement, but the tools Higher Logic provides allows us to take a closer look at the engagement level of our committee members when needed
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Open Source
    • Drag and drop functionality is easy to use
    • Easy to switch between straight text and HTML content
    • Ability to easily have multiple environments so that pages can be built in b/c-stage before they are approved and published
    • Solid user experience where it's clear how to navigate the platform
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Higher Logic
    • Higher Logic product managers are probably some of the best in the industry. They know their products and aren't pushy in trying to sell them to you. Don't get me wrong, they do try to sell you a product, but they understand that not everyone who is tasked with learning more is also a decision maker. That doesn't stop them from being professional and thorough in their demonstrations or explanation of fees.
    • Their technical support is top notch. Not only do they work to resolve issues, they also work with you to help you with non-issues. Our initial redesign was done by an agency that worked with HL directly to set up the new site. When I was tasked with a mini-redesign this year, HL technical support offered me a lot of insight on how to best do this using just my skills and HL.
    • They offer training on their platforms to ensure your success as an administrator. There is no cost and you can either go to their onsite two days "boot camp" or you can access a plethora of training videos and webinars through their online users' community.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Open Source
    • This is not an easy CMS to work with if you don't have a good understanding of website development. It isn't "plug-and-play" like Wordpress or Shopify.
    • Over time, doing major updates to the system can be taxing, especially if you aren't well-versed enough in doing system updates in line with your "child" theme and code.
    • The CMS can become somewhat cumbersome with server resources if not carefully optimized while you build and customize it to your liking.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Higher Logic
    • Reporting is copious but you cannot build your own reports so you may have lots of information in several different reports and have to pick and choose across several to combine manually. Exporting functionality is there but there are some reports that are only a screen shot and you cannot export them.
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Open Source
    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.
    Read full review
    Higher Logic
    They are a great company that offer great products - primarily their community. As they continue to grow and expand their offerings, I believe they will increase the number of products that offer and in turn grow their client base. We use their community, activity synch, and volunteer manager currently.
    Read full review
    Usability
    Open Source
    As a team, we found Drupal to be highly customizable and flexible, allowing our development team to go to great lengths to develop desired functionalities. It can be used as a solution for all types of web projects. It comes with a robust admin interface that provides greater flexibility once the user gets acquainted with the system.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Higher Logic
    The software is not that simple to use when you have to get volunteers involved in the content assembly process. The content management system that is native to Higher Logic could improve to make the task of training volunteers far easier. Given its simplicity, it is hard for the system to rival more developed websites that use advanced CMS software.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Open Source
    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).
    Read full review
    Higher Logic
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Open Source
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Higher Logic
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Open Source
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Higher Logic
    Higher Logic's support is sub-par at best. It can be difficult to get in contact with anyone from the support team, and when you do, it seems as if they don't want to talk to you and don't even have the answers to your questions. Within the past few months, we've contacted them twice and both times have been very disappointing. The first time was to let them know there was an inconsistency between the analytics report and the heat map. They basically said that they already knew about the problem but didn't have any set plans to fix it because they were working on other "more important" things. The second time was for a conference call to go over some additional features that we wanted to implement. And the lady we spoke with seemed very disgusted to have to speak with us and then rushed us off the phone because she had another call.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Open Source
    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.
    Read full review
    Higher Logic
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Open Source
    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.
    Read full review
    Higher Logic
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Open Source
    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%
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Higher Logic
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Open Source
    Drupal can be more complex to learn, but it offers a much wider range of applications. Drupal’s front and backend can be customized from design to functionality to allow for a wide range of uses. If someone wants to create something more complex than a simple site or blog, Drupal can be an amazing asset to have at hand.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Higher Logic
    We are just in the early stages of looking into HubSpot Service Hub to determine if it will be a viable replacement for Higher Logic Community. We have other uses for the ServiceHub so there is an appeal to have it be a "one stop shop" for us. The big question however is how it will stack up to Higher Logic for the online communities. Candidly, while Higher Logic may be tough to beat in this area, it is something we will be looking closely at in the next 12 months.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Open Source
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Higher Logic
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Open Source
    • Given the endless possibilities that Drupal can have, we tend to have great support going on when we get a website launched
    • It has become much much faster and easier for us to launch a new project due to reusability
    • Configuration management in Drupal helps greatly with CI/CD, saves us costs
    Read full review
    Higher Logic
    • Understanding preferences-- Higher Logic helps us tap in to how our members want to hear from us.
    • Data collection-- Since we started using Higher Logic the amount of data we get from our members has increased greatly.
    • Consolidation of tools-- Higher Logic replaced 2 or 3 additional SAAS options being utilized by us. This helped save money!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Higher Logic Thrive Screenshots

    Screenshot of Higher Logic Thrive Community logged in view
Bring members together 24/7. Discussions, Q&A, events, and engagement tools like automation and a mobile app – Higher Logic Thrive Community provides everything you need to bring members back from wherever they are.Screenshot of Higher Logic Thrive Community logged out view
Your value proposition shines on the logged out view of Higher Logic Thrive Community. Use this valuable space to remind members and prospects about the important work your association does.Screenshot of Target groups
Tailor every email or automated campaign with dynamic content, segmentation, and personalization. Integrations with your AMS or online community make adding contacts and creating compound distribution lists a breeze.Screenshot of Message designer
Save time with pre-built email templates and automated campaigns based on nearly two decades of association experience.Screenshot of Reports
Refine your programs with data. Gain insight from email interactions and web tracking so you can refine your offerings and prove ROI.Screenshot of Engagement scoring
See how engaged your members are so you can be sure you are providing value.