Drupal vs. MadCap Flare

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Drupal
Score 7.0 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
MadCap Flare
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
MadCap Software, headquartered in La Jolla, offers MadCap Flare, a help authoring and technical writing tool featuring onboarding and support from MadCap, and a set of modules for designing advanced guides, aids, and web or application help aids.
$167
per month
Pricing
DrupalMadCap Flare
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
MadCap Central
$1,500
per year
MadCap Flare
$1,999
per year
MadCap AMS
$2,999
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DrupalMadCap Flare
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsIncludes a 12-month Platinum-level Maintenance Plan.
More Pricing Information
Features
DrupalMadCap Flare
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Drupal
3.3
66 Ratings
84% below category average
MadCap Flare
-
Ratings
Role-based user permissions3.366 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Drupal
8.0
63 Ratings
5% above category average
MadCap Flare
-
Ratings
API9.358 Ratings00 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language6.654 Ratings00 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Drupal
6.0
69 Ratings
25% below category average
MadCap Flare
-
Ratings
WYSIWYG editor2.362 Ratings00 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness9.366 Ratings00 Ratings
Admin section4.069 Ratings00 Ratings
Page templates4.968 Ratings00 Ratings
Library of website themes3.959 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design10.063 Ratings00 Ratings
Publishing workflow9.367 Ratings00 Ratings
Form generator4.164 Ratings00 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Drupal
5.7
68 Ratings
26% below category average
MadCap Flare
-
Ratings
Content taxonomy10.063 Ratings00 Ratings
SEO support2.463 Ratings00 Ratings
Bulk management10.059 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions3.162 Ratings00 Ratings
Community / comment management3.162 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
DrupalMadCap Flare
Small Businesses
Divi
Divi
Score 10.0 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
DrupalMadCap Flare
Likelihood to Recommend
3.2
(78 ratings)
8.2
(5 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(18 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
3.0
(10 ratings)
6.4
(2 ratings)
Availability
9.7
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.9
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
5.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 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
DrupalMadCap Flare
Likelihood to Recommend
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
Read full review
MadCap Software
MadCap Flare has its problems, but it serves our team well as an authoring software. This would not be the case if we needed to regularly collaborate on articles, as Flare is prone to conflict issues when another person dares to breathe near an open topic. When working individually, though, it's fine. I'd love to see improvements to design, performance, and stability, but Flare remains one of the best softwares on the market for our needs as an authoring team. MadCap Central is well-suited to internal reviewing when every member is comfortable with Flare (the errors it tends to introduce set aside). SMEs, though, tend to find it hard to use. It's cluttered, some styles don't render, and it just seems like a failed attempt to reproduce Google Docs. I'd love to see improvements there, to help get our SMEs to want to use Central.
Read full review
Pros
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.
Read full review
MadCap Software
  • Single-sourcing
  • Branching (GIT)
  • Publishing and hosting
Read full review
Cons
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
Read full review
MadCap Software
  • I use it on a mac with windows parallel and it can be so buggy and laggy.
  • I would love it if the software was entirely cloud-based, like Google Docs.
  • Reviewing in Central is not a good experience, need better review functionality.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
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.
Read full review
MadCap Software
No answers on this topic
Usability
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.
Read full review
MadCap Software
MadCap Flare is in desperate need of an overall redesign. It relies heavily on dozens and dozens of tiny buttons that contain dozens of nested features. Clicking the wrong button can cause your software to freeze and crash. Building targets can be an absolute mystery, as far as all the files involved. It also has a tendency to freeze and crash. There's typically a huge learning curve for new hires who've never used it--nothing is intuitive.
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Reliability and Availability
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).
Read full review
MadCap Software
No answers on this topic
Performance
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.
Read full review
MadCap Software
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
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.
Read full review
MadCap Software
No answers on this topic
In-Person Training
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.
Read full review
MadCap Software
No answers on this topic
Online Training
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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MadCap Software
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
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%
Read full review
MadCap Software
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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.
Read full review
MadCap Software
MadCap software does offer quite a few more technical features than Google Drive, but the user experience is far inferior. Google Drive is much less buggy to work with, and it's much more accessible. MadCap only being available on Windows operating systems makes it difficult to work with teammates who may not have such a device available.
Read full review
Scalability
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.
Read full review
MadCap Software
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
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
MadCap Software
  • We haven't measured this specifically
Read full review
ScreenShots

MadCap Flare Screenshots

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