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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

    Meltwater

    Score7.6 out of 10
    N/AMeltwater Media Intelligence platform is a set of public relations software tools for media monitoring, social media monitoring, and collecting brand insights. The four areas of functionality are Monitor, Analyze, Distribute, and Engage. (Note that this product combines features from the vendor Meltwater's former Buzz, Press, and News products.)N/A
    Pricing
    DrupalMeltwater
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    DrupalMeltwater
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    DrupalMeltwater
    Considered Both Products
    Open Source
    No answer on this topic
    Meltwater
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    76%
    Would buy again
    13 Answers
    63%
    Would buy again
    20 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    88%
    Delivers good value for the price
    14 Answers
    62%
    Delivers good value for the price
    16 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    76%
    Happy with the feature set
    13 Answers
    69%
    Happy with the feature set
    22 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    92%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    12 Answers
    63%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    15 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    87%
    Implementation went as expected
    13 Answers
    81%
    Implementation went as expected
    22 Answers
    Features
    DrupalMeltwater
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Drupal and Meltwater
    Feature
    Drupal
    8.3
    74 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Meltwater
    -
    Ratings
    Role-based user permissions8.374 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Drupal and Meltwater
    Feature
    Drupal
    7.8
    69 Ratings
    0% below category average
    Meltwater
    -
    Ratings
    API7.364 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language8.260 Ratings00 Ratings
    Web Content Creation
    Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Drupal and Meltwater
    Feature
    Drupal
    6.5
    78 Ratings
    19% below category average
    Meltwater
    -
    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 Meltwater
    Feature
    Drupal
    6.6
    77 Ratings
    13% below category average
    Meltwater
    -
    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
    DrupalMeltwater
    Small Businesses
    Umbraco CMS
    Score7 out of 10
    Help a Reporter Out (HARO)
    Score5 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Square Online
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Cision Communications Cloud
    Score8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    RWS Tridion Sites
    Score9 out of 10
    Cision Communications Cloud
    Score8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    DrupalMeltwater
    Likelihood to Recommend
    6.8
    (87 ratings)
    7.2
    (73 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    1.0
    (19 ratings)
    10.0
    (10 ratings)
    Usability
    6.9
    (20 ratings)
    5.6
    (5 ratings)
    Availability
    9.7
    (3 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    8.9
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    1.0
    (5 ratings)
    10.0
    (29 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    6.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    5.1
    (4 ratings)
    6.1
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    1.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    DrupalMeltwater
    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
    Meltwater
    Meltwater is well-suited for agencies that have an engagement team who is looking to service a variety of client needs such as social media reporting, public relations outreach, and community management. If you're looking to have a platform serve just one need, you can still use Meltwater but will get more bang for your buck if you are needing a variety of tools.
    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
    Meltwater
    • Media research - you can search for relevant publications and journalists to add to your media list.
    • Earned media coverage - you can search for coverage of your brand and find news stories that also include data that may be useful (how many people did the story reach for example).
    • Building media lists - if you have no current existing list, you can build and export one in Excel for example.
    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
    Meltwater
    • The dashboards are not user-friendly, customizable (color, font size, etc.), or worthy of presenting to a client. All of the insights from a dashboard get pulled from the platform and placed into a more client-friendly presentation.
    • Paywalls for certain publications connected to who-knows-what. DowJones racket limits media monitoring capabilities and results in manual searches for a growing number of publications.
    • TVeyes, the broadcast monitoring arm of the media monitoring capabilities, just needs TLC and to become more client-facing. Currently, the links produced to share clips look sketchy, and they have a relatively short shelf life.
    Incentivized
    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
    Meltwater
    Meltwater works well for our organization and has allowed us to meet our internal goals. We are always open to new products and services that may be able to provide similar or better features; however, our experience has been that many of Meltwater's competitors are not up to the task.
    Incentivized
    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
    Meltwater
    Once you get some basic training it's pretty easy to use. I would like to see training manuals, or instructional videos to help me explore features I'm not currently using.
    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
    Meltwater
    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
    Meltwater
    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
    Read full review
    Meltwater
    Our account rep at Meltwater went dark for a long time. Then, a couple of weeks ago, our new account manager reached out to set up a meeting. Apparently, they had a big shakeup in the company, and there were some personnel changes. Our new account rep was great in discussing the platform's capabilities that were available to us and even offered to schedule a follow-up meeting with his technical team to introduce our new social media team members to the platform and how it could help them with their jobs.
    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
    Meltwater
    Again, really in-depth and helpful for a program that is really easy to use.
    Read full review
    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
    Meltwater
    Walked step by step through program. Very informative on a program that doesn't require much training.
    Read full review
    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
    Meltwater
    You are only allowed 15 users, so make sure you've identified who will have access to use the tool.
    Read full review
    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
    Meltwater
    I was looking for a full-service option. I did some research. What really sold me was the presentation. They offered products that were helpful, and I wasn’t even aware of them. It is more expensive than the other products that are out there, but you get more. The other companies are good, but Meltwater Media Intelligence is more full service.
    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
    Meltwater
    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
    Meltwater
    • As a PR firm, we rely on the media databases that [Meltwater Media Intelligence Platform] supplies to deliver the media exposure that they expect from us.
    • We utilize their tracking of media hits for our overall reporting to our clients.
    • Both of these are advantageous in helping us to not only keep our existing clients happy but also to gain new clients (and, in turn - revenue), as well.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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