Drupal vs. Optimizely Content Management System

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
Optimizely Content Management System
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) is used to deliver digital experiences across channels and devices with a marketer-friendly interface, AI-generated insights that drive real-time personalization, and flexible content delivery options—including headless delivery.N/A
Pricing
DrupalOptimizely Content Management System
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DrupalOptimizely Content Management System
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
DrupalOptimizely Content Management System
Considered Both Products
Drupal
Chose Drupal
When selected, Drupal was the tool that had enough power to create a robust intranet while not being too overly complicated. It allowed for custom integrations that were developed from IT, and it was able to handle the mass amount of users we needed, many of whom are not overly …
Optimizely Content Management System
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Good value for the cost.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Optimizely Content Management System provides a very scalable CMS out of the box vs other CMSs. I do like the opensource community of the other CMSs.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Optimizely CMS is part of a more composable suite when it comes to DXPs. With that, some other systems like Sitecore Experience Platform are monoliths, which makes the development and maintenance of those products fairly complex (this includes system architecture). In our …
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Optimizely Content Management System doesn't invent complexity. It just sticks to common patterns and recommendations from Microsoft. This makes it extremely easy to learn and onboard new developers, and it makes it easier to upgrade and maintain.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Optimizely CMS better handles large scale websites offering personalization and editing content in bulk out of the box but is not free/cheap.
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
Episerver outranks these products in most cases. There are some functions in each product that you would love in Episerver but when you sum it up Episerver is the greatest :)
Chose Optimizely Content Management System
EpiServer competes with both Drupal and WordPress, hands-down, in terms of both efficiency as well as usability. I would say EpiServer is actually a lot easier to use than Drupal was for me personally. EpiServer wasn't confusing like Drupal, and had an easier learning curve.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
DrupalOptimizely Content Management System
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Drupal
10.0
65 Ratings
22% above category average
Optimizely Content Management System
8.5
120 Ratings
6% above category average
Role-based user permissions10.065 Ratings8.5120 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Drupal
9.5
62 Ratings
21% above category average
Optimizely Content Management System
8.1
118 Ratings
5% above category average
API9.158 Ratings7.9113 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language10.053 Ratings8.287 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Drupal
9.4
68 Ratings
21% above category average
Optimizely Content Management System
7.6
136 Ratings
0% below category average
WYSIWYG editor9.161 Ratings7.7126 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness9.166 Ratings7.8115 Ratings
Admin section9.568 Ratings7.9124 Ratings
Page templates9.567 Ratings8.0124 Ratings
Library of website themes8.658 Ratings6.662 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design10.063 Ratings7.9119 Ratings
Publishing workflow9.167 Ratings8.1124 Ratings
Form generator10.063 Ratings6.989 Ratings
Web Content Management
Comparison of Web Content Management features of Product A and Product B
Drupal
9.5
67 Ratings
26% above category average
Optimizely Content Management System
7.6
127 Ratings
4% above category average
Content taxonomy10.063 Ratings8.1117 Ratings
SEO support10.062 Ratings7.6118 Ratings
Bulk management10.059 Ratings7.099 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions8.661 Ratings7.7101 Ratings
Community / comment management9.161 Ratings7.882 Ratings
Best Alternatives
DrupalOptimizely Content Management System
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
DrupalOptimizely Content Management System
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(77 ratings)
8.7
(161 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(18 ratings)
9.5
(30 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(9 ratings)
8.0
(30 ratings)
Availability
9.7
(3 ratings)
9.2
(4 ratings)
Performance
8.9
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
5.0
(4 ratings)
10.0
(6 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
6.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
5.1
(4 ratings)
6.4
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
DrupalOptimizely Content Management System
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
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Optimizely
Well suited to an organisation who wants a real presence and a superior customer experience when visiting your website. Very modern look and feel and is great for hosting videos and specialist graphics. It is hard to fault the product and it is up there amongst the best in the market
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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.
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Optimizely
  • A centralized UI to maintain multiple websites using a common entry point.
  • Page types and blocks that can be highly customized using .NET code, but at the same time allows checks and validations when being created by Marketing/Content Users.
  • A very good set of extra libraries/add-ons that allows to expand website functionality in a very short period of time (Content APIs, Personalization, A/B Testing, Social)
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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
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Optimizely
  • On the technical side, Spire is all built on React Redux, so there's a React framework and then Optimizely built their own framework on top of that React implementation, which is, I'd say customized and non-standard. So learning that as a developer is usually a four to five month learning curve. So that is a con where it's not a standard React redux implementation.
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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.
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Optimizely
Since I work on the implementation side of things, and do not directly own licensing for Ektron CMS, I have to base this rating off of how I think it will be received or presented to customers looking to start a new site deployment. I try to remain CMS agnostic, though my specialty is with the .NET and Microsoft stack. Because of the experience I have working with Ektron, I tend to be more forgiving with the shortcomings as I am familiar with how to work around them or past them from experience. Being familiar with the community available also helps, as you become familiar with the best approaches to find solutions to your issues. Each product has it's ups and downs and all of them are only going to be as good as the company or development team implementing them can make them. This is EXTREMELY important to remember when choosing a CMS, as it can make or break your expensive investment.
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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.
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Optimizely
The Opti CMS is pretty easy to use once you get used to it. Setting up the experience editor takes some time and difficult to follow and do in a group setting. We found working one on one or in smaller groups works better
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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).
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Optimizely
Unplanned outages or errors are fairly rare in our instance. And when there are issues, they're usually fixed fairly quickly
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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.
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Optimizely
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.
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Optimizely
I attended multiple trainings/tutorials early in the process. The vendor-supplied content about Optimizely was engaging for users/attendees (I often analyze training content, compliance programs, governance plans), which helps our OCM people by having good "word of mouth" about the product long before a rollout ever happens. I actually when the user-focused portion of the Optimizely Academy twice in 2022 to ensure I had a grasp on operability and to be able to support the training and OCM efforts
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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.
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Optimizely
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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Optimizely
Ektron is one of the best solution for .Net platform. Over the years have improved the performance issues that the previous versions had. My only complain is right now you can't do Page builder pages if you choose to have a MVC architecture
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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%
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Optimizely
I was not fully involved.
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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.
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Optimizely
Optimizely CMS is part of a more composable suite when it comes to DXPs. With that, some other systems like Sitecore Experience Platform are monoliths, which makes the development and maintenance of those products fairly complex (this includes system architecture). In our experience, Optimizely makes it simpler to implement solutions in a rapid manner and "tack on" additional products if needed as organizations grow and are able to leverage that functionality.
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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.
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Optimizely
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.
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Optimizely
  • The positive is on ROI as we can get more done without needing to go through 3rd party or know Code to create and add content.
  • Workflows could use improvement. I don't know that there are workflows that I'm aware of.
  • Make it easier to connect to 3rd party software like Hubspot, Magento, email services, etc.
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ScreenShots

Optimizely Content Management System Screenshots

Screenshot of Marketer-Friendly Interface: A low/no-code interface lets content editors manage their day-to-day.Screenshot of On-page & in-context editing: Content can be created and edited with a full view into how it appears, wherever it's published.Screenshot of Drag-and-drop layouts: Layouts and drag-and-drop functionality to test creative limits.Screenshot of Content TypesScreenshot of DashboardScreenshot of Templates