Drupal vs. Kentico Xperience

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
Kentico Xperience
Score 7.2 out of 10
N/A
Kentico is a web content management system for building websites, online stores, intranets, and Web 2.0 community sites. Kentico CMS uses ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server for development via its Portal Engine, using Visual Studio, or through Microsoft MVC.
$9,999
Subscription license
Pricing
DrupalKentico Xperience
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Kentico Xperience Business
$9,999 / year
Subscription license
Kentico Xperience Business
$14,999
Perpetual license
Kentico Xperience Enterprise
$17,999 / year
Subscription license
Kentico Xperience Enterprise
$29,999
Perpetual license
Kentico Xperience Corporate
Upon request
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DrupalKentico Xperience
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
DrupalKentico Xperience
Considered Both Products
Drupal

No answer on this topic

Kentico Xperience
Chose Kentico Xperience
Out of these CMS systems I've worked in, Kentico is still hands down the easiest to build and manage.

Ingeniux was a failed project, it was too cumbersome to work in (MVC based), it was a nightmare to do any custom dev work in it, couldn't debug, and their own staff couldn't get …
Chose Kentico Xperience
When discussing Kentico with clients, I find myself uttering the same phrase repeatedly. "Kentico provides 95% of the functionality of high-dollar CMSs at a fifth of the price." This allows clients to use the dollars they would have previously put towards licencing into feature …
Chose Kentico Xperience
There is flexibility in what you can do in Kentico but also simple to manage and find content to edit. Other CMS like Drupal and Orchard feels like digging to locate content to edit. Kentico feels very neat and tidy.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
DrupalKentico Xperience
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Drupal
10.0
65 Ratings
22% above category average
Kentico Xperience
7.1
24 Ratings
12% below category average
Role-based user permissions10.065 Ratings7.124 Ratings
Platform & Infrastructure
Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Product A and Product B
Drupal
9.5
62 Ratings
21% above category average
Kentico Xperience
7.5
21 Ratings
7% below category average
API9.158 Ratings8.020 Ratings
Internationalization / multi-language10.053 Ratings7.018 Ratings
Web Content Creation
Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Product A and Product B
Drupal
9.3
68 Ratings
20% above category average
Kentico Xperience
7.0
25 Ratings
8% below category average
WYSIWYG editor9.161 Ratings8.024 Ratings
Code quality / cleanliness9.166 Ratings7.125 Ratings
Admin section9.568 Ratings7.225 Ratings
Page templates9.567 Ratings7.125 Ratings
Library of website themes8.658 Ratings5.812 Ratings
Mobile optimization / responsive design10.063 Ratings8.023 Ratings
Publishing workflow9.167 Ratings6.224 Ratings
Form generator10.063 Ratings7.024 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
Kentico Xperience
6.9
25 Ratings
3% below category average
Content taxonomy10.063 Ratings6.324 Ratings
SEO support10.062 Ratings7.224 Ratings
Bulk management10.059 Ratings5.124 Ratings
Availability / breadth of extensions8.661 Ratings7.924 Ratings
Community / comment management9.161 Ratings7.923 Ratings
Best Alternatives
DrupalKentico Xperience
Small Businesses
Divi
Divi
Score 9.8 out of 10
WordPress VIP
WordPress VIP
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Image Relay
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
Tridion
Tridion
Score 9.0 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
DrupalKentico Xperience
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(77 ratings)
9.0
(44 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(18 ratings)
9.1
(22 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(9 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Availability
9.7
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.9
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
5.0
(4 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
6.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
5.1
(4 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
DrupalKentico Xperience
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
Kentico software
Kentico is a robust and flexible CMS platform that is great for managing multiple websites and multiple environments (dev, stage, and production for instance). It makes content management very easy and makes it easy to keep the environments synced with the same content. However, the Kentico CMS does require a bit more technical understanding to get it set up properly and requires a bit more effort and support than, say, free open-source options.
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
Kentico software
  • I love the intuitive top and left navigation within the content management platform. I can easily find what section, sub-section, and page I'm looking to edit
  • For creating content, the WYSIWYG editor is so intuitive; it feels like you're working on an MS Word doc!
  • The tab for adding metadata in simple fields takes away the headache of having to hunt and peck through code to add H1 tag, page description etc.
  • The image library is easy to edit and manage
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
Kentico software
  • Kentico needs to invest in more enterprise class environment management utilities -- example: global CDN support via the CMS is sorely lacking. There are work-arounds, but it should be more elegant.
  • The Kentico staging module could be improved to support the concept of bundled releases. Current staging module functionality is good, but could be improved.
  • Kentico ecommerce support is a touch immature. While content management is superb, Kentico lags in this area when compared to many open source ecommerce engines.
  • Kentico is lacking MVC support. 99% of the time this isn't an issue for the end-user or business user, but can be a hurdle for technology teams depending on the team's makeup.
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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.
Read full review
Kentico software
We are locked into Kentico for the long haul. It provides us with an easy and flexible solution for a very non technical company to create a site and have the features they want, especially with the inclusion of EMS into our license. Now we have a true platform to build and grow our solutions.
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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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Kentico software
It seriously is one of the best interfaces I have ever used. I also love the fact that I can use UI personalization to secure any functionality by user or role that I don't want that role to have access to. The best part is the customization of the UI, I can add in any button, tab, or menu item I want through it, no code required.
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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
Kentico 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
Kentico 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
Kentico software
Their support staff is friendly, knowledgeable, and will work with you until your issue is fixed. This could take a few phone calls back and forth, but they are very diligent in helping you.
Read full review
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
Kentico 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.
Read full review
Kentico 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%
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Kentico software
The system provides many opportunities to integrate and enhance the platform and makes it easy to do so.
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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.
Read full review
Kentico software
I've used Sitecore, Ektron, Joomla!, WordPress, and SharePoint (if you want to count that as a competitor for CMS). Kentico 8 blows them all out of the water. Nothing is more intuitive in the way that content is created, the way the site is setup, and how efficient rollouts can be with Content Staging.
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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.
Read full review
Kentico 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
Kentico software
  • Kentico has enabled faster speed to market for SMEs. They are empowered to enter content them selves while still having that content go through editorial review to ensure tone of voice and brand are maintained.
  • Deploying Kentico has freed up web developer resources from manual content entry enabling them to build more useful solutions to support the business efforts
  • Tapping into the Kentico event pipelne allows us to trigger external system events when product content is published.
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ScreenShots

Kentico Xperience Screenshots

Screenshot of Application listScreenshot of Marketing AutomationScreenshot of Kentico DashboardScreenshot of Data ProtectionScreenshot of Persona InsightsScreenshot of Campaign Management