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Drupal has been widely used in a variety of industries and situations, proving itself as a robust and extensible platform that can fulfill …
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What is Drupal?
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…
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What is Drupal?
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.
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What is Drupal?
Drupal is a free and 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 common to content management systems. These include a dashboard with a menu management system, RSS feeds, page layout customization and themes to aid this, and system administration tools. Drupal offers access statistics, more advanced search features, caching and feature throttling (to improve performance if needed), descriptive URLs, multiple users with controllable privileges, access control and restrictions, and workflow tools (triggers). There are over 30,000 addons or modules to expand Drupal's functionality.
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Drupal Competitors
- Joomla!
- Kentico Xperience
- Plone
- Magnolia (V5 and later versions)
Drupal Technical Details
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
Reviewers rate Role-based user permissions and Mobile optimization / responsive design and Form generator highest, with a score of 10.
The most common users of Drupal are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
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Drupal has been widely used in a variety of industries and situations, proving itself as a robust and extensible platform that can fulfill specific needs. For example, Ericsson is leveraging Drupal to develop an internal application for accessing company policies and documents, including a news and events section. This showcases Drupal's capability to serve as an efficient tool for knowledge management within organizations. Similarly, Commercial Progression takes advantage of Drupal's integration capabilities with CRM and ERP systems to develop websites for various industries, demonstrating its flexibility in meeting diverse business requirements.
Another key use case for Drupal is creating uniform intranet sites across different operating units, enabling organizations to convey their identity and provide basic information consistently. This allows companies to maintain a cohesive brand image while providing essential resources to their employees. Additionally, non-technical staff can easily create and manage content using Drupal, addressing marketing web presence needs efficiently without extensive coding knowledge. This user-friendly aspect of Drupal makes it accessible to a wide range of users within an organization.
Furthermore, Drupal proves invaluable in the realm of website development, offering a quick and flexible solution for building test sites or serving as a content management system for clients who require rapid website development with built-in control. Its ability to handle large volumes of content makes it suitable for managing customer service articles, translation services, and industry-standard features like views and revisioning. The platform is also chosen by developers specializing in Drupal due to its ease of use in quickly getting sites up and running for clients.
In the educational sector, the University of Edinburgh's Web Interfaces team has utilized Drupal to develop bespoke web solutions with a focus on security and scalability. This use case highlights Drupal's suitability for academic institutions seeking reliable and customizable solutions for their web development needs. Moreover, Drupal has proven its worth in the online education space, with approximately 95% of websites designed to market and recruit online degree programs being built with this platform.
Overall, Drupal offers a versatile range of use cases, from powering corporate intranets to supporting website development across various industries. Its capacity for customization and its ability to handle diverse content needs make it a compelling choice for organizations of all sizes.
Extensibility and Customization: Users highly appreciate the extensibility and customization options provided by Drupal's wide range of contributed modules. Many reviewers have stated that this flexibility allows them to tailor the software to their specific needs, enhancing the overall value of the platform.
Cost-effectiveness: The open-source nature of Drupal is seen as a major advantage by users, with many stating that it eliminates ongoing licensing costs. Reviewers mention that this cost-effectiveness makes Drupal an attractive option for those on a tight budget.
Strong Community Support: Users highly value the fantastic open-source community surrounding Drupal. Several reviewers have mentioned that they appreciate the community's readiness to help and provide solutions to any problems encountered. This support system is seen as invaluable, ensuring users have necessary assistance and resources to overcome challenges while using the software.
Intuitive User Interface: Some users have mentioned that the user interface of Drupal is not intuitive and requires technical expertise to use effectively. They feel that the platform lacks a WYSIWYG text editor, making it necessary to have a basic understanding of HTML and CSS style sheets to customize the site.
Complicated Development Process: Several users have found the development process in Drupal to be complicated and difficult to learn, even for experienced developers. They express that development is hard to learn and complicated, which can be challenging for those with prior experience in web development.
Time-Consuming Maintenance: Users have expressed that maintaining Drupal websites can be time-consuming due to frequent updates and patches that need to be installed. The continuous need for maintenance can become burdensome as it requires allocating additional time towards keeping the website up-to-date.
Security Concerns with Plugins: Some users have raised concerns about the security of Drupal websites, attributing it to the large number of plugins available from numerous developers. They find it harder to ensure site security due to this vast variety of plugins, often requiring careful vetting and monitoring.
Resource-Intensive Infrastructure Requirement: Users mention that compared to other content management systems (CMSs), Drupal requires a more powerful infrastructure. This makes it more resource-intensive in terms of hardware requirements, potentially increasing costs for hosting and server resources.
Steep Learning Curve with Drupal 8: The learning curve associated with Drupal has been highlighted by users as a challenge, particularly concerning its eighth version. They perceive Drupal 8 as significantly different from previous versions, complicating the learning process further.
Confusing Back-end User Interface: Some users find the back-end user interface of Drupal confusing and clunky. They express difficulties navigating through menus or locating specific settings within the interface, leading them to consider it less user-friendly than desired.
Configuration Changes Hidden in Menus: Users mention encountering certain configuration changes hidden within menus where they may not expect them. This can make it challenging for users to locate and modify specific settings, potentially causing frustration or inefficiencies.
Time-Consuming Setup and Configuration: The process of setting up and configuring Drupal has been mentioned as time-consuming by users. They express that it requires technical skills and knowledge, making the initial setup a potential pain point. Additionally, some changes may require IT assistance and might not be applied immediately.
Limited Ease of Use: While Drupal is generally considered relatively easy to use, some users note that it still requires development skills. They advise that installation and upgrading processes should be handled by someone with technical expertise to avoid potential troubles during these procedures.
Users have made several recommendations based on their experiences with Drupal. Here are the three most common recommendations:
- Start with a theme if you don't have much time to learn the system.
- Avoid using too many plugins and have someone on-site for day-to-day maintenance.
- Consider other options for CRM or shopping cart functionality.
Overall, users believe Drupal is a robust CMS platform but recommend starting with a theme for quicker setup, limiting plugin usage, and considering alternative options for CRM and shopping cart functionality. These recommendations aim to optimize the user experience and ensure efficient management of websites built on Drupal.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 77)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
February 09, 2023
Drupal! You beauty!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
- Content revisions
- Content translations
- Database and server logs
- Error backtrace
- SEO
- Can be overwhelming to new users
- Integration with APIs requires full Drupal technical knowledge
- Default package size is large
December 12, 2022
Drupal, a hidden gem in the sea of the content management systems out there, a framework of it's own that goes beyond a common CMS
- Well structured entity definition
- Designed to be extended, everything can be extended/connected to each other
- API-first design with the latest versions
- Great developer experience
- Huge community, all driven off of open-source contributors
- Developer onboarding experience
- Better marketing materials
- Better out of box experience
- Faster innovations/integrations with Javascript ecosystem
June 14, 2021
An open source CMS with excellent tools!
- Drupal has the main advantage of being an open-source product; we can customize the way we want.
- It allows me to manage and create websites or blogs that our customers require.
- It has impressive administration and customization features, being able to manage any amount and type of content.
- I have always started and completed a new page in Drupal in just a few minutes.
- It has been straightforward to understand and effortless to use.
- Drupal has different languages used; not just anyone can make use of the tool.
- It should have more support material to customize and modify the code.
May 28, 2021
Drupal is a great open source CMS
- Open source framework
- Variety of themes, colors and possibilities of work with images and texts
- Easy to use
- 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
- Enterprise-level security and performance
- Easy skin/ UX-UI customisation
- Easy plugin management
- Large web community in case of need
- Development is complicated and hard to learn, even for experimented developers
- Time-consuming maintenance (frequent updates and patches to install)
- Plugin development could be easier
May 25, 2021
Capable Contextual CMS
- Relational context makes for very powerful page capabilities
- Can be transformed into anything you can imagine
- Fast search capabilities
- Steep learning curve
- Not ready for use out of the box
- Can be slow to load if not configured properly
- Secure
- Extensible
- Customizable
- Non-intuitive UX
- Developer-driven UI
- Permissions overkill
- Open source framework and localization.
- Multiple themes and skins for user's webpages and websites.
- Allowing them to write PHP modules is a big advantage, but at times integrating them is a slight challenge due to the version on which the developer is working.
- Security and new release notifications are a hassle as they happen too often, but are still a good thing to have.
January 21, 2020
Need a Content Collaboration Website at Low Cost. Try Drupal!
- Easy to use, especially compared to other open source CMS.
- Robust user community to address issues and to provide advice.
- Steep learning curve (but easy to use once you learn the system).
- Poorly written or unsupported plug-ins can be a security liability.
January 13, 2020
Drupal is Powerful at Scale
- Powerful
- Easy to scale
- Can be overwhelming to get started
- No two Drupal websites are built quite the same
December 04, 2019
An all-powerful CMS with a steep learning curve
- Customizable.
- Scaleable.
- Robust community for support.
- Search engine friendly.
- Extremely powerful, but easily scaled down for simple sites.
- Steep learning curve, but worth it.
- Modules with similar jobs can be confusing - This can be a pro or a con, depending on the day. Sometimes it's nice to have choices, but other times there can be 3 or 4 modules that all do 90% of what you need, but none that do it all. Drupal requires creative thinking to get various modules to work together to complete a task.
- Some modules get abandoned or don't work the way you intended.
July 19, 2019
Drupal, the CMS for large, data-rich websites
- Drupal has a large support community. Many businesses and organizations have adopted it, and it has a large developer base, so it's likely to be around for a long time.
- Drupal is designed around the concept of structured data so that the data you put into it is reusable and can easily be referenced or accessed by other pages, or exposed through APIs to other systems.
- Drupal is well suited for building large, complex websites.
- Drupal has a steep learning curve due to its flexibility and complexity. Because it's so flexible and customizable, sometimes it's daunting trying to figure out the best way to do something.
- Some aspects of the system don't receive the support and attention they need, particularly contributed modules. It can take months (or years) for bugs to get resolved, or for new features to be developed. Many of the contributed modules are poorly supported. It's common to find modules that still haven't been migrated to the latest version of Drupal, even though it's been out for over 2 years. It's also common to discover a bug, only to find out that a patch was already submitted to fix that bug months ago, but hasn't been merged into the module yet.
- Upgrading to new versions of Drupal core can sometimes be painful and challenging, depending on how you've customized it or what modules you've enabled.
- Sometimes it's difficult to figure out how to customize a particular aspect of the system because you have to work within the framework it provides.
March 29, 2019
Customizable, scalable and professional content manager.
- Is easy to install and has a very professional and clean interface.
- Has a lot of free and paid add-ons for anything you can think of. You can also design your own because there is enough documentation for that.
- Drupal is excellent for websites with a lot of content, also where you require high personalization of the permissions and details of the users.
- Has excellent options to implement your websites in different languages.
- As the new versions evolve, they become incompatible with older complements.
- For those who start, the learning curve is steep.
March 14, 2019
Trusted large scale content management system
- Producing pages - I can start and complete a new page in Drupal in just a few minutes. It is really easy to understand and very straight forward.
- Updates - Drupal is constantly being updated with security patches, new versions and works with most new web technologies
- Cross Browser friendly
- Organization leaves a little to be desired. In the version that we are using ( 7 ) - sometimes when you remove an asset, it is hard to see if there are any other versions of the assets on different pages.
- The asset library can be a little more organized. Finding something that you uploaded can be difficult to locate if you do not know where it was originally posted.
January 09, 2019
Drupal has many advantages for small and large businesses
- Customizable to fit our needs.
- Scalability.
- Cross-device seamless content.
- Loading time for heavy content could be slightly improved.
January 06, 2019
Drupal for multipurpose websitex
- Handling a large number of users easily.
- Can get easy themes, modules, as it is available for free too.
- Can create large sites, dynamic blogs, e-commerce, interactive sites.
- Can be difficult to deal with for a non-technical person.
January 01, 2019
Drupal: Excellent CMS for Corporate use
- Responsive web design
- Fast loading page speeds
- SEO
- Slow learning curve
- Could improve CMS experience
December 26, 2018
Do you deploy a lot of content daily? Do you have strong technical resources? Drupal 8 might be a fit!
- 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.
- This is NOT the most intuitive CMS. You really need to take the time to understand how Drupal 8 works--how content is served up--if you're going to administer a site. Whereas WordPress is very "flat" and simple, Drupal 8 is much more dynamic. You utilize Views to access your content/data and "blocks" to build out beautiful landing pages (similar to widgets in WordPress). I had to prepare a TON of documentation for the client--so many user guides.
- It is not very friendly to engineers. It probably took 3 to 4 times longer to build out a Drupal 8 site as opposed to had we built it as a static site with perhaps a WordPress back-end (though you would have required multiple WordPress instances to manage localization and other things, which is what we were replacing).
- It seems that the Drupal 8 consortium (or whatever) is trying to push the ball forward a little too far, rather than consistently maintaining a solid foundation. There were many times when my engineers had to build entirely custom modules to compensate for known bugs in Drupal 8. I have good engineers and we still lost weeks to deploy a workaround. Your organization might not be so lucky as to have an appropriate caliber of engineers, though I hope it is!
December 22, 2018
Drupal as a Solution for Clients
- Very flexible CMS (Content Management System)
- Coding is not required; however, could be useful
- Offers various levels of control
- Themes for layout and color schemes are available at reasonable prices
- Drupal does have a learning curve that requires time, especially if new to CMSs. Therefore, before starting one should be prepared by making a site on their own time prior to offering Drupal as a service.
- Documentation is lengthy but thorough. Some of this gets complicated and the community of users is not as large as some others, such as WordPress or HTML, JS, JQuery, CSS etc.
- The languages used to develop Drupal are a variety and they are multiple. Therefore, if the developer would like to use it and tweak the code, they must know a number of web programming languages.
December 21, 2018
Possibly the most powerful and flexible CMS
- Drupal is great at managing any amount of content, and any type of content. Its flexibility and customizability are two of its greatest strengths.
- Drupal isn't just a CMS, Drupal lets you build the CMS that website editors will be using. Its backend customization and admin features are awesome and are being expanded by the community all the time.
- There are thousands of contributed modules and themes freely available. Not only is Drupal open source, but all the best modules and themes people have built are available for free as well!
- Drupal's community is big, prolific, and welcoming. Not only can you use other's community contributions, but the community is always happy to help others building their own Drupal sites or custom modules and themes for the rest of the community. If you ever get stuck, the forums or Drupal Slack are incredible resources for assistance.
- Drupal's admin side is very powerful and flexible, but it's a little bit harder to wrap one's mind around. If a customer is familiar with using a basic WordPress site, showing them the full Drupal back-end might be overwhelming and confusing at first. Luckily you can easily limit and customize the admin pages that each role sees.
- Drupal is huge and complex. Doing simple things is generally simple, but more advanced capabilities of Drupal have a higher learning curve (as can be expected). You can build a Drupal site quickly, but don't expect to build your dream site with loads of custom features in a week.
- Ready-made themes are more sparse than something like WordPress. If you're most interested in simply plugging an existing theme in and using it, you won't find as many professional-looking themes out of the box. There are some, but with Drupal, the best results are usually achieved by finding a good base theme and creating your own child theme based off of it.
December 21, 2018
Drupal works at scale, and is free.
- Managing content blocks. Drupal is very effective at providing a standard way to move content across systems.
- User management of content. Users have complete control over their spaces. It requires some training, but users can update content and create alerts without the need for a web developer.
- Overall design. Drupal looks pretty good, and provides a good structure for simple text, graphics, and links.
- Drupal is not intended for visualizations or other interactive content - this is an emerging field that could be better.
- While mobile responsive, I wouldn't call Drupal the most modern design. It's functional, but not beautiful.
- Users have control over their content, but it can be difficult to figure out how to do what you are trying to do.
December 17, 2018
Drupal Can Be Great If You Know How To Use It
- Easily create custom content types which can be used and reused in multiple views around a website.
- Granular control of websites on a per page basis.
- Allows tiered user access to support users having different access to content and administration capabilities.
- Steep learning curve
- Resource intensive
- Making a development mistake can result in hours of debugging trying to figure out what went wrong.
December 13, 2018
QA Analyst's Review of Drupal
- Customization.
- Wide variety of add-on features/functionality.
- Easy to learn and use.
- While easy to use, you do have to have some development skills.
- Installing needs to be done by someone with technical skills.
- Upgrading can be troublesome.
December 11, 2018
Drupal is a good, moderately powerful CMS that isn't too confusing
- It has a document repository that makes it easy to store necessary documents
- It has an image repository where users can store images
- it has the ability to have many users across the organization
- it can be a bit buggy at times
- it's not the most intuitive user experience
- while it's nice there is a photo repository, the folder structure could be formatted a bit better
December 11, 2018
Drupal is a powerful but complicated CMS
- Very powerful out of the box
- Highly customizable
- Secure
- Good community
- Steep learning curve
- Resource intensive
- Custom coding and templates can be difficult
- Painfully slow for features and fixes to be added to Drupal core