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Drupal

Drupal

Overview

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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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

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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Drupal! You beauty!

10 out of 10
February 09, 2023
  • To develop content oriented and transaction oriented sites
  • Non technical users can easily build sites using Drupal
  • Drupal 8 and above have …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

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  • Page templates (67)
    9.5
    95%
  • Admin section (68)
    9.5
    95%
  • Code quality / cleanliness (66)
    9.1
    91%
  • Publishing workflow (67)
    9.1
    91%
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Pricing

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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.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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What is UENI?

Small business owners don’t have much time to build their online presence, don’t have much money to spend on digital advertising, and don’t want to navigate the complexity of what it means to be online today. So UENI presents a solution built specifically for them. Unlike DIY website builders or…

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Product Demos

Drupal Glazed Theme Tutorial 1: Basic Drag and Drop Controls

YouTube

Drupal Demo

YouTube

Drupal Paragraph Blocks Demo

YouTube

JSON:API demo

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Drupal Link Intelligence Getting Started Demo

YouTube

Drupal Content Optimizer SEO Module Demo Video

YouTube
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Features

Security

This component helps a company minimize the security risks by controlling access to the software and its data, and encouraging best practices among users.

10
Avg 8.0

Platform & Infrastructure

Features related to platform-wide settings and structure, such as permissions, languages, integrations, customizations, etc.

9.5
Avg 7.7

Web Content Creation

Features that support the creation of website content.

9.4
Avg 7.6

Web Content Management

Features for managing website content

9.5
Avg 7.3
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Product Details

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.

Drupal Video

Why Drupal?

Drupal Competitors

Drupal Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

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.

Joomla!, Kentico Xperience, and Plone are common alternatives for Drupal.

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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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(378)

Community Insights

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!

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:

  1. Start with a theme if you don't have much time to learn the system.
  2. Avoid using too many plugins and have someone on-site for day-to-day maintenance.
  3. 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 37)
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
  • To develop content oriented and transaction oriented sites
  • Non technical users can easily build sites using Drupal
  • Drupal 8 and above have responsive design included.
  • Easy access to inline edit mode that directly allows the users to edit components then and there without having them to move to a whole new page as in case of full page edit mode.
  • 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
If you have a team that comprises a less number of developers and large number of content writers than Drupal is a must.
It is written using PHP which almost all developers habe experience with or can get easily accustomed to.
Multilingual functionalities of Drupal are exceptional.
Last but not the least, if you are looking for content management systems then look no where Drupal is your answer.
Sohail Lajevardi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
We use Drupal daily, that's our main driver for any websites and apps we are developing, this has been the case for the past 12 years for me personally, the scope is as wide as a small local webshop to large enterprise organizations, connecting multiple websites as services to each other, we also use Drupal as a content hub as a headless CMS, or just fetching data off of it with exposed API
  • 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
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
Dominik Ras | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
With Drupal, we customize all modules to meet the best marketing terms, respond to the needs and guarantee clients a better web presence. With its ability to manage different themes for each site and have a unique look and feel, all of our clients we have worked with have been satisfied. It has allowed us to create websites and update our clients' sites.
  • 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.
In my experience, Drupal is an excellent CMS with advanced features that offer powerful content management. It has guaranteed security to back up data and is constantly being updated with new features. It also allows you to customize your websites the way you want.
Fernanda Ministerio | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is a very powerful tool for the general construction of websites. Drupal is used by my department as a content management tool to bring information and communication to our users on a variety of digital channels. All of this is managed using the open source Drupal framework for which we have a license. Another very interesting point is the possibility of applying different themes for each site. It allows good user management and is also easy to use.
  • 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
Drupal is suitable for design or development professionals looking for a more robust platform than Joomla or WordPress. It has many better features. With a little thought and creativity, Drupal allows you to do many amazing things. The possibility of integration with PHP modules is really the limit for customization. However, Drupal is not suitable for amateurs; someone who wants to make just one website for themselves; or a professional on a tight deadline. The learning curve can be a very big obstacle and is sometimes not worth it.

I have been working for some time and sometimes give up on some projects and choose another tool. It is definitely not a technology for those in a hurry, it is necessary to have time and dedication. The newer versions of Drupal are more friendly and intuitive and allow the construction of many cool things.
Chris Kerry | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The Historical Society considered using Drupal vs Sitefinity and settled on Drupal due to its open-source structure and versatility. Drupal is a strong tool to use for large organizations where having the ability to do almost anything is key. The software is more like a framework than a CMS in that you can transform it into almost anything you want like building blocks. One thing to keep in mind is it has a steep learning curve for new users and it is very unopinionated in style and setup.
  • 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
For universities and historical societies, [Drupal] is an excellent tool to showcase your institution's different departments and capabilities. I would not recommend this software for smaller organizations with smaller IT departments since it is a lot for a single developer to do by themselves. Excellent enterprise software for no cost.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Drupal in the following situations:
  1. Our own website runs on Drupal
  2. We implement clients' websites, and depending on the scope and functional requirements, we will often recommend and implement Drupal as the CMS that would best fit their needs (including multisite).
  3. In situations requiring non-core functionality, we evaluate, recommend, and implement suitable Drupal modules. Where none are available, we may develop a custom module.
  4. We work within the hosted Drupal (Acquia) platform for some clients.
  5. Finally, we've consulted on the implementation of the investor relations (IR) website portals of several publicly traded companies, which also run on Drupal.
  • Secure
  • Extensible
  • Customizable
  • Non-intuitive UX
  • Developer-driven UI
  • Permissions overkill
In the instances where a business (small, medium, and even potentially large/enterprise) have the following requirements:
  • Content management
  • Frequent content additions and/or updates
  • Scalable framework
  • Functional requirements that can't be met/managed by WordPress
  • Multilingual and/or multi-regional
  • Centrally managed multiple-website management
  • Varying user types with configurable permissions
  • Integration with other platforms, such as SSO authenticators
  • Preferably not e-commerce (typically better handled with a hosted solution, such as Shopify)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Drupal is used by my department as a content management tool to reach our target audience in multiple digital channels. We manage the educational author's key works, charities managed by them, their educational talks, the reader's page. All this is managed using the Drupal open-source framework for which we have a license. The ability to apply different themes for each website is useful in managing multiple authors and giving their websites a unique look all through Drupal's specific themes and skins which are applied through a few clicks.
  • 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.
Drupal is very well suited for creating blogs, and websites for people like music artists, authors, and universities. It is very easy to customize and the deployment is not a hassle at all as the changes are reflected instantly. It is very scalable too. Scenarios where Drupal is less suited are when it comes to security or having your own video player or media player. Though it has robust support for images, the support for video could use some work.
Fred Bals | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Open source CMS use by our content team for collaboration and to share files. As the content team is scattered across three different geographies, Drupal allows us to communicate and collaborate quickly and easily through an intranet site. We find it ideal to edit collateral among several collaborators. The allocation of roles to each user allows a quick review cycle while lessening the chance of errors.
  • 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.
Our experience with Drupal is for in-house websites ranging from relatively simple blogs to enterprise-level collaboration sites. In our case, we use it to develop content among an internal audience. I'd recommend it for any team that has a technical bent or has developer support (we have both). Drupal can power any number of websites, from extremely complicated to simple portfolios.
Bobby Donohue | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Drupal as the primary platform for website design and development for my own company's websites, and all my clients as well. While some smaller client websites may be fine using something less complicated like WordPress, Drupal gives me several unique advantages:

  • All my websites use it, so every website I create an manage is on one platform.
  • Drupal is infinitely scalable, so as my clients' needs change, it's relatively easy to alter the current website rather than start from scratch.
  • Drupal has a feature called "Views", which enables me to create custom content display modes for each client, without reinventing the wheel every time.
  • 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.
Drupal is well suited for design or development professionals looking for a more robust platform than Joomla or WordPress. With a little thinking and creativity, there is nothing Drupal cannot do. And if you can create your own PHP modules, then the sky is really the limit for customizability. Drupal is not well suited for a hobbyist; someone looking to make just one website for themselves; or a pro under a tight deadline. The learning curve may be too big a hurdle, and sometimes not worth it.
I joke it took me nearly 2 years to get "pretty good" at Drupal. It was a commitment I made to learn it and use it for my entire business in the long term. If you need something easy and quick for right now, then don't start learning Drupal. It requires time and patience. When I started I was proficient at HTML but had never used a CMS before. If you already use other CMS's with MySQL and PHP, then you will already know how all that works. So it probably won't take you two years. Plus, I learned on Drupal 5, which was not at all designer-friendly. That was put together by coders and it showed. Today, Drupal 7 and 8 are much more user-friendly.
Richard Davies | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Drupal has been selected as the CMS for our new city website. It was time to replace the custom, home-grown CMS we've been using for almost 20 years, and we wanted something that could power a large, enterprise-wide website. We wanted something with a large user base and healthy ecosystem so that we could ensure that the software will be supported and maintained for years to come. Drupal fit the bill as one of the most popular open-source content management systems that is used by over a million websites, many of them government websites like ours.
  • 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.
Drupal is a good choice for large, complex websites. Because it was designed with structured data in mind, it works will with data-rich websites where you need to reference data in different ways and on different pages. For example, a website acting as a music library containing a database of artists, albums, and songs. Or a large corporate website or government website.
Drupal is probably not the best choice for smaller, simpler websites. For example, it's probably overkill for a small brochure website with only a handful of pages that rarely change.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Drupal is a well developed, well-known Content Management system, capable of handling a large volume of visitors, and can create a number of content pages. It can be used as a simple blog, can make interactive business sites, and can create an e-commerce site too. Can easily be customizable to meet one's needs. The theme system is another of the important features, as you can use the large number of free templates available if you do not want to build from scratch.
  • 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.
Drupal is a highly used product among developers to create different types of websites, blogs, e-commerce sites. It includes shopping carts, help desks, live chat features, and inventory management. Drupal has a very strong community, so it's easy to get your problem solved. It can be connected with other tools like facebook, twitter, chat systems etc.
Features :
Advanced User Management
Open Source
Plugins
Support
Collaboration with other tools etc.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a marketing and web development company and creating Drupal sites is one of our specialties. We use it internally for several things, but also for most of our clients' projects when their needs fit the solution. It allows us to build sites ranging from small blogs or brochure sites all the way up to huge, scalable, custom e-commerce sites utilizing the same set of tools built by one of the best communities online.
  • 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.
Drupal is well-suited to pretty much any web project requiring a CMS-like experience or a lot of admin control. If you need a CMS, I would strongly encourage you to evaluate the latest version of Drupal for your needs.

On the other hand, if all you need is a small static site, and you don't need to let people edit content or control the site on the web, then Drupal might be overkill. Simply utilize a code framework or a static site generator, and you can save time and money in that case.
Stefanie Cash | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My company needed a new website that was responsive, allowed for an easy to manage content management system, and flexibility/scalability. Due to Drupal being open source and having the ability to create templates that are customized - it solved many of our business problems. Some of those problems being; dynamic response, loading forms, creating custom landing pages.
  • Content storage
  • Easy backend navigation
  • Ability to add users with ease
  • WYSIWYG
  • Rich Text Editor
  • Containers
I find Drupal is only suited for individuals who are savvy with content management systems. It is not a difficult learning curve to overcome, but without experience, it does make the navigation hard. Loading up content and physical management of said content is a breeze. Scalability also makes Drupal a solid go-to for website development.
Charles Hogan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The global education services division is driven by websites designed to market and recruit online degree programs for prospective students and consumers. 95 percent of those websites are built with Drupal. Through these websites we gather information vital to the company's business strategies.
  • Drupal is an open source CMS and has a vibrant community supporting it.
  • Drupal's core package offers a great out-of-box product that can easily be modified to meet any business need.
  • The community dedication to contrib modules is second to none. There's a module for just about everything you could imagine, want, or need on a website.
  • Excellent administrative framework and user-based interface allows for custom role creation and specific access levels based on credentials.
  • Being open source, there isn't a company solely dedicated to it, which can sometimes represent challenges for bugs associated with specific modules.
  • Frequent releases require upgrading to maintain support for active components.
  • Flexibility and options are vast, but not necessarily intuitive for the non-experienced or web novices.
  • Requires a developer.
Drupal is suited for every web-based scenario my company has thrown at it. It's produced a reliable, quality product for many years, and it's only getting better with time.
Brian Nizinsky | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Drupal hosts our main public website, which has hundreds of thousands of users visit it monthly. It is being used by the marketing department and we chose it for its flexibility and ease of use. We were stuck with an old CMS that was rigid and a pain to work with. Our developers hated it and it prevented us from being nimble. Drupal solves those problems for us.
  • Drupal separates data from presentation, which is very important when you are trying to build a website. It is great at letting the back end developers focus on data structure and the front end focus on presentation.
  • You can change anything you need to, or find someone who already has. Since its open source you can find a developer who can help you with a problem.
  • Its been around for a long time and there are many mods that have been created to solve many problems.
  • It can be daunting to a developer who has no experience with Drupal at first. There is a learning curve and it may not be for everyone.
  • Because there are so many choices for mods and add-ons its hard to pick which ones are the best.
  • There are not as many people with Drupal 8 experience out there even though its been over a year since its release.
Drupal works well when you have to build a website but don't always have all the info on specs, or the specs change quickly. It allows the developers to write less code and use native Drupal features to get that type of work done.

I think it's less appropriate if you do not have developer support for it. Drupal isn't for the faint of heart or people who are used to something like Wordpress.
September 23, 2016

Drupal as a framework

Armen Danielyan, PMP | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a small department (in a big non-profit organization) that supports organization's international and domestic development projects through consulting and implementation of ICT solutions. We develop websites and web applications such as online databases, digital libraries, data collection and visualization platforms, communities of practice and many more for these projects. We switched to Drupal in 2011 and never looked back. For most of the websites and applications we develop Drupal is a perfect fit. The development on Drupal is very efficient and most of the time is as easy as selecting right modules and configuring them to work together. In 90% of cases we don't have to write a single line of custom code. We do create custom themes based on custom design though.
  • Databases. Drupal is a great choice for building an online database. It has great tools for creating advanced data structures out of the box. With help of a few contributed modules the possibilities are limitless.
  • Digital Libraries. Drupal is also a perfect solution for digital libraries. With integration with search engines such as Solr, faceted search, and document preview we can build searchable and filterable digital libraries of any scale.
  • Websites. Being a content management system in the first place Drupal is a perfect platform for websites - large to small. It's extendable with more than 12,000 open source modules that can do almost anything. There is a famous answer to almost any question in Drupal community - "there is a module for that".
  • Content management. Content management is perhaps the strongest part of Drupal. You can easily create and place your content anywhere on your website, reuse and aggregate it in many different ways.
  • There are not many areas where Drupal needs improvement that haven't been already address in Drupal 8. However there is one feature I want to mention that could have been implemented better -- the Forum (or discussion board). Although with a few contrib modules and a little of custom code the forum functionality in Drupal can be fine tuned to be almost as powerful as Google Groups, it requires a lot of effort to make it work as expected.
  • Out of the box theme in Drupal does not look professional enough. Most of developers will want to replace it with something else. Thankfully there are hundreds of free themes available for Drupal for free, and many more can be purchased online.
So far my positive experience way outweighs the negative. Most of the issues we faced were solvable with a little to medium effort. Many people complain about a steep learning curve of Drupal. However I think it is not always true, especially if you are a professional developer. In any case the effort you make to learn Drupal will pay off in full.
August 09, 2016

Drupal review

Alex Lada | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a digital agency that serves some clients who require Drupal expertise. They either come to us for help with Drupal, or we recommend Drupal to them based on their business needs. It solves the issue of providing a powerful and extensible open source CMS.
  • Drupal provides a robust and powerful open source CMS platform. Due to this, it has a wide community of supporters and contributors and a vast library of modules that have already been produced.
  • Drupal is free to use, which makes it a great choice for our clients that need something more powerful than WordPress, but cannot afford the licensing fees of system like Sitecore.
  • As of Drupal 8, Drupal provides good admin tools for configure data and content architecture and relationships.
  • Drupal's admin section, especially before Drupal 8, can be fairly confusing to navigate. This is tough for developers as well as content authors.
  • Drupal traditionally has been a little constrictive with regards to front end templating, although it has gotten easier over the years.
Drupal is a very good choice for our clients that require a powerful, robust, extensible, and open sourced CMS system that has no licensing fees. It allows for complex data structures and efficient site performance without the cost of something like Sitecore. It provides much greater performance and is easier use when modeling complex data structures and relationships than another free CMS like WordPress.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it for our main website that is our marketing tool. This website is hosted separately from any other application we have because it has to be available during an emergency. It is really a place to attract customers.
  • Easy to manage users, access, etc.
  • Simple to use (for regular users)
  • Fast platform if set properly
  • Development for it takes time
  • Initial setup can be pain
  • Editing sometimes may not be applied immediately and requires IT assistance
It is great when you want to control content that is being published, but it is not as great when it comes to development, setup and maintenance
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Drupal is our main CMS/framework for our complex web solutions (in-house) and to develop websites that require advance data relationship for our customers. Websites starting from simple corporate directories to web apps that rely on data structure and data relationships are well served by this powerful CMS. For small or very basic websites we use some more basic software because Drupal is too much power for basic web tasks.
  • Create and manipulate data to show it on different views, queries and sections. It is like a WEB CMS like you can do it on a Database with a simple interface.
  • Multiple content types, fields, relationships created over a strong, yet simple to use, backend.
  • Great community support
  • Ease to develop over the Drupal framework. Well documented.
  • Open source
  • It needs a more powerful infrastructure vs other CMSs
  • GUI is great but could be improved.
  • Themes are not as usable as some on other CMSs
  • Learning curve is not simple because of its complexity.
Well suited for complex web projects
Matt Lundstrom | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We offer Drupal to our end users as a solution for creating a web site.
  • Drupal has a large user base which means that there is plenty of supporting documentation available for learning its usage.
  • Drupal has a large user base which means finding a developer to customize Drupal functionality is going to be easier because more talent is available and that talent is already familiar with the code.
  • Drupal is fully customizable because it is open source and written in PHP, which is easily one of the most popular programming languages for web.
  • Some users may find the interface complicated to use.
  • Some users may not understand how to backup their Drupal instance properly or how to restore it if something bad were to happen.
  • Some users will not understand the importance of keeping the software up to date and may be at risk for a hacked web site. Note: This is not a Drupal specific issue, all open source and arguable all software that does not get updated regularly may become vulnerable. However, automation in updates and backups is something most all modern pre-fab web apps have room for improvement. Most users just want to turn on their web site administration and generate content, not worrying about updates or backups.
Modern versions of Drupal are used to generate a wide variety of web sites. In the earlier days it was used pretty heavily for e-learning and schools, now most modern iterations are used for everything from a local beauty web site to some of the biggest names in the industry.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My company is a digital agency that specializes in building and managing content management systems for clients. We primarily recommend Drupal as a solution, and use it for our own company website because of its flexibility as a CMS. While we do use other platforms and software within the company and externally for marketing purposes, from a developer's standpoint, Drupal is a crucial part both for managing our own website and in providing a great solution for clients.
  • It's the most flexible CMS I have worked with, including other open source solutions and proprietary.
  • The development community is invaluable. Unlike some CMSs, drupal developers are all about the big picture when it comes to building features, and work together to create a solid solution, rather than trying to sell options that may or may not be a good fit for what you need.
  • Drupal is open source, which means anything really is possible in terms of development. It has very few limitations when building custom websites, and the only road block tends to be the amount of time or money available to spend on a solution.
  • It's not the prettiest out of the box. We have had clients lean towards other CMS's such as WordPress since they come default with a 'prettier' management side. However, unlike WordPress it is much more flexible to customize the backend side if necessary.
  • If all you want is a simple brochure site and blog, it may not be the best choice. While it is fully capable of doing both, it may take longer to set up than a simple WordPress or Squarespace type site. On the other side, if you do plan on building out and customizing a site it may be worth the consideration in the long run since this is where it shines.
  • For development the learning curve can seem steep. Because it's such a robust system that offers so much in terms of capabilities, it may take a while to get a full handle on everything.
Drupal is fantastic when you want to build a website that either already requires a lot of custom functionality, or for a site that has the plan to add it in the future. If all you want is a quick and easy website with a blog and a few pages of content, it may not be the best choice.
I like to compare it to art. If you want a blank canvas with a toolbox full of art supplies and an unlimited amount of possibilities, this is it. If all you want is something that doesn't take too long to create and looks nice, a paint by numbers option may be more appropriate.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Drupal is used for our intranet site across our entire organization, which uses a package called Open Atrium running on Drupal.
  • Drupal has a powerful backend that seems to be very stable.
  • Drupal has a lot of online resources for support.
  • Drupal has a user friendly web interface that allows for most configuration changes in a user-friendly way.
  • Drupal is fairly slow and requires a lot of horsepower to run.
  • Some configuration changes are hidden in menus where they may not be expected.
  • Drupal seems to require more regular maintenance than other systems.
Works well for an intranet solution.
Bart Martinez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Used for the department news and information site and as a gateway to our other applications. We are migrating away from static HTML pages and Drupal will allow non-technical staff to put up announcements and news updates rather than developers.
  • User management and roles.
  • Open source with tons of available modules.
  • Drupal 7 is not responsive by nature but can be addressed by adding responsive themes.
  • Large learning curve to get the configuration and development practices down.
  • Needs too many additional modules to be on par with some of the other CMSs available.
Drupal is a great CMS for those with strong development skills that need to be able to highly customize their site. If you need just a basic blog or news format it might be best to find something a little simpler such as WordPress or Concrete5.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Drupal is one of the platforms we recommend for small to mid-sized engagements. We traditionally target the Drupal platform based on customer budget to high level scope being requested. We have used Drupal for any WCMS and have connected into ecommerce platforms.
  • WCMS - simple and straightforward content management
  • Modular - the fact that I can model Drupal into any shape I want is a huge selling point for us
  • Community - the Drupal community is also a very strong selling point
  • Open Source - This can be a strength and weakness based on the customer involved
  • Time to Market - it is not as short as it is sold on some site. It takes time and knowledge to properly setup Drupal and tune it to get the optimal performance.
We have found that Drupal is more of a fit for small to mid-sized engagements. It tends to be less appropriate when there is larger enterprise level and transaction heavy engagement. Multiple integration points can also be a challenge at times.
February 26, 2016

Drupal a Themer's Dream

Mahesh Krishnan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Drupal is open source with a wide range of modules available to readily integrate with your project. There are a lot of communities that support Drupal if you want to get help. I have used Drupal in a number of my projects and was overwhelmed by its ease of use. I have been a designer and had worked with many of the Drupal themes; blueprint being the most commonly used by me. On any day, for a CMS solution, I would support Drupal.
  • Many modules to choose and integrate with your project.
  • Many themes to choose from and in case you want to build your theme, it lets you do that with ease.
  • Open Source.
Drupal being open source and widely used as a CMS with a number of communities supporting it, I would recommend Drupal anytime as the best CMS to use.
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