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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

View all 16 features
  • 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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Unavailable

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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Product Demos

Drupal Glazed Theme Tutorial 1: Basic Drag and Drop Controls

YouTube

Drupal Demo

YouTube

Drupal Paragraph Blocks Demo

YouTube

JSON:API demo

YouTube

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

(26-50 of 76)
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Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Our overall site traffic has grown exponentially since we have moved to it.
  • We have been able to bring a standardized format to all of our resources and communications.
  • Promoting new products is much easier due to the easy to use interface of Drupal, we can get a new product launch page up in record time compared to our old platform.
September 11, 2018

Drupal is the 777 of CMS'

Sean Pomory | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Has helped us better guide users down predefined funnels
  • Easily embeds resources that have a direct monetary amount attached to them
  • The site can last for sometime without any significant architecture, extending the lifespan of the product
Charles Hogan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Our business is dependent on the consumers we attract through our websites. Drupal allows us to meet the demands of our various partners on one platform. This is a huge factor in terms of maintaining an able workforce.
  • Drupal provides us the flexibility in terms of customizable elements and scalable entities to grow our client base and confidently display our portfolio to potential new business partners.
  • Each of our Drupal environments is handcrafted to provide a consistent, informative, and unique user experience, which makes an easier decision the investment of our product.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • I think it provides an opportunity for more users to create their own web pages.
  • It is also an easy way to manage the ADA compliance issues, somewhat. Now ADA gets more and more complicated, such as the same text must have the same exact URLs.
Brian Nizinsky | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • It has had a positive impact on out development process by reducing and simplifying it significantly.
  • Drupal provides very easy editing so its had a positive effect on our publishing process.
  • Drupal hosted on AWS is very fast and this has had provided a positive user experience.
Andrew Shannon | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Drupal allowed my company to finally realize their goal of offering a subscription based software package that expired and revoked the users permissions after a certain amount of time. Previously we had to offer perpetual licenses to our software and users would pass down their licenses to others, thus limiting our revenue on those products.
  • Drupal allowed my company to easily keep our own website up to date with the latest and greatest things we offered without needing to pay a web developer every time we wanted to add something to our website.
  • Drupal allowed our company to finally offer an e-commerce site that integrated with our in-house ERP system named Acumen because of the flexibility and customization available within Drupal and its modules.
Joel Tanzi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Using Drupal for site-building gave our company an edge in building out sites quickly that were robust enough to meet our clients' needs.
  • Faster project completion due to Drupal's code abstraction resulted in substantial overall savings on manpower and time.
  • Handoff of completed projects to clients was far simpler and Drupal sites easier to maintain than most conventional websites.
Shane Sevo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • Drupal takes more investment up front to properly set up the development environment, but once done a Drupal instance can be confidently deployed with continuous development in mind. Cost of long term updates decreases over time.
  • Many efficiencies are gained with the right integration. We have developed integrations with CRM and ERP systems that automatically replicate data and reduce the need for duplicate data entry scenarios.
  • Modern responsive design and SEO aware taxonomies make Drupal the ideal platform for building out an inbound marketing strategy with content at the core. Attracting business and building a website that converts visitors into customers is where Drupal shines.
September 23, 2016

Drupal as a framework

Armen Danielyan, PMP | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • The Development with Drupal sped up our web development time dramatically. Most of the features that we would have to custom code otherwise are already available in Drupal out of the box or in form of modules.
  • The security of websites we build improved significantly.
  • Thanks to Drupal's great community there is always someone who can answer our questions or help to solve a technical problem we may face during the implementation of our projects.
August 09, 2016

Drupal review

Alex Lada | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • As an agency, Drupal has allowed us to service clients with more sophisticated needs in their website than what can be covered with WordPress.
  • Our clients get a powerful CMS system that covers their complex needs without the price tag of other paid-for CMS systems.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Over our previous CMS, Drupal is like 10 steps up. Users are able to set content easily, mobile responsiveness is great, the whole backend is simple for everyday user
  • Developer spent good portion of its time to set up appropriately in order to run smoothly
  • It has achieved what we wanted, produced good quality website that is used as our marketing tool
Eric Batson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • The various operating unit sites are now fairly uniform. When you go from one site to another it is fairly easy to find information.
  • Employees who want fancier options with their intranet sites were disappointed with the Drupal user interface.
  • Employees now know where to go to access predictable information regarding the different operating units.
Matt Lundstrom | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Drupal is an important part of our business as a hosting company, because we obviously wish to host Drupal web sites for our customers. We have fine tuned our servers to provide a highly optimized environment for Drupal and because of that, our investment into supporting the Drupal software has helps support our company's growth.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Recommending Drupal to clients has given us many opportunities for new/continuous work.
  • Drupal is an appropriate solution for a wide array of needs, which widens the available market for potential work.
  • The exceptionally supportive community that Drupal has allows for developers to pick it up quickly.
Jason Smith | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Drupal has represented less infrastructure cost in that as a flexible platform, it has allowed architectural changes that mitigate exposure, better leverage caching and share functionality.
March 18, 2016

Drupal review

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • As a user only, I cannot comment on ROI however I can say that it has greatly improved our efficiency and turn around time on maintain our website.
Kelly Lee | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Drupal has reduced the amount of support calls with its solid performance. Have not had a single hack, database failure or file failure like I have with WordPress and Joomla. This reduces downtime and frustration for the client.
  • Drupal has allowed several enterprise ecommerce clients to easily incorporate multilingual sites that work flawlessly. This increases sales worldwide by presenting the website in the customers native language without issue.
  • SEO and Drupal go hand in hand. We used Drupal as our company website utilizing the SEO friendly structure.
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