Skip to main content
TrustRadius
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…

Read more
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 …
Continue reading

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 …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

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%
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing
N/A
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

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

28 people also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

What is Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued)?

Adobe Business Catalyst was a cloud-hosted system for building and managing web content and online stores with a built-in CRM framework in addition to sales, service, and marketing features including eCommerce and Email Marketing tools. It has been end of life (EOL) since 2020.

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…

Return to navigation

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
Return to navigation

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
Return to navigation

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).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

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 75)
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.
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
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.
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.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Drupal is the content management system we choose when we made our website again.
It is used by both marketing and IT department :
The marketing dept uses it mainly to manage content, add or modify pages, and get customer behavior insights,
while the IT dept uses it mainly for user/access management and maintenance purposes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Lindsay Halsey | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a search engine marketing agency, some of our customers' websites are powered by Drupal. We configure modules to ensure their websites meet search engine marketing best practices. Overall, we find Drupal to be a powerful content management [tool]. The initial learning curve can be steep, but once you understand how Drupal is organized, it's a solid CMS.
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.
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.
Rose M. Warner | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Drupal is an excellent content manager since it handles large volumes of users and content. We use it in our web system and in the internal intranet. It allows us to create profiles of the users with details and excellent personalization. Besides the personalization, Drupal gives us the facility to add what we need through modules.
Josh Howe | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My company's website is built using Drupal. It is fast, scalable and easy to understand with just basic web knowledge. To be clear - I am not a developer - but work on the frontend building pages, adding events and modules. When I was in the job market - I did notice that a lot of large scale companies use Drupal.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Drupal to create our business website. We were able to customize it to fit our needs and to create a way to showcase our work to clients, build a client base, and connect with clients and keep them up to date. It addressed our security needs as well as our ability to see websites scaled onto smaller platforms.
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.
Kyle Reichelt | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My company was recently hired to build out a fully integrated digital ecosystem for a large endurance brand; inclusive of a CMS, E-commerce Platform, Data warehousing, and a data normalization engine to tie it all together. For this, we selected Drupal 8, Magento, and AWS (Redshift and Lambdas).

Being a global brand, Drupal 8 was the CMS (built by developers for developers) that provided the most extensible launchpad with localization and language support, as well as great workflow and collaboration tools for content creators.

Drupal 8 is utilized by brand ambassadors to submit content for review, internal editors to review content, race directors to manage events and venues, as well as marketers to post landing pages. It ensures consistent branding across the board.
Dr. C. Michael Sturgeon | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am, in addition to my organization title, a web developer. After many years of coding, I decided to look into CMSs as this allowed clients to access their sites and update content as needed. Some clients find that the use of Drupal is the solution to simplifying the updating process. Drupal is one CMS that allows the administrator to assign pages or content areas to specific personnel. This again is the solution to the problem of multiple people updating. Depending on the need, Drupal offers flexibility. As a full organization, departments can be given administrative or editor access and avoid even seeing other departments' pages. In my opinion, this is the best solution, especially for the price.
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.
Matthew Deakyne | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Drupal is being used across the whole KU organization. It's the primary content management system, and pages are created for departments, units, and organizations on campus. It provides a supported solution for users to manage their own content, for web developers to help optimize and for marketing to track usage. Content is also exported in blocks to feed other systems with information, including important academic dates.
Nicholas De Salvo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Drupal has powered our company website for multiple iterations over the passed 10 years. We have also used it in client projects during that time. What we have liked about it is the granular control it allows over your website out of the box.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The company I work for builds websites for higher education institutions. We use Drupal and another platform. We have plans to move away from the other platform and have all of our websites on Drupal. Drupal is easy to use, versatile, secure, and overall a great product. We have a wide variety of departments which use Drupal including our Developers, QA team, Content team, and UX team.
Jimmy Mack | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Drupal is used as the content management system for our organization's intranet. The intranet has hundreds of pages as well as image and document storage capabilities. It also has a number of custom integrations built by the organization's information technology department that have been integrated into the Drupal system for use. Users across the organization access Drupal.
Nate Dillon | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I used Drupal in a previous organization to build websites for clients. Drupal was our primary CMS, and we used it to build about 12 websites per year. I currently use Drupal to build a few of my personal websites, as well as websites for friends. I also use Drupal to build and maintain a website for an organization that I am a part of.
Return to navigation