Drupal Reviews

The Best CMS

Comments: Excellent. Very nostalgic to think about my journey with this software. I have built countless websites over the years using Drupal, and my experience has been varied.

Pros:

Drupal is, in my opinion, the best open source CMS available. I have seen it grow since version 4.0 and heavily used it right up until version 7. Drupal 6 was the golden era. There are countless extensions, most of which are completely free and built by a passionate community. If you need a fast, reliable CMS for free, this is the first place you should start.

Cons:

Since the [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] left, things haven't felt the same. It has sadly become more up-market and commercial. However the core software and extensions still remain, and it is still probably the best CMS on the market.

Always Flexible

Comments: I have solved various business use cases with Drupal. I've been able to build standard marketing web sites, real estate sites, work order system, online calendar scheduling, and a multitude of other types of sites. This is all possible via the modules available and the software being open source.

Pros:

The most impactful feature of Drupal is that the software is open source. This means it is full extendable and allows new features to be created to enhance the product by end users. The flexibility this provides to continue growing a web site makes it priceless. The community around the project is amazing and has provided excellent modules to get a site up and running easily.

Cons:

The product does not lack features. There is a learning curve to get started, but every new product has a learning curve. The hook system allows integrating to the site, but does have a learning curve to understand the various hooks that are available.

Drupal will get you there, but it will be painful in the process...

Comments: Somewhat positive. Had I a chance to do it over, I probably would've just rolled a Wordpress site.

Pros:

It was easy to deliver content to our thousands of resellers, capture leads and form data, roll out branded features in record time and host media blogs and video content. Most of the functionality was either baked in, or was available via 3rd party module install. Permissions and user accounts were managed via oAuth. There were very few things we couldn't accomplish with Drupal. The community around it is astoundingly good.

Cons:

Half-baked modules powered our sites; sometimes a module's creator would abandon the effort and it would cost us thousands of dollars in lost revenue. Bugs were everywhere when we tried to do something as simple as backup/migrate. Database issues galore. Multi-language websites (internationalization) were painful and confusing. Very few folks on the team knew enough to explain how to do things, and the Drupal foundation didn't do a great job of answering the phone--they overrcharged us for support through their commercial company, Acquia instead.

Drupal is difficult but worth it

Comments: It was very difficult to get started with the product but I find the flexibility more than rewarding as I perceive an unlimited ceiling in developing with the product.

Pros:

Drupal's ability to fit every potential need is what originally drew me to the platform and keeps me developing in it's rich environment.

Cons:

It's very challenging to get started in Drupal. Naming conventions concerning views, nodes, taxonomy, menu items, panels, modules and tokens can be confusing and particularly overwhelming to a beginner.

Very well engineered CMS

Comments: Drupal has been an excellent CMS and has helped us greatly in implementing and maintaining a data driven website.

Pros:

We've been using Drupal for our websites for many years and have found it to be a very well engineered Content Management System (CMS). We have a comprehensive back catalog of sermons and songs and Drupal has the best data storage and organisation system of the open source CMS systems. It has been a pleasure to work with Drupal and how it has been designed from the ground up to handle all manner of complicated scenarios seamlessly.

Cons:

With the transition to Drupal 8 and beyond, a lot of contributed modules that we were using on Drupal 7 became unusable and there seems to be no plan to update these modules from the contributors. We've had to look into paying extra for custom module programming to update to Drupal 8.

Drupal is still in the top 10 website platforms

Comments: Setup is kind of ruff if you are not a Drupal website developer. I recommend hiring a pro from the get-go. However, once the setup was complete and I found everything I needed, the website was very secure and also works perfectly every time I use it.

Pros:

The business directory platform on Drupal is one of the easiest and most reliable I have used. I have way fewer issues with the business directory module than I have with my other website platforms overall.

Cons:

Setup is very time-consuming and difficult. I ended up hiring an expert to finish the job because I couldn't get everything up and running on my own.

Drupal Was a Decent Option Years Ago but I Would Not Consider it Today

Comments: Drupal has been an affordable content management system for us over the years but I wouldn't consider them now based on there being more user friendly options out there.

Pros:

The Drupal content management system is free and the WYSIWYG ( What You See Is What You Get) editor is helpful for those of us who run a website without much HTML knowledge.

Cons:

The product is difficult to use with limited coding knowledge. Additionally, there are few plug-ins and the add-ons that do exist are not super reliable as they are essentially created by volunteers.

The Supreme CMS

Comments: It was a difficult process to start. I came from Wordpress which was stupid simple, but once I learned Drupal and realized the power it had I was completely sold. It's great for all sizes of projects and has a great community of people using it.

Pros:

Drupal's content management struct and philosophy is so robust. It can handle any kind of content, not just blog posts. The ability to model data exactly how you want it and even query and create views is unparalleled.

Cons:

The learning curve on Drupal is high. The documentation is cumbersome and so it's difficult to know where to begin without help from somebody who already knows. That said, once you "get" Drupal you'll never look back

Drupal is a Tough CMS

Comments: My overall experience with Drupal is not rosy. I have barely used Drupal for up to 6 months, and the experience has been tough.

Pros:

Drupal is secured, very secured. This is one thing I love about it. Unlike most CMSes in the market where their core could be easily affected by malware, Drupal ensures that the security of its core is seriously handled without compromise. And that is a big plus for them.

Cons:

Drupal is too difficult to use, especially in its deployment. I started loosing interest in the application when the installation was becoming cumbersome and taking longer than normal.

Great for users who are more advanced

Pros:

I like the flexibility of the modules and themes.

Cons:

There seems to be more a learning curve compared to other CMS. There's also not as big of a developer community.

Managing your content like a pro with Drupal

Comments: Overall, Drupal has been a valuable tool for our company. Its scalability, robust content modeling capabilities, and wide range of modules and themes have made it easy for us to create and manage our content and documents. While the software requires some technical expertise to fully set it up and customize it, the benefits of Drupal far outweigh the cons for our business.

Pros:

As a user of Drupal in our company, I have found it to be a powerful and flexible content management and document management system. One of the biggest advantages of this software is its scalability. Drupal can handle a large number of users and a large volume of content, which is essential for our company as we have many different departments and teams that need to access and manage their own content. Additionally, Drupal's robust content modeling capabilities have made it easy for us to create and manage structured content types, such as documents and articles. Another great feature of Drupal is the wide range of modules and themes available. These have allowed us to add additional functionality to our content management system, such as document version control, advanced search and tagging, and improved user permissions. Additionally, the module repository is vast, and it has been very easy for us to find and install the modules we need to improve the functionality of our content management system.

Cons:

One of the downsides of Drupal is that it can be complex to set up and customize. Other than that, there is nothing to complain.

Phenomenal software

Pros:

Drupal has seven main Pros: 1) It's uses a very flexible system of modules. You can use Drupal modules to add new features to your site. For example, the Membership module lets you add member based services, the Video modules lets you host video clips, while the Commerce module lets you add shopping features. Each modules is made up of smaller modules, which ensures you only activate the bits you need for your project. Best of all, you can mix and match the modules to create things the original module designers might have never considered. For example, combine the Commerce, Membership and Video modules to create a paid for membership site of training videos. 2) It's very layered. In Drupal, system code lives in one layer, code to do with appearance (e.g. CSS, HTML) lives in another separate layer and custom modifications live in another separate layer. This makes it very easy to change things. For example, you can change the entire layout of your site without having to modify the original content to adapt to it. 3) It's free Remarkably, the core technology and all these modules are available for free. There are some themes that you have to pay for if you want to change the look of your site, but you can make your own themes and there are number of free themes as well. 4) Great user support Drupal has a good support network of dedicated and helpful users who are willing to provide plenty of free help. There's also free training videos on YouTube. 5) Plenty of updates Drupal releases minor updates on a monthly basis which address any of bugs or security concerns that crop up. There are also major updates every 2-3 years, which radically change the functionality of the core system. 6) Portable code Most code can easily be transferred between sites. Hence, if you create a function on one site, you can move it to another without having to re-do it all from scratch. 7) Don’t need strong coding skills Drupal's module system means you can easily achieve a lot without needing to know how to code. It might not look and function exactly as you want, but it will be a decent effort.

Cons:

Drupal has 2 main set backs: 1) It can get very complicated The down side of all the flexibility, is that there are often 10 ways to do one thing in Drupal and it's not always clear which method is best. Often the only way you can find out is through experience. Which means your early Drupal projects might not be as good as they could be, as you cut your teeth on learning which methods are best for you. 2) Your code won’t last forever. Every 2-3 years, Drupal releases a new major update which radically changes the functionality of the site. The plus side of this is that it makes Drupal better. The downside is that you will often have to completely re-write your custom code. Because these major updates change everything, you will often need to install new modules to replace old ones. Essentially you have to rebuild your site (thankfully all the content can be transferred over). Upgrading isn't a requirement. But after a couple of years, the older versions of Drupal are no longer supported. So if building a Drupal site, expect to redo it from scratch it in 3-5 years. Hence, it's not really good for projects which only have a budget for minor changes each year.

Drupal is a CMS that can do it all.

Pros:

The best part about Drupal is that you can do anything and the best functionality is either in Drupal core or a free module at Drupal.org. There is a misconception that the learning curve is difficult. In comparison, achieving the basic needs of a brochure website are the same in all of the top CMS solutions. Aside from comparisons, the best tool within Drupal is Views. You can create lists and grids of data that can then be sorted, filtered, and altered in so many ways without adding any additional modules. Of course you can extend views and provide even better data lists or different view types but the ability to display and work with items that reside in the system is unlike any other system.

Cons:

With so many options available to you, the learning curve comes with learning how to best use the best module for the job. There may be 5-10 modules that achieve a result, but in the end, there may only be one module that does it exactly how you want it. So the complexity is in the trial and error of having multiple options. So you may waste time working through the complexities of a module and realize that was not the main intent of the module or it doesn't quite do everything you wanted. This is worth it to me though as I will then be able to understand how different modules can be used in different ways to perform different functions.

Ideal for collaborative work in corporate media

Comments: My overall experience with Drupal has been good, I prefer it as a manager and portal design before others, the only thing that happened is that the platform fell when a news had many entries at a time. We manage a news page and its content search engine is very effective and reliable. And the roles of the users, to execute changes in the page are very useful, in addition the trace is faithful.

Pros:

It is an ideal software to edit a corporate communication medium among several collaborators, the allocation of roles to each user, allows the levels of publication and approval to be faithful and thus errors are avoided, as well as assigning or changing roles in the users. It is very easy to use, and the variety of features it brings allows you to alternate with designs and templates, which are very easy to edit and move, without the need to make new purchases or downloads. The drupal community is very knowledgeable and willing to help solve problems. In addition, security levels are higher than other content managers.

Cons:

For those who are starting a web page and do not have programming knowledge, it can be difficult to find a lot of modules, but once you take the rhythm you can have a different page in both look and feel and functionalities. It also tends to hang when there are many entries at once to its database; or the server goes down.

Working with Drupal is a balance of unbridled freedom and future-proofing frustration.

Pros:

Druapl is a CMS that allows the developer to do anything they could want, provided they have the know-how and the time to build it. Plugins are often open-ended enough to allow for developers to plugin into them and continue building until the feature they are looking for is completed. There is incredible value here - while it is free, more premium plugins cost money. The user-base also serves as technical support - plugins are built by users and so they are also maintained and supported by those users. This means that there is a wide range of plugins and people to provide support if you run into an issue. Despite any shortcomings, I do love the product a lot. It's optimistic in the way its' built - very few software let you just have the ability to do anything with it these days. This is still one of those products, and so it should be commended for it.

Cons:

This is NOT for somebody who wants to build their first website. This is a developer's platform, and some of the ways things are done in Drupal makes it very difficult to just get off the group and build out a website. I mention above the word "Developer" a lot, and that's who this product is really for. If I am aiming this review towards the general public, I would take the ease of use down to 2 or even 1 star for them - it's just not something you should do if you don't have experience building in it. Hire somebody. The other side of the coin in having a wide range of plugins means that there are a lot that are not very good, or are not maintained. They become a security liability. The fact that these plugins are maintained by users also means that there is nobody making sure that the maintainer keeps the plugin working, which can really wreck how a site functions.

Great software made by a great community that uses and enforces best practices

Pros:

With Drupal, you can make almost anything you can imagine even (and mostly) complex sites/apps without the need for starting from scratch. This is possible because of its great (in terms of quality and size) community and contributed modules. Some features I like the most of Drupal: - Myriad of contributed modules - Security - Possibility to work with several environments and replicate a site/config/contents from code - Great documentation, repositories, issues... everything you need in one place - Backend allows managing most of the tasks using a great user interface - Multilingual - Community - Encourages and enforces best practices - Possibility to perform most actions from command line - ...

Cons:

It has a steep learning curve Last 8.x version requirements are quite elevated

Drupal's time has passed

Comments: I've configured Drupal for many customers and while it was good for our bottom line because they needed to ask us to do a lot of work for them, it meant building so much that it took much longer than if we'd just thrown someone on WordPress and used plugins. Drupal has a lot of power, but the tradeoff is usability and approachability.

Pros:

Drupal has a lot of power if you have gotten past the learning curve and don't mind excessive configuration to get your website up. This is definitely an engineer's dream in that you have a lot of control over what you do and you can build your integrations to do some powerful stuff, like publishing to multiple sites.

Cons:

Everything requires configuration and it is highly unfriendly to non-technical users. Additionally, the option to use WordPress is so much more attractive if your administrators are going to be non-engineers.

Powerful but can be tiring

Pros:

It's very, very flexible and ultimately enables you to use it for a wide range of applications. There's a very strong community to back it up which means that instead of having to write your own bespoke drupal modules, there's normally one already waiting for you on drupal.org. With very configurable permissions, you can allow regular users to have sessions with varying levels of access.

Cons:

There's been a lot of security advisories for this software over the last year. Most weeks, I've had to support some issue or another and they just keep coming. Drupal 8 is an entirely different beast to Drupal 7 too so there's a whole lot to learn if you'd previously developed on 7. In addition, the APIs underneath the hood of Drupal often make it quite a long process developing with Drupal. There are a lot of quirks to learn about before you can really get stuck in.

Easy to Use, Hard to master CMS

Comments: I've used a few CMS such as Joomla before, but Drupal is the one that my team and I consistently go back to. For some of our key sites, this is a great tool to use. I have members on the team that are well versed in PHP and CSS so this is relatively easy for them to work with. We've used Drupal for a few in house websites ranging from relatively simple blogs to enterprise level business sites. The team has been using Drupal since Drupal6 and we're now at Drupal8. Drupal's best selling point over many CMS is in its flexibility and the multitude of options available for the users.

Pros:

I really like the options that are available with Drupal; themes, modules,etc. I particularly enjoy having the ability to use themes and having options to create and use custom themes. It's a bit challenging to install and deploy the first time, but the themes themselves are incredibly easy to write if you have knowledge of CSS. I also feel that Drupal is well supported with forums, an established community documentation, and a decent slack channel.

Cons:

I think that the old adage, "Easy to learn, hard to master" applies really well to Drupal. The layout and feel of Drupal is not really naturally intuitive. Furthermore, while it's not necessarily a con, but it feels like there really are almost too many modules and features available. Some of them share very similar functionalities and novice users may choose a less fleshed out/established option. However, I feel that this is typical of many open-source CMS software and it's something that can be easily overcome with experience.

Drupal - a CMS that could use an UX upgrade

Comments: Hopefully the new decoupled admin built in react will make for a better UX experience that will draw more attention to the system's strengths versus it's downfalls

Pros:

Drupal is extremely versatile for people who have used it for a while. You get the options of being in an ecosystem for large scale development CMS software and it's all open source.

Cons:

What can be extremely useful can also be horribly complex and not without it's challenges. Drupal 8 has gen going through some growing pains leaving devs a mystery in which path they should take without being left out. The community seems to talk in closed circles sometimes and you are left wondering if you made the right dev choice. <- this isn't a joke the webforms mess at the beginning of the drupal 8 cycle was a shit show.

Want to use an unnecessarily complex CMS? Drupal is for you

Comments: Painful at least. There are several times where we have been affected by bugs that, after digging in a little, we found that had been there for 5 or 6 years with no solution. If you are starting out a new project, I don't recommend using it unless you require some specific feature. For example, drupal permissions management is excellent.
If you don't require something that you know only drupal can provide, go with something else. You will save a lot of frustration.

Pros:

Some of its design choices make sense, and actually help you set up a complex site without diving in too deep.

Cons:

Unnecessary complex. The software cannot evolve at the same rythm of the web. Some packages that were crucial in Drupal7 are still in Beta in Drupal8, and several years have passed. Basically if you choose to go with Drupal, you are on your own.

Drupal

Comments: Drupal offers more advanced Content management facilities which in my opinion are very suitable for larger businesses with large content management needs and it's a nice work tool for professional developers too.

Pros:

From its framework system to all other extensive functionalities, Drupal performs extremely well. It offers a lot of customization features that are suitable for designing large and complete websites.Drupal offers a more advanced security grid which is best to avoid website phishing or any other forms of web attacks.There is quite a large quantity of training resources available for new users and the community support solution is also great.

Cons:

What made me migrate off Drupal is the fact that it's designed mostly for advanced web designers. The workstation is not beginner-friendly even though, I do enjoy its performance.

More than a CMS--An incredibly powerful site building and management tool!

Pros:

It's open source! You can build just about anything with it, and you can do most things right within the user interface. Many things you can do in the UI such as building complex views are quite simple once you know the process, and would require writing complex code or database queries in most other systems. The community is excellent and there are thousands of free contributions. Drupal is great about security releases and about reviewing the security of Drupal core as well as the contributed space. Powerful theming layer using Twig templates in Drupal 8+. Drupal Commerce allows for a powerful e-commerce system.

Cons:

The admin interface is not always intuitive for non-technical users. There's a learning curve involved with Drupal and many of its major contributed modules. Requires contributed modules for, or just entirely lacks, some features which users unfamiliar with the technical aspects of Drupal might expect. Drupal can be slow compared to some other systems, but its great caching layer mitigates this.

I wants to marry Drupal

Pros:

Being a developer its hard not to love Drupal -- with their recent update to Drupal 8 and moving to a Symfony2 backend and Twig templating system, its become bulletproof. Also, Composer is now built in to manage dependencies. The developer community is incredible and all modules are peer-reviewed by the community. This way you know the code you are getting is safe and sound unlike competitors...*cough*wordpress*cough*

Cons:

The migration from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8 may be hard for some developers to swallow. A lot has changed, but almost all for the better. Drupal 8 modules are still a bit slow to be ported from Drupal 7.

The Best Open Source Content Management System

Comments: My overall experience is really great with Drupal, because I have designed a number of ecommerce websites for my clients. They are really happy with the performance of the website including front-end and back-end. I am really satisfied with the features of Drupal.

Pros:

Drupal is the professional and incredible content management system for the developers. Using Drupal you can build a stunning and amazing website. Drupal provides flexible and powerful solutions for your ecommerce business. You can secure your users. The interface is really easy to use, so even beginners can also create a website.

Cons:

Drupal is great for marketers, developers and agencies. Even individuals can create and design the portfolio sites without any kind of cons. You will never face any issue in Drupal.