Top 5 Advantages of Drupal vs. Other Content Management Systems

A content management system (CMS) is a foundational part of your digital experience. As the digital landscape continues to extend to more channels and touchpoints, a CMS must offer flexibility, powerful content creation tools, and efficient workflows to power the content for customer journeys. Drupal is the CMS of choice for over a million websites around the globe and continues to be a leader when it comes to delivering ambitious digital experiences. 

If you’re looking to transform your organization’s approach to digital with a CMS that can meet demand at every size and scale, it’s time to consider Drupal. See why we believe Drupal has the advantage over every CMS on the market today. 

1. Community 

Drupal’s open source model encourages continuous improvement and innovation through the support and passion of the Drupal community. Today, there are over 1.4 million Drupal users in 230 countriesthat are committed to seeing Drupal succeed. With a pool of such diverse experts regularly working to make Drupal better, the possibility to create exceptional digital experiences expands far beyond what a single team of proprietary software developers could dream up. 

For every new Drupal release, individuals and organizations around the globe contribute their time and resources to reviewing code, creating documentation, testing and incorporating feedback directly from the users themselves to deliver the best experience possible. See for yourself why Drupal stands above any other CMS in our e-book: Why to Migrate to Drupal.

2. User Experience

The modern Drupal is a digital experience platform that developers and marketers alike can leverage to create unforgettable customer experiences. Recent versions of Drupal have prioritized user experience (UX) to empower everyone from site editors to content creators to build powerful customer experiences. Some enhancements to Drupal’s user interface include:

• Layout builder. Offers content authors an easy-to-use page building experience that lets editors control the appearance of their content without having to rely on a developer.
• The Claro administrative theme. Provides a cleaner, easier-to-use interface for site administration, configuration, and authoring.
• Mobile responsive web features. Delivers out-of-the-box mobile responsive themes, responsive images, and mobile administration.
   

Organizations looking for the simplest and fastest path to design and launch their sites can also leverage the capabilities of Acquia Cohesion, a low-code site builder tool with a dynamic UI that makes it easier than ever for non-developers to shape experiences on the front end. Cohesion’s reusable components can be used to apply new features across all of their different digital properties in a single action. Recently, a major consumer-health pharmaceutical used the combined power of Cohesion and Acquia Cloud Site Factory to relaunch over 1,500 websites in multiple languages to a single digital platform in less than a year!  

3. Scalability

Drupal is a powerful and future-ready CMS that gives brands the freedom to scale with their needs. Drupal’s flexible API architecture supports exponential content growth across a global multisite ecosystem. Drupal is optimized for a number of caching modules that support faster page loading, optimized bandwidth and an overall more robust web performance even in high-pressure circumstances.  Last year, when the Drupal-powered Justice.gov website released Special Counsel Robert Mueller's long-awaited report on Russian interference in the U.S. election, the site experienced a 7,000% increase in traffic. Thankfully, the site experienced no interruptions or availability issues. Choosing Drupal lets web teams feel confident that their sites can handle even the highest traffic spikes — even when the whole world is watching.

4. Security

When it comes to building digital experiences people trust, security is the first priority. For highly regulated and public-facing industries like government and healthcare, not adhering to digital security standards can both damage consumer relationships and cause businesses to suffer hefty legal fees. Drupal takes security more seriously than any other CMS. That’s why organizations, such as The State of Georgia, Steward Health Care and Fannie Mae, rely on Drupal to protect their websites and maintain trust with their audiences. 

The Drupal Security Team is made up of security experts from around the world who are dedicated to analyzing and identifying potential risks in both Drupal core and contributed Drupal modules. Every new contributed model must undergo stringent review by a team of Drupal core maintainers before it is released publicly. Despite the common misconception that open source software is more vulnerable than proprietary models, Drupal’s large, dedicated open source community gives it an advantage by empowering millions of developers to detect issues in the code and submit bug reports.

5. Accessibility

Drupal’s commitment to accessibility standards prioritizes an inclusive web experience for all users. Accessibility is a gateway requirement for any new module and feature added to core.   

Drupal ensures that all its features and functions conform with the World Wide Web Consortium guidelines WCAG, WAI-ARIA  and ADA guidelines out-of-the-box. Some of the accessibility features included in Drupal 8 and the forthcoming Drupal 9 include:

• Optimized Color Contrast Themes and Font Sizes
• Alt Tag Defaults 
• Control Tab Order 
• Mobile Responsiveness
• Aural Alerts
   

For verticals, such as higher education, with the responsibility of providing opportunities and knowledge to students from a variety of backgrounds, accessibility is a major point of concern.  Today, Drupal is the CMS of choice for over 70% of higher education institutions, including North Dakota State University. Drupal remains dedicated to offering accessible information and positive digital experiences to everyone, no matter their circumstances. 

If you’re ready to take your Drupal journey, now is the perfect time to start. Drupal 9 is set to be released on June 3, 2020 and Acquia has a powerful toolkit to help you get ready. Our Drupal Migration Status Tool and Acquia Migration Status Accelerator help companies expedite their migrations at a lower cost and provide expert resources to plan and launch your site with ease.