Home > CMS Software > Drupal > Drupal vs Craft CMS

Drupal vs Craft CMS

Last Updated:

Our analysts compared Drupal vs Craft CMS based on data from our 400+ point analysis of CMS Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Overview Pricing Benefits & Features User Ratings Analyst Summary Screenshots
Drupal Software Tool
Craft CMS Software Tool
Get Free Demo Demo    Request Pricing Pricing
Get Free Demo Demo    Request Pricing Pricing

Product Basics

Drupal is a free to use, open-source solution to manage website content through authoring, customization and automated workflows. Its WYSIWYG editor comes with an intuitive interface to customize text, images and layouts without needing developer support. Multiple users can create content in a central repository and share it on any channel, backed by a modern content delivery network (CDN) provider.

It enables marketing automation with advanced email reporting for specific audiences, streamlined processes, real-time sales alerts and bulk data management. Its data security protocol includes database encryption, user access control and security reports. Backed by a strong online developer community, its coding standards and strict code review processes help mitigate internet vulnerabilities
read more...
Craft CMS is a software to manage content and design websites from a centralized unified interface. Users can create content through attributes like custom fields, image editor, form builder and live preview. It enables digital asset management with files stored in Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud Files and Google Cloud Storage. Users can customize its dashboard and add and resize widgets which include an RSS feed, quick post, recent entries, updates, Google Analytics and commerce reports.

User management with role-based access permissions is available in the Pro version and above. Templates are powered by Twig, with DRY code and flexible, bring-your-own HTML development. For non-public URLs, the licensed plans are available for free so long as the site is not deployed to a public server. The vendor provides a free version.
read more...
$0 Open-Source
Free Trial is available →
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
$279/Project, Freemium
Free Trial is available →
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
Small 
i
Medium 
i
Large 
i
Small 
i
Medium 
i
Large 
i
Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile

Product Assistance

Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support

Product Insights

  • Scalability: Drupal effortlessly scales with your business growth, handling traffic spikes and expanding content without compromising performance, making it ideal for businesses aiming for growth.
  • Security: With a dedicated security team and a robust coding standard, Drupal provides enterprise-level security, making it a trusted platform for government agencies and large corporations.
  • Customization: Drupal offers unparalleled customization options through modules and themes, allowing businesses to tailor their websites to their unique needs and brand identity.
  • Content Management Flexibility: Drupal excels in managing complex content structures and hierarchies, enabling businesses to deliver rich, multimedia content experiences.
  • Community Support: Drupal benefits from a large, active community of developers who contribute modules, themes, and fixes, ensuring the platform stays innovative and secure.
  • SEO-Friendly: With its advanced SEO modules, Drupal helps businesses improve their search engine visibility, driving more organic traffic to their websites.
  • Accessibility: Drupal adheres to web accessibility standards, ensuring websites are usable for people with disabilities, which expands audience reach and complies with legal requirements.
  • Multi-language Support: Drupal provides built-in multilingual support, allowing businesses to create websites in multiple languages, catering to a global audience.
  • Integration Capabilities: Drupal can integrate with a wide array of marketing, sales, and analytics tools, enabling businesses to create a cohesive digital ecosystem.
  • Mobile-First Approach: With responsive design and mobile-first themes, Drupal ensures websites look great and function well on all devices, enhancing user experience.
read more...
  • Intuitive Content Management: Craft CMS offers a user-friendly interface that simplifies the process of creating, managing, and updating website content, making it accessible for users of all skill levels.
  • Flexible Templating: With its Twig-based templating system, Craft CMS allows for the creation of complex, dynamic websites that can be tailored to meet specific design and functionality requirements.
  • Highly Customizable: Developers can extend the functionality of Craft CMS through plugins and modules, enabling the creation of bespoke solutions that cater to unique business needs.
  • Robust Security: Craft CMS is built with security in mind, offering features like proactive updates, secure password hashing, and built-in protection against common vulnerabilities, ensuring your website remains safe from threats.
  • SEO Friendly: Craft CMS facilitates SEO efforts with features like automatic generation of SEO-friendly URLs, easy metadata management, and the ability to create sitemaps, helping improve your site's visibility in search engine results.
  • Multi-Site Capabilities: Manage multiple websites from a single Craft CMS installation, allowing for streamlined operations and consistent branding across all your digital properties.
  • Live Preview: The Live Preview feature enables content creators to see how their content will look in real-time before it goes live, ensuring accuracy and alignment with design standards.
  • First-Class Localization: Craft CMS supports multi-language and regional differences out-of-the-box, making it an ideal choice for businesses targeting a global audience.
  • Performance Optimization: Designed with performance in mind, Craft CMS ensures fast loading times and a smooth user experience, even for content-rich sites.
  • Community Support: Benefit from a vibrant and supportive community of developers and users who contribute to the platform's extensive plugin ecosystem and offer help and advice through forums and social media.
  • Content Versioning: Craft CMS automatically saves versions of your content as you make changes, allowing you to easily revert to previous versions if needed.
  • Comprehensive Asset Management: Efficiently manage digital assets like images and videos with powerful tools for uploading, organizing, and editing, directly within the CMS.
  • Granular User Permissions: Control access to different parts of your site with detailed user permissions, ensuring team members can only see and edit what they need to.
  • Scalability: Whether you're running a small blog or a large e-commerce site, Craft CMS scales with your business, accommodating growth without sacrificing performance.
read more...
  • Content Authoring: Publish and deploy content across multiple platforms from one place. Connect marketing tools such as marketing automation, CRM, analytics and more to build and manage sites, build multichannel digital experiences and customize mobile web browsers and apps. 
  • Security: Keep data secure with access controls, database encryption, Denial of Service (DoS) and more. Prevent security failures with its strong coding standards and community code review process, continuously monitored by a team of security experts. Prevent malicious data entry, resolve issues before exploitation and share information via security reports. 
  • Performance: Ensure websites keep up with high traffic volumes by working with an advanced CDN provider, guaranteeing uptime without server outages. Run over a million performance checks per day and implement technology that scales across server clusters, providing customers with quick availability. 
  • Multilingual: Automated translation for over 100 languages makes every aspect of content accessible to viewers across the globe. Detect a site visitor’s preferred language based on information such as IP address, browser settings and more. 
  • Accessibility: Allow customers with disabilities to create, access and consume content, following the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) guidelines. Utilize structured metadata that is intelligible by screen readers and provide editorial tools to apply accessible content creation capabilities.  
  • Marketing Automation: Integrate marketing automation platforms to assign rules for tasks such as sending prospects email offers, assigning them to particular lists or using AI such as chat bots to deliver information. Refine marketing processes with no licensing costs by streamlining workflows, creating real-time sales alerts, managing data in bulk and more. 
  • Personalization: Deliver a personalized customer experience by analyzing site visitor’s clicks and decisions at each data point to create a profile for them. Leverage information such as geolocation, browser history, device type and behaviors to deliver tailored marketing messages, recommended products and more. 
  • Content as a Service: Manage and deploy content for a variety of websites and services from one location in a preconfigured development environment. Design reusable content, deliver content in various layouts, scale regardless of size and more using the platform’s unbarred infrastructure and APIs. 
read more...
  • Field Customization: Manage all custom field types and organize them. Assign bespoke fields to sections, users, tags and more.  
  • Multi-site: Run multiple sites from within a single software installation. Manage content across different regions and use other websites under the same parent company. Configure site-specific settings and employ site groups to keep them organized and define the order they should appear in on the control panel. 
  • Hassle-Free Localization: Target multiple territories and translate different languages by creating new sites to represent the content. 
  • Sharing Page Reviews: Share unpublished pages privately with team members using a link, keeping a tab on the work progress. 
  • Optimized Asset Management: Access built-in desktop-class asset management. Move files and folders quickly between local and cloud-based sources. Create a new transform that sets the parameters to output images at a specific size. 
  • Single-Click Update: Keep the software and plugins up-to-date with bug fixes, security enhancements and the latest features with a single click. 
  • Control Over Publishing: Full control over when to publish changes, along with the option of ‘Post Date’. 
  • Image Enhancement: Use the software’s Image Editor for resizing, rotating, flipping and cropping images. Set focus points, ensuring that every image renders seamlessly on all devices. 
  • Matrix: Split the content into different blocks and use them multiple times in any order. Enjoy the flexibility in creating any number of blocks containing as many fields as required. Change the layout of fields within the Matrix field to save space and give a better experience. 
  • Real-Time Preview: Update changes in the content and preview them even before publishing. Get a better idea of the design and appearance of the content in advance. 
  • Syntax Alert: Catch typos within the template with a helpful error message, along with a snippet of the code highlighting the offending line. 
  • Twig: Compile powerful template engines into optimized PHP files. Access various solutions offered by the language to keep templates DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself). 
read more...

Product Ranking

#13

among all
CMS Software

#57

among all
CMS Software

Find out who the leaders are

User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 1237 reviews
Great User Sentiment 34 reviews
81%
of users recommend this product

Drupal has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 81% when considering 1237 user reviews from 6 recognized software review sites.

83%
of users recommend this product

Craft CMS has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 83% when considering 34 user reviews from 2 recognized software review sites.

4.9 (14)
n/a
3.8 (339)
n/a
4.23 (376)
5.0 (1)
4.2 (339)
4.1 (33)
4.3 (7)
n/a
3.6 (162)
n/a

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Highly Customizable: Drupal is known for its flexibility, allowing users to create highly customized websites without extensive coding knowledge. The availability of numerous modules and themes empowers users to tailor their sites to specific needs and preferences.
Scalability: Drupal's architecture is designed to handle websites of all sizes, from small personal blogs to large enterprise applications. Its ability to scale efficiently makes it a suitable choice for projects with growth potential.
Strong Security: Drupal has a reputation for robust security features and a dedicated security team. Regular updates and security patches help protect websites from vulnerabilities and potential threats.
Active Community: Drupal boasts a large and active community of developers and users who contribute to its development, provide support, and share knowledge. This vibrant community fosters collaboration and innovation within the Drupal ecosystem.
Show more
Intuitive Interface: Craft CMS is often praised for its user-friendly interface, making it easy for content editors and administrators to manage and publish content efficiently. The interface is clean, well-organized, and intuitive, allowing users to find what they need quickly and easily.
Flexibility and Customization: Craft CMS provides a high degree of flexibility and customization, allowing developers to create bespoke content models and tailor the system to meet specific project requirements. This flexibility empowers users to build unique and complex websites without being constrained by rigid structures.
Performance and Scalability: Craft CMS is known for its excellent performance and scalability, ensuring that websites built on the platform can handle high traffic volumes and complex content structures without compromising speed or reliability. This is crucial for businesses and organizations that require a robust and scalable online presence.
Show more
Steep Learning Curve: Drupal's robust features and flexibility come at the cost of complexity, making it challenging for beginners to grasp. The learning curve can be daunting for users accustomed to more intuitive content management systems.
Module Dependency Issues: Drupal's modular architecture, while offering extensive customization, can lead to compatibility issues between modules. Resolving these conflicts often requires technical expertise, causing frustration for users seeking a seamless experience.
Performance Overhead: Drupal's feature-rich nature can impact website performance, especially on shared hosting environments or with numerous modules enabled. Optimization may be necessary to ensure smooth operation and fast loading times.
Show more
Steeper Learning Curve: Craft CMS's flexibility and power come at the cost of a steeper learning curve compared to simpler platforms like Squarespace or Wix. Users accustomed to more intuitive interfaces may find Craft's initial setup and content management less straightforward.
Plugin Dependence: While Craft CMS offers core features, extending functionality often requires plugins. This can lead to challenges in maintaining compatibility between plugins and the core system, especially during updates. Additionally, some essential plugins may require a purchase, adding to the overall cost.
Pricing Structure: Craft CMS's pricing structure, which involves a per-project license fee and potential plugin costs, can be a deterrent for budget-conscious users or smaller projects. The initial investment might seem higher compared to open-source alternatives or platforms with freemium models.
Show more

Don't "drupal" the ball when it comes to choosing the right content management system (CMS) for your needs. Drupal has been around for over two decades and has garnered a reputation for being a powerful and flexible platform, but it's not without its quirks. User reviews from the past year paint a picture of a CMS that's a bit of a mixed bag, with some folks singing its praises and others scratching their heads in frustration. Drupal's biggest strength is its flexibility. It's like a chameleon, able to adapt to a wide range of website needs, from simple blogs to complex e-commerce platforms. This is largely thanks to its extensive library of modules and themes, which allow users to add all sorts of bells and whistles to their sites. However, this flexibility comes at a cost: complexity. Drupal has a steeper learning curve than some other CMS options like WordPress, and it can be a bit overwhelming for beginners. It's like trying to assemble a piece of furniture from IKEA without the instructions – doable, but definitely not a walk in the park. So, who is Drupal best suited for? It's a great choice for organizations with complex website needs and the technical know-how to navigate its intricacies. If you're looking for a CMS that you can truly make your own and are willing to put in the time to learn the ropes, Drupal could be your perfect match. However, if you're a beginner or need a quick and easy solution, you might want to consider a more user-friendly option. Remember, the CMS landscape is constantly evolving, so it's always a good idea to check out the latest reviews and comparisons before making a decision.

Show more

Looking to "craft" the perfect website? Craft CMS might just be the tool you need. Craft CMS has garnered a reputation for its user-friendly interface and flexibility. Users appreciate the intuitive control panel, which simplifies content creation and management. The ability to customize the dashboard to individual preferences further enhances the user experience. Craft CMS's flexible content modeling system allows users to design their content structure, making it suitable for various website types, from simple blogs to complex e-commerce platforms. Its headless architecture provides developers with the freedom to deliver content to any platform, offering greater versatility compared to traditional CMS platforms. However, some users find Craft CMS's capabilities less extensive than those of platforms like WordPress, which offer a wider range of built-in features and plugins. Additionally, Craft CMS's flexibility can lead to a steeper learning curve for beginners. Despite these drawbacks, Craft CMS's strengths lie in its ability to empower users to create unique and tailored digital experiences. Its focus on customizability and user experience makes it an ideal choice for businesses and individuals seeking a CMS that can adapt to their specific needs and grow with them over time.

Show more

Screenshots

Top Alternatives in CMS Software

Alfresco
Box
Confluence
DocuShare
DocuWare
Egnyte
Epicor ECM
Laserfiche
M-Files
Nuxeo
OmniDocs
OnBase
OpenText ECM
Oracle WebCenter Content
Revver

Related Categories

Digital Asset Management Software
Document Management Software
ECM Software
Records Software
Show more
Digital Asset Management Software
Document Management Software
ECM Software
Records Software
Show more

WE DISTILL IT INTO REAL REQUIREMENTS, COMPARISON REPORTS, PRICE GUIDES and more...

SelectHub Products Reporting and Analytics
Build Your Requirements
SelectHub Products Cost and Pricing Guide
Get Your Free Comparison Report
Compare products
Comparison Report
Just drag this link to the bookmark bar.
?
    Table settings