Drupal
Open-source PHP CMS built for complex, structured sites in government, universities and enterprises.
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About Drupal
Drupal is a long-running open-source CMS written in PHP and released under the GPL. Its strength is structure: content types, fields, taxonomies, granular roles and permissions, multilingual content and revision workflows are all part of the core, and thousands of contributed modules add the rest. That makes it a common choice for universities, governments, NGOs and large organisations with many editors and lots of interlinked content. It can also act as a headless backend through its JSON:API and GraphQL modules. Recent versions add Drupal CMS, a packaged starting point with a friendlier setup and recipes for common site types. The trade-off is that Drupal expects developers: building and upgrading a site well takes real PHP and Drupal knowledge, and small sites can find it heavy compared with WordPress. The software is free; you pay for hosting, agencies or in-house developers. It is self-hosted on standard PHP stacks or on specialist Drupal hosts, and edited through the browser.
Best for: Organisations with complex content, many editors and in-house or agency developers.
Pros and cons
What works
- Strong content modelling, permissions and multilingual support in core
- Thousands of contributed modules and a large professional community
- Works as a traditional CMS or a headless API backend
Why people leave
- Steeper learning curve than WordPress for site builders
- Major upgrades and custom modules need experienced developers
- Overkill for small brochure sites
Top Drupal alternatives
See all 6- 1
WordPress66.5Easier for non-developers to run, with a far larger pool of themes and plugins.
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TYPO362.6Another enterprise open-source PHP CMS, strong on multi-site and long-term support releases.
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Craft CMS59.6Flexible content modelling with a simpler, more polished authoring experience.
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Wagtail57.2Python/Django CMS with structured content, favoured by similar public-sector users.
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Umbraco55.3Open-source CMS for organisations standardised on .NET rather than PHP.
Why people left Drupal
In reviewers' own words, from reviews of the apps they moved to. These are their opinions, not ours.
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Reviews
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Drupal: common questions
Is Drupal free?
Yes. Drupal is free, open-source software that you can host yourself.
Is Drupal open source?
Yes. You can also run it on your own server.
What platforms does Drupal run on?
Drupal is available for Self-hosted and Web.
What are the best alternatives to Drupal?
The highest-ranked Drupal alternatives right now are WordPress, TYPO3 and Craft CMS. See the full ranked list for pricing, platforms and verified facts.