Why Drupal?

Want to build a website better, faster, and more secure than your competitors' web pages? This is why you should use Drupal 10 or other supported system versions.

These websites were built with Drupal: nasa.gov, pfizer.com, amd.com, nba.com, redhat.com.

On this page, you'll find detailed information on why you should use Drupal 10, 9 or 8 to build your websites.

What is Drupal?

Drupal is what you need to build your new website. It is a system that will easily adapt to your business model.

Software should always support your business model, not the other way around – you should not change your business to fit the existing system architecture. That's what Drupal is like – flexible, which enables it to support your existing business processes.

Drupal is a premium content management system platform.

Drupal is just as flexible as you need it to be.

Drupal is a secure, stable and proven platform, tested by thousands of companies around the world.

What makes Drupal special?

Drupal offers a number of features and functionalities that you can find in other platforms and frameworks. However, what makes it stand out among its competitors is the fact that all the most important functions used for building large, modern websites can be found in one platform.

Key features of Drupal

Open Source – it’s available free of charge, you don't have to worry about licensing fees.

Continuously developed since 2001.

Tried and proven by hundreds of thousands of companies around the world.

Heart of one of the largest Open Source communities dedicated to the development of the platform.

More than just a CMS – it is a Content Management Framework.

Built using the latest technologies such as PHP 8, Symfony Framework.

Thousands of free modules.

Security Team, which monitors threats and publishes security patches.

History/Development of Drupal

On January 15, 2001, Dries Buytaert published version 1.0 (Drupal: 15 years old and still gaining momentum) of Drupal as a GNU GPL-licensed Open Source project.

The subsequent key versions of Drupal include:

Drupal 5 released on January 15, 2007
Drupal 6 released on February 13, 2009
Drupal 7 released on January 5, 2011
Drupal 8 released on November 19, 2015
Drupal 9 released on June 3, 2020
Drupal 10 released on December 15, 2022

Since 2015, new versions have been released on a regular basis, every 6 months.

Currently Drupal is being developed by a community spanning the entire world. There are over 1,300,000 registered users at Drupal.org, including more than 48,000 with access to Drupal's Git repositories, who can develop modules, templates and the Drupal core.

By choosing Drupal to power your website, you get the support of developers from all over the world. Thanks to regular releases of new versions every six months, you can also take advantage of new features and functionalities to enhance your website – all free of charge.

Drupal in numbers

Drupal is one of the most popular CMS platforms in the world. Currently, it occupies the sixth place, with a market share of around 1,5%. Almost 800,000 websites in the world are running this platform.

The statistics covering the most popular websites in the world are also quite interesting. Drupal holds the second place among the top one million most popular websites on the internet, with a share of about 2,5%. Drupal’s share grows significantly when you narrow down the statistics to top 100,000 or top 10,000 websites. For example, according to BuiltWith statistics concerning the top 10,000 websites Drupal's share is almost 6,5%.

The list of the most popular websites powered by Drupal includes Linux, Harvard University, GE Transportation, and Tesla.

You can find the current CMS statistics at:

https://w3techs.com/technologies/market/content_management/30

https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management

https://trends.builtwith.com/cms

Over the last 22 years, Drupal has had a community of over one million people grow and gather around it. That’s how large a community of enthusiasts has joined the Drupal community website (https://www.drupal.org/community) over the years. The ranks of platform enthusiasts include developers, designers, coaches, strategists, coordinators, editors, and sponsors. The community's contribution to Drupal development is, among other things, an extensive database of additional modules that complement its functionality. The sheer number of almost 50,000 modules is amazing. It is worth noting that supporters are contributing to Drupal’s popularity as an actively developed open source project. Drupal is becoming more and more modern and better suited to fulfill users’ needs. For example, installing the latest version takes just under two minutes and three mouse clicks!

Market positions for CMS systems worldwide according to W3Techs.

The statistics with the number of websites on Drupal CMS year by year

By choosing Drupal, you get access to a great CMS, as well as the entire ecosystem surrounding it. So, what is this ecosystem all about? It's a number of additional benefits and tools that coexist with and extend Drupal.

Drupal ecosystem for business:

Open Source Projects

Drupal core and modules are distributed as Open Source, GNU GPL-licensed projects. In practice, this means that you don’t have to pay any license fees and you get full, unfettered access to the source code.

Drupal Companies

More than a thousand companies around the world provide services based on Drupal (development, graphic design, hosting), which makes it easy to get professional support. You can find the full list of companies at https://www.drupal.org/drupal-services.

Security Team

Security Team is a team of security experts who make every effort to ensure Drupal’s security. If any bugs are found, they are immediately squashed with updates and patches. You do not have to pay a cent for this support – it is available to all Drupal users free of charge.

Drupal’s development roadmap

Drupal’s development roadmap extends 3-4 years into the future. Nothing will surprise you – you know what to expect in years to come right away. You can also get ready to switch over from version 7 to version 8 or from 8 to 9 in advance. With Drupal, nothing happens out of the blue. The development of the platform is well-planned and stable.

Drupal Versions

Since 2015, when Version 8 was released, a new version was released every six months (8.1, 8.2, ...). Each of these offers new features and functionalities (such as: Media, Layout Builder, Bigpipe, etc.) By choosing Drupal, you make sure that you will always get new features for free with each new release.

Community

Drupal also means an enormous community. More than a million users signed up for accounts at drupal.org. More than 40,000 of them have access to Drupal's Git repositories and develop its modules and core. Such a large number of developers enables the continuous and dynamic development of the platform.

Certificates

Developer certificates issued by Acquia prove Drupal knowledge. Such certificates are particularly important for companies taking their first steps in the Drupal world, that do not know how to evaluate developers’ knowledge in the process of looking for experts. You can find a full list of certified Drupal developers by company and country at Acquia Certification Registry.

Support of governmental organisations

Drupal is an Open Source project supported by the community and enterprises. The platform also enjoys the support of governmental organisations from many countries, for example EU to fund bug bounty programs for 14 open source projects starting January 2019 and govCMS.

Drupal ecosystem for content editors and marketers:

Layout builder

Layout Builder is another Drupal core tool loved by content editors, allowing them to change content layout using ready-made components and sections – for example, add three columns in the article, then add photos and images, and so on. This gives editors a lot of influence not only on the content itself but also on the way it is presented.

Configurable text formats

Configurable text formats, which can be customised for a given content type – for example full HTML for articles, limited HTML for job offers, plain text for comments and so on. The editor has full control over the extent of formatting options.

Workflow module

Workflow module is a flexible tool for managing content statuses and flow. You can set any number of workflows for various content types, which enables all editors working on the content to see the status and the stage in the life cycle of a given content. For example, work on blog posts can look like this: proposal, draft, corrections, SEO optimisation, graphic design, approval, publishing, promotion. Drupal is an ideal tool for managing a complex content creation process.

Modules for editor

You can find numerous modules facilitating editors' work at drupal.org – for example, a photo cropping module, content publication scheduler, content cloning module, as well as exporting module, which enables you to export content to CSV, XLS and DOC files. You can find the full list of useful modules for editors here: Module project.

Module Paragraphs

Paragraphs is one of the thousands of additional modules that can be added to Drupal. It enables its users to prepare section types that can later be used in the content creation process. You can see how it works in the demo version of Droopler – our Drupal distro at https://demo.droopler.com.

Ckeditor

The built-in Ckeditor facilitates formatting your content without knowing a smidge of HTML.

Talk with us about your Drupal project!

Which companies use Drupal?

Arsenal F.C.

NASA

Pfizer

AMD

XEROX

Here

Grammy Awards

Hermes

Red Hat

Australia Gov.

Harvard University

Nasdaq

Bruno Mars

NBA

JYSK

Sevilla F.C.

The Drupal community actively supports its development. The developers regularly add new functionalities proposed by users – other developers, editors, graphic designers and so on. These changes either expand the list of Drupal’s features and functionalities or make it easier to use by simplifying core installation, installing modules, templates or adding specific content types.

If you decide to power your system with Drupal, you can be sure that with time it will only gain new functionalities and it will get easier and easier to use. More importantly, Drupal will always be free, so you won’t pay a dime to update it to the latest release!

Community initiatives

Regardless of the most important elements that are the key focus areas for the majority of developers, every Drupal user can propose their own changes. If they gain approval and pass the development process, they can be deployed and thus improve the platform. Many of the key Drupal elements were created thanks to these grassroots initiatives and the work of volunteers, who devoted their time to make the system more suited to their needs – for example the feature that allows adding alternative descriptions for each graphical element on the website (which is conducive to SEO and complies with the WCAG guidelines).

Some of these proposals include:

Changing templates from the UI level
Rebuilding menu based on entity reference
Adding an OAuth2 module to the core
Drupal as a service

Key initiatives

Drupal is updated in a well-thought-out and organised way, with a certain focus on ideas that will benefit the Drupal community the most. These include accessibility, automation and initiatives to highlight the benefits of Drupal.

The list of changes to be implemented with the next core update:

Modernisation of the administrator panel with React and JavaScript.
API-first – even easier integration with other systems.
Automatic updates – updates that minimise administrators’ and maintainers’ workloads.
Support for administration using Composer – Composer support in the core.
Better documentation to help developers and improve Drupal’s performance in investor evaluations.
Migrations – easier migration to newer versions of the platform.
Out-of-the-box – ready-made Drupal templates that allow you to use the site immediately after installation.

Upcoming core updates & releases

Drupal 11.0.0 release - 29th July 2024.
Drupal 10.4.0 release - 9th December 2024.
Drupal 7 end of life - 5th January 2025.
Drupal 10 end of life - June 2026.

The list of planned releases - Drupal core release cycle.

The list of changes implemented in the previous updates - Change records for Drupal core.

What is the difference between a distribution (or distro for short) and a “clean” version of Drupal? A distro is a release with useful add-ons configured to serve specific business assumptions of certain types of websites right after setting them up. This can be compared to additional paid add-ons for your car, except in the case of Drupal, all additional modules are free!

There are two basic types of distros:

Quick-start packages, which accelerate the process of building websites.
Specialised, fully-featured solutions made to suit certain needs and applications.

Depending on the type of a selected distro, it will have various template packages, modules, libraries, predefined installation profiles and configurations added to the setup package alongside Drupal core.

Choosing the right distribution can save you a lot of time:

You no longer have to browse, check, choose and install all the modules to fit your needs and assumptions. This significantly shortens the time needed to develop your website, and you can start making money faster.
You spend less time maintaining the system. It gets cheaper, too.

1. Droopler – a quick-start distro for company and corporate websites

This is an example of a quick-start distro, developed primarily with corporate clients in mind. The inclusion of modules such as Paragraphs and Geysir makes it easy to use it as a website factory for building landing pages promoting products or different language versions of a company website. Support for SEO and elegant, responsive design working on phones and tablets is another key advantage of this solution. Thanks to its versatility and easy content editing, this distro is quickly gaining popularity.

2. Panopoly - quick-start package for websites and distributions

A distribution intended for building websites, as well as a foundation for other distros, featuring many useful tools for developers.

3. Opigno LMS - basic package for e-learning

A package for creating Drupal-powered e-learning platforms. The advanced and extensive options enable assigning classes and exercises to students, checking their knowledge with quizzes and giving them certificates.

4. aGov - quick-start package for government websites

A distro developed by the Australian government. It contains basic content types along with examples that make it easy to start for everybody – even content editors, who never had to deal with a CMS like Drupal in their lives. It makes it easier to create websites that work well on mobile devices and meets the recommendations for creating accessible websites.

5. OpenRestaurant - basic package for restaurants

The distro has everything needed to create a functional website for a single restaurant, as well as an entire chain, featuring a menu management system, language versions, blog, events, locations and more.

6. Thunder - distro for publishers

A distro created for professional publishers and publishing houses, with numerous features for editors and support for various file formats, facilitating the creation for colourful and engaging content. It also supports scheduling posts and content publishing.

7. OpenSocial - quick-start package for social networking sites

A very popular distro designed for applications such as company intranets, social networking sites, community platforms and the like, featuring modules facilitating content editing, likes, following, notifications about activity in threads, as well as settings for groups and events.

8. LISSAKickstart - streaming platform distro

An interesting distro, which enables you to quickly build a video streaming service (live or on demand), send PUSH notifications to customers and present real-time news.

9. Contenta CMS - api-first distro

A Drupal distro focused on an API-first approach, which enables you to quickly build a decoupled website, or a site with embedded scripts written in one of the popular JavaScript frameworks.

Would you like to get in touch with the best Drupal developers? Go to a Drupal-themed conference, attend a local meeting or training workshop. The Drupal community is eager to meet to exchange knowledge and experiences.

The meetings are categorised into several ranks, depending on their scope. DrupalCons are big bi-annual conferences, always attended by Dries Buytaert – the platform’s founder – and the board of the Drupal Association, also serving as great celebrations for the entire community. DrupalCamps and Summits are smaller, usually national conferences, bringing together the best companies and developers in the region. The lowest-rank meetings include local meetups, sprints and workshops aimed mainly at developers who are just starting out with Drupal.

If you would like to establish a collaboration with a Drupal agency or if you are looking for Drupal developers or good PHP/Symfony experts, consider sponsoring one of these meetings. It is a great form of advertising and you can be sure that your company will be noticed.