When looking at a content management solution, considering popular options can reveal critical insights into what that system has to offer and how other organizations are using it. Drupal in particular has a wide variety of users, from small businesses to large enterprises, showing just how versatile this open-source CMS truly is. But why exactly is Drupal so popular? Let’s take a look at some of the key pillars of Drupal’s popularity and how it benefits businesses:
“Drupal has proven to be a secure CMS that stands up to critical internet vulnerabilities.”
Highly Flexible
Every organization is different, and your CMS should be able to support your unique needs. Drupal’s hook terminology makes it highly flexible and customizable. Businesses can customize existing core functionalities and create their own modules to meet their requirements. Drupal itself also offers over 23,000 free modules for companies to leverage. These modules are constantly updated and new ones are added to cover current and future functionalities. This type of flexibility will ensure that your CMS and web presence lasts well into the future.
Strong Ecosystem
When managing your own site, it’s important to have experts on your side to drive continuous improvement and solve critical issues. Drupal’s ecosystem has more than 20 services and sub-sites that users can take advantage of. Drupal also has a wide community of more than 1 million members that provide continuous support. Organizations can turn to this strong ecosystem to receive guidance and information from experts around the world. This type of accessibility to skilled professionals will help speed up issue resolution and deliver the best result for users.
Security
In some cases, a CMS might need to interact with personally identifiable information or sensitive business data. This might include financial data acquired through customer transactions on your site, for example. Cyber criminals are increasingly targeting this type of information in their exploits, making it necessary to secure your site to remain compliant and maintain customer trust. Drupal has proven to be a secure CMS that stands up to critical internet vulnerabilities. It’s designed with robust security in mind and is used by leading corporations, brands and governments thanks to its protection capabilities. Drupal’s strong coding standards and rigorous community code review processes ensure that many security problems are prevented entirely.
Cost-effectiveness
Your choice of CMS can impact how much you should expect to pay to run, manage and support it. Some systems quickly add up expenses through features, modules and other options. However, Drupal removes high licensing fees, offers free modules and has been shown to deliver true cost savings. When the Georgia Technology Authority moved its websites from a proprietary system to Drupal, their operational budget declined from $1.5 million in 2012 to $513,000 in 2015. This 65 percent cost reduction was the result of:
- Decreased hosting expenses.
- Eliminated licensing costs.
- Lowered support staff costs.
Not only was the agency able to reap savings, but they also saw dramatic efficiency improvements, reducing the time required to add and edit content to their various sites. Drupal was able to provide the infrastructure and services necessary to migrate more than 80 websites and deliver major benefits in the process.
When considering the benefits like cost-savings, flexibility, security and strong ecosystem, it’s easy to see why Drupal has become so popular among a wide variety of organizations. While Drupal does require some expertise, it’s worth it to have a CMS that will meet your needs both now and in the future. Paramount Software Solutions offers enterprise CMS services with experts in managing and supporting Drupal environments. To learn more about how you can use Drupal’s key pillars for your business, contact Paramount today.
