Drupal Vs Sitecore - A Detailed Comparison

It is important for businesses to choose the right Content Management System (CMS). A CMS is an application that helps a business create its digital identity by managing what content needs to be created, edited, and published. A good CMS provides the tools to distribute content online, whether audio or visual, via various customer touchpoints. It also provides the required support to update and manage that content from a single dashboard. But narrowing down on a CMS that offers the best-in-class services often riddles businesses.

Businesses can choose from multiple CMS options available in the market. In this blog, we’ll be looking into Drupal and Sitecore - two of the leading CMSs and provide a detailed comparison to help organizations make the right choice of CMS that addresses the needs of their developers, marketers, and content creators.

Drupal vs Sitecore

Drupal and Sitecore offer businesses various features like content and document management, workflow creation, collaboration tools, media library, and more. However, despite these similarities, both CMSs differ substantially from each other. Let’s dig into the detail to understand what these CMSs are.

Drupal is an open-source CMS  maintained & supported by a community of more than 1,000,000 volunteers and sponsored contributors working together. It comes with many out-of-box features, multiple modules, and API integrations that can be customized for simple to complex web applications.  Whereas Sitecore is a proprietary CMS that requires an upfront hefty licensing fee. It also comes with out-of-box features with modules enabled but the customization and deployment do take time. However, it has one of the best marketing automation tools.

Drupal vs Sitecore: A Deep-dive into Features & Functionalities

• Content management

  In Drupal, custom workflows can be implemented for the content team following organizational governance standards. It ensures that all content is approved and published according to an organization's content practices. It allows businesses to manage and publish content across multiple channels while simultaneously supporting authors to work on content. 

  Even Sitecore in its latest version has improved the authoring experience and content management tools, allowing users to configure systems for approvals, notifications, and translation of different types of content. 

• Decoupled and Headless approach
  

  Decoupled Drupal offers multi-platform capabilities and superior digital experiences. It follows the ‘COPE’ approach meaning Create Once Publish Everywhere. This content management technique allows content creators to add content in one place and repurpose it across multiple mediums seamlessly.

  Sitecore started as a headless CMS, ensuring content, layout, and presentation layers were decoupled or separated. The changes to the web content are automatically reflected on all channels which have used the content objects.

• Performance and Scalability
  

  Performance refers to the speed at which a webpage loads and displays content, while scalability refers to the ability of a platform to be scaled to manage the increasing load of users without affecting performance. A scalable website ensures that increases in site traffic do not impact its performance.

  Drupal, on account of its API-first approach, enables rapid scalability in accordance with the growing business needs to deliver exceptional digital experiences consistently across platforms and helps businesses to render and scale websites swiftly and effectively. Websites with extremely dynamic traffic loads, such as the Grammy Awards and NBC Olympics are powered by Drupal, and thus are proof of its scalability prowess. 

  Sitecore struggles with offering high performance and scalability. However, its recent out-of-the-box feature upgrades use three separate databases - core, master, and web - to achieve it, with the latter offering useful functionality for content editing and delivery.

• Multilingual Site
  Drupal is equipped with multilingual functionality as an out-of-the-box feature. It does not require any additional modules or integrations for the same. It facilitates automated language translation, which enables you to deliver a superior user experience. Sitecore also has in-built multilingual support that enables businesses to deliver content to a global audience. 
• Responsive Web Design
  

  Drupal's out-of-the-box mobile-friendly features enable designers and developers to create a responsive website that automatically adjusts to different screen sizes and viewports.

  Sitecore’s device detection modules enable websites to automatically adapt the design and optimize content to the device through which it is accessed. The GeoIP detection package helps to personalize content based on the user's location.

• Enterprise Integrations
  

  Drupal seamlessly integrates with CRMs and multiple third-party applications with the help of integration modules and Application Programming Interface (API).  It integrates with Salesforce, MailChimp, Google, Facebook, and others.

  Sitecore Connectors are pre-packaged integration products that deliver out-of-the-box functionality with Sitecore CMS.  Sitecore Connectors integrate with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamic 365 for Sales and Retail. For other third-party integration, businesses need to leverage services from Sitecore’s Technical Alliance Program partners. But Sitecore’s practitioner tools for marketing needs like testing, optimizations, customer data profiles, etc., do not integrate with the leading tools available in the market, making a strong case for Drupal’s third-party integrations.

• Marketing automation
  

  Sitecore's strength in marketing automation makes it a preferred choice for businesses focused on delivering exceptional customer experience. The module features such as continuous testing, path analysis, granular segmentation and analytics, and machine learning make it an ideal choice for businesses with content personalization, journey orchestration, and marketing as priorities.

  Drupal facilitates marketing automation workflows and enables enterprises to manage a massive volume of customer data. However, Drupal does not have a default integrated marketing and analytics functionality but rather leaves room for businesses to choose the marketing automation tools that best meet their needs.

  The choice between the two platforms depends on the business's priorities and the extent of marketing automation capabilities required. 

• Security
  

  Sitecore is built on ASP.NET and robust dot net architecture that ensures the platform is highly secure. The risk of external vulnerabilities is extremely low with Sitecore websites being designed to integrate minimally with other enterprise systems.

  Drupal is one of the most secure CMS, which acts in its favor and leads to its high adoption rate among top businesses and private organizations. Platform security is managed by a Drupal security team consisting of experts from around the globe to spot and report vulnerabilities in the core Drupal platforms and community-contributed modules. These security updates need to be updated from time to time in the Drupal core.
• Accessibility
  

  Drupal provides default support for Web Accessibility Initiative – Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA). It includes several accessibility tools out-of-the-box with modules like Block ARIA Landmark Roles and more that enable businesses to deliver enhanced user experiences. There is no need for additional accessibility tools or plugins, as inbuilt functionality allows businesses to create a website accessible for all.

  Websites based on Sitecore CMS can be built and tested as per the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards, but it is an effort and time-consuming process. Drupal has an edge over Sitecore in ensuring accessibility. 

How Do Different Personas View Drupal and Sitecore

• Content Creators and Editors
  

  The panel module in Drupal enables drag and drop functionality. Drupal offers superior editing options with one of the options to use the full edit mode where any content item can be easily edited using CKEditor. And now with CKEditor 5 being used in Drupal 10 and above, authors and editors are in for a more enhanced experience. 

  Sitecore Experience Accelerator offers a UI (User Interface) that enables content editors to drag and drop various reusable elements onto the page. The editing is managed by Sitecore Experience Platform and Sitecore Experience Accelerator.  Sitecore Experience Platform provides editing tools, namely the content editor and experience editor. 

  Drupal offers flexibility in content grouping display because of its highly structured content and views module, which is part of its core. In addition, Sitecore's search utility displays content item grouping. Both are equally efficient editorially.

• Developers and Architects
  

  A Drupal developer requires proficiency in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the frontend and Object-oriented PHP and MYSQL

  Sitecore developer requires proficiency in .Net library, particularly C# and ASP. NET, along with expertise in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

• Marketers
  

  Drupal integrates with third-party marketing automation tools, giving marketers the flexibility to choose tools that best meet their requirements. The modules are available in Drupal for incorporating web personalization features. In addition, Drupal Commerce helps in setting up eCommerce websites.

  Sitecore CMS has integrated marketing automation, but integration with third-party tools is not its strong suit. It comes with integrated web personalization features. Ecommerce sites can be set up with the help of Sitecore commerce.

Drupal Outperforms Sitecore: A Glimpse into the Pros & Cons

• Cost
  Drupal is an open-source CMS that doesn’t require upfront license fees, unlike proprietary Sitecore CMS, which is costly. Drupal has multiple hosting options at different price points.

• Adoption
  Drupal websites are economical compared to Sitecore websites, due to which Drupal has relatively more market share and industry-wide adoption. About  5,50,000~ websites are using Drupal CMS, while Sitecore CMS powers 14,000~  websites.

• Vendor dependency
  As Sitecore CMS is a proprietary system, there is a higher dependency on vendors compared to Drupal CMS, which is vendor agnostic.

• Community
  Drupal has a strong community of more than 1,000,000 volunteers and sponsored contributors working collaboratively. A strong community presence adds more value in making Drupal a reliable platform and convinces enterprises that they can depend on community support to address technical issues and challenges. In addition, the community-created and peer-reviewed patches are instantly available. Whereas Sitecore only has user forums for developers, the community size is comparatively smaller, making it difficult to get quality support. 

We can help you get started with Drupal

Drupal is a cost-effective option with solid community support. It is hosting service agnostic and offers innumerable third-party integration. Drupal is an ideal platform for businesses that require a solution with seamless and complex integration. Before you choose a CMS, you need to consider cost, the time required for learning, development, and maintenance, and the support needed from vendors. 

We have expertise in Drupal-based website development and maintenance and have helped businesses across industries to create a robust digital presence. Get in touch with us right away to start working with Drupal, the best open-source CMS available in the market.