Craft CMS vs. Drupal: An In-Depth Look

Craft CMS and Drupal are both content management systems (CMS) that are used to build and manage websites. They are two powerful contenders that frequently find themselves in the comparison spotlight. They both stand out for their unique strengths, flexibility, and user experiences.

We'll dive into the key distinctions between Craft CMS and Drupal, exploring aspects such as ease of use, flexibility, scalability, cost, and customization options. Whether you're a developer seeking granular control over your website's architecture or a marketer looking for intuitive content creation tools, this guide will help you determine which CMS best fits your needs.

Craft CMS: Simplicity Meets Power

Craft CMS has built its reputation on providing a clean, intuitive user interface that simplifies the content creation and management process. Its dashboard is thoughtfully designed, offering a streamlined experience that allows users to navigate the system with minimal training. This makes it especially appealing to small and medium-sized businesses, marketing teams, and small-scale e-commerce sites that are needing a powerful yet more manageable platform.

Craft CMS also excels in providing a flexible content structure that doesn’t overwhelm users. Its visual interface allows content creators to intuitively build and organize pages, while features like “live preview” ensure users can see exactly how their changes will appear before publishing. This reduces the learning curve for non-technical users, empowering teams to manage their website content confidently without relying heavily on developers.

Drupal: Built for Complexity

Drupal offers a robust framework designed for more complex web projects that require advanced functionality and scalability. While this makes Drupal an excellent choice for large enterprises, government organizations, and educational institutions, it often comes at the cost of user-friendliness. Drupal’s interface is less intuitive and requires more technical knowledge to configure and manage effectively. Developers and technical teams may appreciate the flexibility Drupal offers, but non-technical users often face a steeper learning curve when performing routine content updates or making design changes.

For organizations that prioritize simplicity and want their marketing or content teams to manage the website independently, Craft CMS offers a more accessible solution that balances power with ease of use. Meanwhile, businesses that require intricate permissions, advanced data structures, or highly customized web experiences may find Drupal to be a better long-term investment, provided they have the technical resources or experienced and skilled agencies like Brilliance to manage it effectively.

Ultimately, choosing between Craft CMS and Drupal comes down to your organization's priorities. If your focus is on empowering content creators with an intuitive platform, Craft CMS stands out as a user-friendly choice. If scalability, complexity, and extensive customization are essential, Drupal may be the better fit, although it often demands a greater investment in technical expertise and ongoing maintenance.

Both Drupal and Craft CMS are highly customizable content management systems (CMS), but they offer different levels of customization.

Drupal is known for its extensive library of modules, offering a wider selection of plugins compared to Craft CMS. This larger ecosystem provides more options for customizing functionality, workflows, and content structures. With a broad and active developer community, Drupal can support complex requirements, making it a popular choice for larger organizations and institutions. However, the advanced customization available in Drupal often requires technical expertise, so businesses may need experienced developers to fully take advantage of its features

Craft CMS is also highly customizable, but it’s generally considered to be more user-friendly and easier to learn than Drupal. It prioritizes a content-first approach, giving developers complete control over the front-end experience while providing content editors with an intuitive, streamlined interface.

Craft CMS also excels at flexible content modeling, allowing users to build custom fields, content types, and templates with ease. While it may not have as vast a library of pre-built modules as Drupal, Craft CMS’s lightweight and modular approach allows developers to create tailored solutions without unnecessary complexity. For businesses that value a clean user interface combined with the ability to build customized experiences, Craft CMS strikes an ideal balance between power and accessibility.

At the end of the day, the verdict on ease of use largely depends on your team's composition. If you prioritize getting content editors up and running quickly with minimal friction, Craft CMS offers the smoother path. If your organization has technical resources dedicated to a CMS and requires sophisticated content modeling, Drupal's learning curve might be worth the climb.

As we mentioned, Craft CMS is often seen as the faster, more lightweight option compared to Drupal. It’s built with simplicity in mind, which means it runs smoothly right from the start. There are no heavy configuration or performance tweaks required, which means that websites built with it tend to load faster and feel more responsive out of the box.

This makes it a great fit for websites where speed is highly essential. Think websites that depend heavily on lead generation, which often need to grab visitors' attention quickly to keep them engaged. The same goes for portfolio websites, especially ones packed with high-quality images, video galleries, or interactive features. Craft CMS’s efficient design helps these visual-heavy sites maintain fast load times without sacrificing creativity or user experience.

Since Craft CMS doesn’t come with a bunch of extra features and plugins you may never use, developers can build exactly what’s needed without adding unnecessary bulk, meaning, it doesn’t rely heavily on plugins for basic functionality. Some CMS platforms like Wordpress lean heavily on third-party add-ons and plugins, which can add to longer site load times and increased bounce rates.

Drupal may not be as fast right out of the box as some lighter CMS platforms like Craft CMS, but that’s because it’s built for handling large-scale, data-heavy, and complex websites. Drupal thrives in environments where content is highly structured, interconnected, and frequently updated.

For example, take a college or university website that manages thousands of pages for different departments, faculty profiles, course details, and event calendars. Each of these content types may have its own unique structure, yet they all need to be linked together seamlessly. Drupal’s flexible content architecture makes this possible by allowing developers to create detailed content types, custom fields, and relationships between data points.

Similarly, government websites and enterprise portals often rely on Drupal because they require strict access controls, multiple user roles, and complex content moderation workflows. With Drupal’s advanced permission system, you can assign highly specific roles. So, one group can publish content, another can review it, and a third can only view certain sections. This level of control is crucial for large teams or organizations managing sensitive information.

If you’re aiming for a sleek, fast site with a simple content structure, Craft CMS is likely your best bet. But if your project demands something bigger, more powerful, and capable of managing complex content relationships, Drupal is hard to beat, as long as you’re prepared to put in some extra effort to fine-tune its performance.

Budget considerations inevitably influence CMS decisions, with costs extending beyond just licensing such as how much it takes to build your site and how much it costs to keep things running smoothly.

Craft CMS offers a simpler yet still highly customizable platform that’s more lightweight and optimized for performance. Its streamlined design generally means faster development time, which can help keep project costs down. The interface is intuitive and easy to work with as well, making it easier for developers to build and manage sites without getting bogged down in complexity.

Another big plus with Craft CMS is its lightweight nature. It’s optimized for performance, so it doesn’t need as much server power as Drupal. This often translates to lower hosting costs, which can lead to long-term savings.

Comparatively, the flexibility that Drupal offers can come at a price. Since Drupal’s structure is more intricate, you’ll likely need developers with specialized skills, which can push up development costs. On top of that, Drupal’s feature-rich setup can take longer to customize, especially if your project demands a lot of tailored functionality.

Hosting is another factor to consider. Because Drupal can be resource-heavy, it often requires a more powerful hosting plan to perform well. Whether that means managed hosting, dedicated servers, or other solutions, these added requirements can increase your ongoing costs.

Craft CMS: (Powered by Yii2)

Craft CMS runs on the Yii2 framework, a fast, secure, and efficient PHP framework designed for building robust web applications. Yii2 is open-source and licensed under BSD, which means it’s free to use and customize.

One of Yii2’s standout features is lazy loading, a clever performance trick that only loads the parts of your site that are needed at any given time. This keeps things running fast and efficiently, which is especially useful for content-heavy websites with lots of dynamic data.

Yii2 is also praised for its clean code structure and straightforward documentation, making it easier for developers (especially those familiar with modern PHP) to build and maintain websites. Since Yii2 leans on clear conventions rather than endless configuration, it tends to offer a smoother development experience.

While Yii2 may not have the same name recognition as some other frameworks, it’s well-respected for its performance, security, and simplicity, all of which contribute to Craft CMS’s reputation as a fast and reliable platform.

Drupal (Powered by Symfony)

On the other hand, Drupal is built on Symfony, a powerful and widely-used PHP framework designed for building everything from simple websites to complex applications, APIs, and web services.

What makes Symfony stand out is its modular architecture. Instead of being one big, all-in-one system, Symfony is made up of reusable components that developers can mix and match to create exactly what they need. This makes Symfony extremely flexible, perfect for building complex functionality or integrating with other systems.

Another advantage of Symfony is its thriving developer community. With thousands of contributors and extensive resources available, there’s no shortage of guidance, tutorials, and third-party tools to help developers solve problems and improve their skills.

That said, Symfony’s power comes with a learning curve. As a full-stack framework packed with advanced features like dependency injection, event dispatchers, and service containers, it can take some time for new developers to get the hang of it. For teams unfamiliar with Symfony, this learning curve can add time (and cost) to development.

At the end of the day, both frameworks are capable, and the best choice depends on your project’s needs, your team’s experience, and how complex your website will be.

If you’re after a sleek, intuitive platform that’s easy to manage, Craft CMS might be the way to go. If you’re building an application that includes a plugin that is already built on Symfony, Drupal could be the better fit.

At Brilliance, we’ve worked with both platforms for years, helping businesses create websites that not only look great but also perform well and are built to last. We know what works, what doesn’t, and how to match the right solution to your goals.

If you're still weighing your options, let's talk. We're more than happy to chat through your ideas, answer your questions, and help you figure out which CMS makes the most sense for your project.