I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had C-suite and Marketing Directors ask me, “What is the best CMS platform?” My answer never changes, “Depends on what needs to be done.” Tailoring your technology based on business needs is fundamentally important to the success of your business. You would never invest in a new hire for marketing and then expect them to cover software development and financial analyst roles – it wouldn’t make sense. Similarly, you need resources that are both specific and flexible enough to accommodate the needs of your business.
At Merkle, we work with our clients to understand and guide them towards the technology that fits their needs. Sometimes a client knows exactly what they need, like an AEM site or a new Sitecore 9 solution. However, we have some clients with very unique challenges that require thinking outside the box. This is where Drupal hosted on Acquia or Pantheon shines as an enterprise level CMS solution.
Customization on Drupal
Most people will have seen Drupal pop up on any list of free, open-source CMS solutions. The base Drupal solution is free with a thriving community. It becomes an enterprise level CMS when hosted on Acquia (the parent company of Drupal) or Pantheon. The base Drupal experience is magnified by cloud hosting on these platforms as the possibilities expand into what you would expect from an AEM or a Sitecore enterprise solution. The advantage for Drupal, however, comes from its innate customization. Development is needed on any enterprise CMS solution to it into what is needed for the business. AEM inherently stays in the Adobe Marketing stack, allowing it to be powerful, but very confined in solutioning. Sitecore is more flexible with solutions, but still has limitations. Drupal is the most customizable enterprise solution available by design. This means that mostly all marketing platforms will work with it including Google Analytics, Tableau, Shopify, SalesForce, HubSpot, BrightCove, Adobe Marketing Cloud, and many more. Functions such as Drupal Paragraphs allow you to make your own drag-and-drop solution.
Merkle has experience bringing highly customized solutions to scale utilizing Acquia, or Pantheon Drupal solutions. The Drupal Layout Builder setup brings the ease of AEM’s page builder to creative development challenges. Acquia also has a full suite of additional features that makes the experience simple, clean, and an amazing solution for challenging business needs.
Below is a useful chart to help you find the right solution based on your business needs:
