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Drupal for charity websites?

Natalia Byng Solicitor at Maternity Action Posted 1 year ago

Hi all, I am wondering if anyone can help. We are considering moving from Wordpress to Drupal for our website. I just wondered if anyone had experience of Drupal and would recommend for a small charity? Any thoughts, pros or cons would be helpful. Thanks in advance 😊

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Rahoul Naik Staff PANEL

Trustee at CPRE Leicestershire | First Step | SPMT 1 year ago

Don't do it 😅

Hi, Natalia

I've just been working with an organisation that had a Drupal website and we've been moving them over to Webflow. The Drupal website had been built pretty shoddily but the biggest issues were:

- Team's independence and confidence in making changes on the website

- Difficulty in keeping the tech up-to-date vs. others in the industry

- Creating an engaging website that could capture users' imagination.

We've recommended Webflow to a number of charities/orgs as it's modern, cost-effective, looks slick (it's almost hard to make a bad Webflow website) and will future-proof your website (no more bi-yearly refreshes).

Wordpress is a stronger open-source CMS option vs Drupal but I'd always suggest taking a look at Webflow.

Happy to chat further if you have more questions 👍

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Jon Stutfield Staff PANEL

Volunteer Digital Consultant at Various 1 year ago

Hi Natalia

As well as being a charity volunteer and board member, I'm also the CEO of a digital agency. We use Drupal and Wordpress, but normally recommend Drupal. It's got a lot going for it - it's more scaleable, secure and reliable. However, there are some things you need to take into consideration:

Drupal is more complex for developers. It's also not as popular as Wordpress. This means that hiring in-house development staff will be more difficult.
However, the admin interface of Drupal is much better, so onboarding your admin team is easier.
Drupal developers tend to be more expensive, as they are more highly skilled, and will generally follow better development practices. I'd argue that this is a good thing, but it will seem like an overkill for a simple, small-scale website.
Drupal's community are great, but Wordpress's popularity means that there is a much larger ecosystem of plugins.
Drupal is more of a toolbox of raw components. This makes it very powerful in the right hands, allowing complex bespoke solutions to be created. Wordpress comes with more out of the box, but isn't as scaleable or flexible as a result.

The most important thing is to make sure you have good developers - this is true of any platform. Ask your agency for references, so you can see how past clients have found their service. And ask for a demo of the platform, so that you can see how they use Drupal - no two Drupal sites are the same.

Good luck!

Jon

CEO, Bliss (digital agency for non-profits)

Digital Director, Parental Engagement Network (educational non-profit)

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Clare Sulley Staff PANEL

Operations & Finance Manager at Child.org 1 year ago

Hi Natalia, We've just moved from Drupal to Wordpress! We used to have some digital-savy employees on our team who were able to maintain and use Drupal with no issues. However, since they have left, we struggled with the limitations of our website and were in need of something much simpler. We were finding we had lots of restrictions about what we could edit on our website. This could have been to do with our developer and how the site was set up. However, now we have moved to Wordpress, the team are so much happier. From my experience, Drupal is great for those who come with a digital background, but not so easy for those who don't. If you've got any more questions, don't hesitate to reach out!

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Robb Masters Staff PANEL

Former charity Chair; current volunteer (and commercial MD) at various. 1 year ago

Hi Natalia,

I've been working in website development for almost 30 years, and with Drupal for the last 15.

While I'll use other platforms too (such as Magento for websites that are focused on e-commerce), I'm a big fan of Drupal, and have delivered Drupal solutions for a number of charities. While your developers shouldn't be needed for day-to-day updates after the site has been delivered, you should budget for them to be able to carry out regular software updates on an ongoing basis (and probably for, say, campaigns that require new designs or functionality).

The other concerns that Rahoul highlights are not inherent to Drupal. (And I'd have to strongly disagree regarding WordPress!) But I've certainly seen some "sub-optimal" Drupal builds in my time, so can understand reservations based on a poor experience. Nevertheless, there are good reasons that Drupal is so popular within the third sector.

Happy to answer any specific questions you may have.

Best wishes,

Robb

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