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Adobe Experience Manager vs Drupal comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Adobe Experience Manager
Ranking in Web Content Management
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Content Management (5th), Enterprise Social Software (5th), Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) (1st)
Drupal
Ranking in Web Content Management
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Web Content Management category, the mindshare of Adobe Experience Manager is 9.1%, down from 11.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Drupal is 5.9%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Content Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Adobe Experience Manager9.1%
Drupal5.9%
Other85.0%
Web Content Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2771634 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Program Manager /Senior Lead Solution Architech- Product Technology & Gen AI at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Have faced challenges with setup and pricing but have found flexibility and support helpful
Adobe Experience Manager needs more optimization. The frequency of components where we have vitals of a page or an app needs to be optimized because these are heavy Java codes along with some AEM developments. The code language should be optimized or they should have some string functions or web plugins to create a lighter version rather than implementing large amounts of code lines. They should start implementing industry best practices which are not currently offered. We perform our internal development for customization at our own pace. We have multiple frameworks that help us in various ways. We are advancing in terms of AI integration. We have already started our own POCs before Adobe implements these features.
it_user982032 - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
A good product that helps me to manage complex digital solutions
My advice to others would be that Drupal is not only a CMS, you need to learn the Drupal fundamentals before to start the project. Drupal is a handy tool whenever you work on a digital infrastructure broad project and not only a simple website. So if you have a big project, you can use Drupal. But if you have a small website, like a blog or simple website, my advice would be not to use Drupal, because Drupal is too complex and the cost to maintain the platform can be too high, related to the value of your website, for example. If you have a website with a big product catalog, for example, in many languages and in many countries in the world, then Drupal is good. But if you have a simple website, like a portfolio or five page-website, you can use many other technologies that'd be simple to maintain and implement. On a scale from one to 10, I will rate Drupal an eight. In the next release, I would like to see basic page buttons and better integration with the analytics platform. A drag and drop function to create simple pages will also be handy. For example, if a customer wants to create a landing page, it should be easy for him or her to do so. I would also like to see better translation management.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The integration of customer behavior and website setup is impressive."
"The most valuable features of Adobe Experience Manager include its capability to manage content and create reusable fragments."
"Easy to work with the solution."
"Adobe Experience Manager is one of the best enterprise-level content management and digital experience platforms available."
"I like the native applications such as Adobe Target, Adobe Analytics, and Adobe Experience Platform. Because of these, it's very easy to connect and obtain reports on how my website is doing, how many have visited it, how frequently, etc. The multiple publisher concept is one of the best parts of this solution."
"Adobe Experience Manager is quite a powerful product that you can use to design files and export them."
"Adobe Experience Manager is pretty stable."
"The best feature is the experience fragment; if you want to replicate content across multiple websites with 1,000 or 20,000 pages, this feature helps accomplish it in a fraction of seconds."
"You can build websites on it very quickly."
"The feature I find most valuable is that Drupal is a framework and not only a CMS."
"It is good for big projects."
"We use a part of the solution called Acquia. The personalization portion of this is the most valuable aspect fo the solution."
 

Cons

"There is a feature missing where if content is created on the UAT environment and needs to be transferred or synced to the production environment, there is no direct way of doing the sync."
"The solution's pricing and stability could be improved."
"In comparison to other CMS products, Adobe Experience Manager is missing some capabilities such as proper versioning or a better versioning system and backend connectivity. If something is deleted in AEM, the user cannot recover it. You have to call technical support, and they will need to recover the whole instance. So, it's really difficult. For example, if you delete a page, you cannot recover it. There should be an option to recover it. In AEM, you have to go to the previous state of the instance itself or the virtual machine, and you have to restore everything, which is not good."
"A little bit of background knowledge of coding and website structure is required."
"The latest trend is to render everything in the client-side framework. For example, SPA or single page application. This is a feature that needs improvement. The cloud deployment pipeline needs to be improved as well."
"Tool-wise, the Adobe Experience Manager support team is not very responsive when the user face issues in AEM as a Cloud Service."
"Adobe Experience Manager could improve by allowing the reuse of components like a progress bar across multiple pages to make the development process more efficient."
"The licensing plus implementation and maintenance cost is very expensive, making it not suitable for small organizations, and the setup is very complex."
"The user experience in designing layouts should be much easier or much more helpful."
"Digital experience features like target, segmentation, and campaign management have a long way to go."
"It is a little bit simplified."
"I think the support needs to improve, as well as the integration with tracking and analytics systems."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There's a free trial for one month for Adobe Experience Manager, which you can use for learning purposes, then, after the trial period, you'll need to purchase the license. Adobe offers a few plans for Adobe Experience Manager, but I'm unaware of how much my company is paying."
"It's a costly solution. I would rate the price at two out of five on a scale from one to five, where one is the most expensive and five is the most competitive."
"It's really costly."
"Users have to pay a yearly licensing fee to use the solution, which is highly-priced."
"I would like to see better pricing."
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Comparison Review

it_user8925 - PeerSpot reviewer
Developer with 51-200 employees
Aug 23, 2013
Jive vs Sharepoint vs Drupal Commons
At Mediacurrent we often get requests to compare Drupal to other platforms used for intranet sites and social business platforms (like https://dev.twitter.com/ for example). This is often referred to as “Social Business Software”, which has grown in popularity in recent years. I decided to do a…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
14%
Government
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Adobe Experience Manager?
It is easy to learn. You don't need to be an advanced Java developer.
What needs improvement with Adobe Experience Manager?
Moving forward, if Adobe implements AI tools wherein a vendor or a stakeholder comes in and gives instructions, they could develop a page or a whole site accordingly in a few minutes or a few days,...
What is your primary use case for Adobe Experience Manager?
Adobe Experience Manager is used for developing components, content management, and developing experience fragments and content fragments. Assets are used for the DAM for storing files and document...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Adobe Day CQ5, Ektron Social Marketing, Episerver Content Cloud, Adobe CQ5
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Metra
BMJ, The Economist, New Republic, SpaceX, Lush, Danone, Tesla Motors, Peugeot, Stanford Law, Harvard, Oxford University, MIT Media Lab, The Beatles, MTV UK, The Weather Channel, NBC, BBC, grammy.com, Mus_e du Louvre, Whitehouse.gov, London.gov.uk, Gouvernment.fr, New Zealand Government, The Prince of Wales, British Council, NYC Metropolitan Transport Authority, Gatwick Obviously
Find out what your peers are saying about Adobe Experience Manager vs. Drupal and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.