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Drupal vs HCL Connections comparison

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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

Drupal
Ranking in Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Web Content Management (5th)
HCL Connections
Ranking in Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Social Software (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) category, the mindshare of Drupal is 17.4%, up from 14.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HCL Connections is 6.0%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Drupal17.4%
HCL Connections6.0%
Other76.6%
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Hasnain Zahid - PeerSpot reviewer
Talent acquisition & development specialist at Software Productivity Strategists, Inc. (SPS)
A stable tool useful to manage marketing-related activities
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. Sometimes, the portal hangs because I find that if I am on a web page, I have to log out, and then I have to log in to the portal again. Since I see that the portal hangs at times, I have to move from one side of the portal to the next, making me feel that some things are scattered in the product. I attended a meeting with IBM recently, and they are improving a few of the things, in my opinion. The concerns that I have related to the product are being improved since I think many other users have reported issues similar to the ones I faced.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Drupal is the most powerful and flexible CMS."
"In the end, you’ll have a solid CMS platform with which to work."
"Drupal is the opposite, since it is not closed software and it does not rely on only one company."
"Significantly less time spent on production issues and maintaining existing functionality, translating into significantly more time adding new and enhanced functionality."
"The best things about Drupal are its extensibility and plug-ability."
"But it is worth it if you require an enterprise level web platform with great scalability, support, and security."
"The site was built on Drupal in three hours."
"I encourage others to use this product; it is a very powerful CMS tool with a lot of themes and modules and is great for enterprise use."
"IBM Connections is a great product, with new functionality each year."
"We used lots of products like wordpress to blog, docuwiki as wiki, bugtracker, todo apps and so on, but Connections delivers all of it integrated in one solution."
"It has really changed the way people work: File sharing, getting away from shared drives, being able to set up communities for information, and empowering business units to leverage support for their business units."
"IBM Connections Pink means a new way of collaboration, like you have never seen before."
"The ease of use has definitely improved the way my organization functions."
"Connections has assisted our business area with our Knowledge Management initiative, providing us with a tool that the staff can use to quickly find the information needed to process their day-to-day tasks and assist our customers, and it has also been valuable as a collaboration tool within our area that encourages our reps to participate within the community to ask questions and share their expertise."
"Our own ROI was within nine months, and we directly benefited from more knowledge sharing (and avoiding re-inventing the wheel) and shorter meetings."
"Marketing has created a community open to all internal employees where it has centralized all marketing content (brochures, presentations, communications)."
 

Cons

"Migration from one major version to the next major version requires significant effort."
"Modifying the themes (colors, dimensions, and pictures) could be easier."
"The version upgrading process is very painful. Moving to a new Drupal version involves much more than building and configuring the new site."
"The documentation on how to do things as a complete novice is only subpar in both Drupal 7 and 8."
"Overall business friendliness of the product: Digital experience features like target segmentation and campaign management have a long way to go."
"Unfortunately, with Drupal, there is a number of learning paradigms that you have to discover, which can make it difficult to understand as a newcomer."
"The user experience in designing layouts should be much easier or much more helpful."
"For specific use cases, there are bugs with its DB Query UI tables (Drupal Views)."
"Their testing, when they release new packs, is not where it should be. Their technical support suffers because of it."
"The administration part of the product could be increased."
"Communities, File sharing and keeping up to date via the Connections activity stream."
"We've had a few issues, but overall the stability has been pretty good."
"The platform is too dispersive and rigid. It should improve in usability and user interface customization by the user (personalized menu, communities to keep close at hand, always available files, and so on)."
"When your activity becomes really big, it can become unreliable and very slow."
"The support is an area where the product can improve...If you are having an issue on a Monday, the support personnel will contact you next Monday."
"The installation process is a bit complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would like to see better pricing."
Information not available
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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
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
18%
Construction Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Performing Arts
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with HCL Connections?
The support is an area where the product can improve. My company faces some support-related issues because whenever we create or generate a ticket, it takes two days for the product's support team ...
What is your primary use case for HCL Connections?
I use HCL Connections for marketing purposes. The IBM product in our company already provides us with direct links to the marketing and HR sides.
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM Connections, Lotus Connections
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Yamato Financial Co. Ltd., University of Zurich, Gwinnett County Public Schools, Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., Telus, Rabobank, Christian Brothers Services, Grupo Financiero Banorte, The Loft Group, Dow Water & Process Solutions, JGC Corporation, College of Medicine, Swansea University, solvito GmbH, Loft Group, Hamm-Reno Group GmbH, Geno SA
Find out what your peers are saying about Drupal vs. HCL Connections and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.