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Drupal vs HCL Connections 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

Drupal
Ranking in Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
3rd
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 (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) category, the mindshare of Drupal is 18.3%, up from 15.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HCL Connections is 6.0%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Drupal18.3%
HCL Connections6.0%
Other75.7%
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

"With over 23,000 contributed modules, there’s a high chance that any feature you want has already been built, and is available for you to use at no cost."
"You can build websites on it very quickly."
"Drupal could be chosen not only for its adaptability and ability to tackle big website projects, but for its core functionalities, which are unmatched in the free software CMS world."
"The best things about Drupal are its extensibility and plug-ability."
"The feature I find most valuable is that Drupal is a framework and not only a CMS, and I like that it's a good product to manage complex digital solutions."
"It is a very powerful tool for the developer's hands and also, it's very easy for the content editors to use."
"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."
"We use a part of the solution called Acquia, and the personalization portion of this is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"The possibility to share files in a unified way helps our organization."
"IBM Connections is a good product with many functions."
"All the features above improve collaboration among employees."
"The most valuable features of Connections would be that it opens up communication silos that previously existed in the company, so that people have the opportunity to discover talents and interests in other areas that may not pertain to their normal job function."
"The most valuable feature is the Activity flow that is used to catch new activities."
"The most valuable features of this solution are that it provides a space for team collaboration, sharing, security, and a standard language within the company."
"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."
"IBM Connections is a great product, with new functionality each year."
 

Cons

"The GUI is still not as intuitive as WordPress."
"I think the support needs to improve, as well as the integration with tracking and analytics systems."
"It has to improve the speed of the admin section. Sometimes you will get stuck while updating the configurations, especially because it uses AJAX in the interface."
"Overall business friendliness of the product: Digital experience features like target segmentation and campaign management have a long way to go."
"The technical support is below average as compared to all the other products."
"It needs better and more themes available for download, like you have in WordPress."
"Modifying the themes (colors, dimensions, and pictures) could be easier."
"Sometimes, you just have to read the code to understand how it works or how to use an API, which is not the best way to learn for everyone."
"For us in the IBM Connections Cloud, we would like to use the capability for instant messages, but we need to have the groups sync up to the cloud from the on-premise, which it doesn't do at this point of time."
"From the sharing perspective, it is very clunky. It's very hard to share files and very hard to share content."
"For our Knowledge Management initiative, it would benefit to have capabilities within the tool to have one single source of information that allows access to the information needed based on the user’s role within the organization."
"For once, I would like to see better support for files."
"The perfect software doesn't exist, but I think Connections is really a good piece of software with few things lacking."
"I understand this is about IBM making money. But I want all the features/capabilities in the base package."
"The different Features (Blog, Wiki, Forum, ...) do not behave equally e.g. how they handle files or links."
"Most Connections functionality must be customized and personalized but it is more expensive to customize this product, and the product does necessarily provide the widespread coverage that a customer may seek."
 

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
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
10%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
20%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
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: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.