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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 (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) category, the mindshare of Drupal is 15.9%, up from 14.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HCL Connections is 5.7%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Drupal15.9%
HCL Connections5.7%
Other78.4%
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

"But it is worth it if you require an enterprise level web platform with great scalability, support, and security."
"Drupal CMS helped in the realization of content-rich web sites that combine article presentation with sophisticated, back-end admin functionality."
"You can build websites on it very quickly."
"Drupal is an open source content management system which provides an easy installation process, a good range of modules for features' expansion, as well as a supportive community that will help resolve issues that you face with Drupal."
"It is a very powerful tool for the developer's hands and also, it's very easy for the content editors to use."
"At Appnovation Technologies we leverage Drupal’s out of the box features and functionality in order to speed up development and delivery time for our clients."
"Drupal’s extensible nature allows me to easily integrate with third-party hosted systems and pull or push data to those systems."
"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."
"Our productivity has increased by using IBM Connections."
"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."
"The solution is useful for team engagement and team collaborations, so that everyone is working together towards the same objective and we are using the best practices among ourselves, sharing and craft sourcing."
"The platform allows in a very easy way to create community and start collaborating."
"The Files feature has really changed the way we do business."
"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."
"The integration of all tools delivered by the platform itself is the most valuable feature of this product, in addition to its ability to integrate with already available default infrastructure tools within the company (like central directories (LDAP’s), load balancer infra or HTTP infra, which is already in place)."
"Especially in a distributed organisation like us, it helps to enhance collaboration and gain faster business results."
 

Cons

"Migration from one major version to the next major version requires significant effort."
"Drupal 8 can be somewhat complex to set up because of the supporting technologies that should be installed, such as Composer, Drush, and Drupal Console."
"Drupal community and forums are not as easy and straightforward as Wordpress, the number of areas covered by existing plugins should be larger, and it is resource hungry compared to Wordpress."
"Modifying the themes (colors, dimensions, and pictures) could be easier."
"I think Drupal has to improve the UX for some administrative pages, such as the modules list page."
"We had stability issues. I have a lot of 'Out of memory' issues."
"Since Drupal is not developed for any specific use cases, it has some learning curve and requires effort to learn."
"The technical support is below average as compared to all the other products."
"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)."
"The improvement's are could be more flexibility to manage files and to have a sync file area more intuitive and which respects the characteristics of other similar solutions."
"I was involved in the setup process to an extent. It was quite complex."
"File management is a little poor."
"For once, I would like to see better support for files."
"The mobile, Outlook, and desktop Plug-ins associated with this product need to be improved."
"The inclusion of a file plugin for Windows Explorer would make it easier to use."
"With the Connections desktop plugin, right now, when we copy files over, we have to do it individually and create our folder structure; we can't just copy our folders over and have them all exist."
 

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
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
18%
Construction Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
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: November 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.