Why do we think Umbraco is a serious alternative to Drupal?

Drupal is no stranger to the CMS market. Many websites run Drupal as a CMS under the hood, but which version are you running now? If you are still wondering why is that important, you should definitely read on. Drupal, like any software product, is subject to change, and at the time of writing, Drupal is available under version 8.8.2.

If you work with Drupal 7 as an organization, you are therefore concretely two versions behind. If you still shrug your shoulders from it's only two versions, you should still read on.

Being two versions behind is something in the digital world that was most likely implemented a long time ago. Especially when you know that Drupal 8 was launched in 2013, which implies that Drupal 7 is much older.

Prevent your CMS from becoming insecure

Now it will be a while before Drupal 7 and 8 are really end of life. That's only November 1, 2021. Rest assured, your site can certainly function after this date, but security updates won't arrive unless you introduce customization. In short, your environment can be considered unsafe and you definitely want to prevent that. So there is work to be done, because before you know it will be November 1, 2021.

Explore the CMS market

But what are you going to do? Nowadays, Drupal 7 and 8 are no longer comparable to the current version. Maybe it's time to explore the market. We are happy to tell you how we, as a technical agency, look at the CMS market with our partners for digital solutions.

At Xuntos, we have also developed sites based on Drupal in the past. However, we stopped doing it because we experience that the market is becoming more and more mature and there is a demand for solutions that link relatively easily with underlying applications, often based on Microsoft.

Unnecessary costs for upgrading the CMS

Another reason was that we didn't find doing Drupal upgrades so easy. In general, it's a rule for developers that they mainly want to develop beautiful things and that upgrading should be easy, because that's the work you don't really want to spend too much time on. In addition, we also have to pass on these costs to the end customer, who we think would be better off investing their budget in, for example, new functionalities.

We have therefore carefully considered which CMS software we position for our customer groups. Our vision to implement and manage a CMS comes from the fact that we think from the user's point of view.

User-friendly CMS

This is because you can select a very user-friendly CMS that will make the editors happy, but if your web designer and developer faces all kinds of limitations when it comes to designing it and building new functionalities, you've really made the wrong choice. We have selected Content Management Systems that suit the different users who will be working with the CMS:

  • For editors intuitive, fast, wysiwyg editor, version control and very user-friendly;
  • For digital designers, no restrictions on designing what you want;
  • Developers can program with the latest proven techniques in which speed and safety provide robust solutions;
  • System administrators don't have to worry about performance, reliability, updates, and security in their cloud or vps environments;
  • Online marketers can work with tooling for personalization, A/B testing and SEO optimization support;

Umbraco, an alternative to legacy Drupal

At Xuntos, we have three Content Management platforms that we use depending on the business case. Our developers are trained and certified on the following platforms: Episerver, Kentico and Umbraco. We can then implement these platforms in a traditional, decoupled and headless way.

Umbraco is open source (just like Drupal) and a very interesting alternative to Drupal.

In short, if you are on the verge of a new site/digital platform, choosing the CMS is not an entirely unimportant one.

Will you stay loyal to Drupal or go back to the drawing board?

In any case, you must find answers to the following questions:

  • How many sites need to be replaced?
  • Do other sites run on other CMS systems?
  • Content quantity and what is static and what is dynamic?
  • Multilingualism, multiple countries?
  • Multi-channel publishing? Is your content also published on an app, kiosks and other digital locations that may also be managed by a CMS?
  • Personalization
  • Number of Editors/Marketers
  • Integration with other applications and systems
  • Open Source CMS or Closed Source

Learn more about Umbraco by watching it for yourself or getting to know Xuntos. Feel free to contact us. We arrange online demonstrations & trials of Umbraco and discuss your digital strategy with you.

Getting to know

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