Drupal is a free, open-source CMS for building flexible websites and web apps. See key features, hosting costs, pros and cons, and top CMS alternatives.
Drupal is a free, open-source content management system used to build everything from simple websites to complex, highly customized web applications, known for letting developers define fully custom content types and data structures rather than assuming a fixed site format.
Released under the GNU General Public License, Drupal core carries no licensing fee, and the platform is extended through thousands of community-built contributed modules and themes.
Drupal supports fully custom content types, fields, and taxonomies, along with a headless/decoupled architecture through built-in REST and JSON:API support for serving content to React, Vue, or mobile front ends.
A large contributed-module ecosystem adds capabilities like advanced SEO tools, e-commerce, workflow management, and multilingual support (Drupal ships with support for over 100 languages out of the box), while granular role-based permissions support complex editorial and governance workflows.
Drupal core is entirely free and open source, with no licensing cost to download, install, or modify the software. Real-world costs come from hosting, development time, and optional commercial support.
Commercial Drupal hosting and platform providers such as Acquia, Pantheon, and Platform.sh offer tiered plans ranging from modest per-site hosting to enterprise managed contracts priced in the thousands of dollars per month, while self-hosting on general infrastructure is also common.
Yes, Drupal core is entirely free and open source under the GNU General Public License. Costs come from hosting, development, and optional commercial support.
Drupal was created by Dries Buytaert, who released the software publicly in January 2001 after building it as a student project at the University of Antwerp.
Drupal is used to build websites and web applications ranging from simple sites to complex, highly customized platforms, and is especially popular with government agencies, universities, and large enterprises.
Drupal offers more flexibility for complex custom content structures and is favored by large, security-conscious organizations, while WordPress has a larger market share, a gentler learning curve, and is more common for smaller sites and blogs.
Yes, Drupal supports a fully headless or decoupled architecture through built-in REST and JSON:API capabilities, letting it serve content to any front-end framework.
Major commercial Drupal hosting and platform providers include Acquia (co-founded by Drupal's creator), Pantheon, and Platform.sh.