Drupal vs. KalioCommerce

We developed a corporate website using Drupal, which features a large number of static pages and several dynamic functions, including a contact us form, location finder, and job posting. We utilized Drupal with some customization to achieve the desired functionalities. We have also worked on e-commerce sites using Drupal, and there is a scope for improvements, specifically in cataloging.

Incentivized

Well suited for large companies that have specific needs, and need multiple customization options, and cannot be confined by other easier to use, but less powerful CMS options. But small businesses and other smaller websites would have no need for all the extra features. It is best to ask yourself exactly how much do you need from your CMS and will all the extra options slow your website load times down

• Content Types... these are amazing. Whereas a more simplistic CMS like Wordpress will basically allow you to make posts and build pages, Drupal 8 gives you the ability to define different types of content that behave differently, and are served up differently in different areas of the website.
• Extensibility... it scales, ohhhh does it scale. They've really figured out server-side caching, and it makes all the difference. Once a page has been cached, it's available instantly to all users worldwide; and when coupled with AWS, global redundancy and localization mean that no matter where you're accessing the site, it always loads fast and crisp.
• Workflows... you have the ability to define very specific roles and/or user-based editorial workflows, allowing for as many touchpoints and reviews between content creation and publication as you'll require.

Incentivized

• They make it easy to create pages for each product.
• They have a variety of customization options to tailor to the needs of your website.
• Changes can be made from one part of the site, to the entire site, with ease.

• Security and new release notifications are a hassle as they happen too often
• Allowing them to write PHP modules is a big advantage, but sometimes integrating them is a small challenge due to the version the developer is working on.
• Steep learning curve, but worth it

Incentivized

• Because Kalio has a growing client base, I find them a bit understaffed. The speed at which our company was growing, we needed to lean on them more, but they weren't always able to deliver because of the sheer volume of requests compared to their staff.
• It's difficult to physically write code within the space they have provided. I find that I have to copy and paste the code into a different text editor to read it better.

I really like Drupal, and besides the one major issue with not being able to update from version 6 to version 7 and I am happy to continuing using it. Hopefully as time goes on they will make it easier to upgrade or provide better tools for mid-level web designers like myself to build out new sites without the help of expensive 3rd party's.

By re-platforming, we could potentially lose over 2 years. The first 6-12 months in physically moving the website over to another service, and then another 6-12 months in learning the new service and all of its intricacies. We found we wouldn't gain much by being stagnant for possibly 2 years

It has a very steep learning curve. When starting with Drupal, the functionality and setup have to be learned, which is complex in comparison to tools like WordPress. Drupal is more powerful and can create a wider range of applications, but it definitely has a learning curve. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to make a dynamic web application bigger than the scale of a WordPress blog.

Incentivized

Drupal itself does not tend to have bugs that cause sporadic outages. When deployed on a well-configured LAMP stack, deployment and maintenance problems are minimal, and in general no exotic tuning or configuration is required. For highest uptime, putting a caching proxy like Varnish in front of Drupal (or a CDN that supports dynamic applications).

Drupal page loads can be slow, as a great many database calls may be required to generate a page. It is highly recommended to use caching systems, both built-in and external to lessen such database loads and improve performance. I haven't had any problems with behind-the-scenes integrations with external systems.

Incentivized

As noted earlier, the support of the community can be rather variable, with some modules attracting more attraction and action in their issue queues, but overall, the development community for Drupal is second to none. It probably the single greatest aspect of being involved in this open-source project.

Incentivized

I was part of the team that conducted the training. Our training was fine, but we could have been better informed on Drupal before we started providing it. If we did not have answers to tough questions, we had more technical staff we could consult with. We did provide hands-on practice time for the learners, which I would always recommend. That is where the best learning occurred.

The on-line training was not as ideal as the face-to-face training. It was done remotely and only allowed for the trainers to present information to the learners and demonstrate the platform online. There was not a good way to allow for the learners to practice, ask questions and have them answered all in the same session.

Plan ahead as much you can. You really need to know how to build what you want with the modules available to you, or that you might need to code yourself, in order to make the best use of Drupal. I recommend you analyze the most technically difficult workflows and other aspects of your implementation, and try building some test versions of those first. Get feedback from stakeholders early and often, because you can easily find yourself in a situation where your implementation does 90% of what you want, but, due to something you didn't plan for, foresee, or know about, there's no feasible way to get past the last 10%

Incentivized

Drupal's capabilities outpace WordPress by miles. Drupal is more customizable, scales better for larger companies and has advanced content types. If you own a small business or work at a startup company, I would recommend WordPress but if your firm is trying to scale and you have more than 50 employees I would recommend Drupal.

Incentivized

Having used Magento and Joomla in the past to manage websites, the KalioCommerce platform allows access to much deeper levels of the platform to better customize it for our needs. In addition, the platform is much more robust, able to handle complex, huge product catalogs, and is more flexible in terms of integration with other tools and services.

Drupal is well known to be scalable, although it requires solid knowledge of MySQL best practices, caching mechanisms, and other server-level best practices. I have never personally dealt with an especially large site, so I can speak well to the issues associated with Drupal scaling.

Incentivized

• Drupal helped us launch a creative, marketing- and product-focused website with custom coding integrations tailored to our goals.
• Drupal allows us to rely on secure and consistently updated core code.
• Drupal's code taxing on the server does start to get a bit heavy as you go along with customizations, so at some point, we decided to stop. We want to ensure our Google Page Score remains high, including paying close attention to page load speed.

Incentivized

• Increased efficiency for my team in regards to keeping the website content updated, ensuring all products are available
• Better customer experience as a direct result of the ease and ability to implement any tools or functionality we want
• Deeper insights into our business as a result of combined analytics available