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Adobe Experience Manager vs Drupal 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

Adobe Experience Manager
Ranking in Web Content Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Content Management (7th), Enterprise Social Software (5th), Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) (1st)
Drupal
Ranking in Web Content Management
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Web Content Management category, the mindshare of Adobe Experience Manager is 9.6%, down from 11.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Drupal is 5.8%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Content Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Adobe Experience Manager9.6%
Drupal5.8%
Other84.6%
Web Content Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2771634 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Program Manager /Senior Lead Solution Architech- Product Technology & Gen AI at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Have faced challenges with setup and pricing but have found flexibility and support helpful
Adobe Experience Manager needs more optimization. The frequency of components where we have vitals of a page or an app needs to be optimized because these are heavy Java codes along with some AEM developments. The code language should be optimized or they should have some string functions or web plugins to create a lighter version rather than implementing large amounts of code lines. They should start implementing industry best practices which are not currently offered. We perform our internal development for customization at our own pace. We have multiple frameworks that help us in various ways. We are advancing in terms of AI integration. We have already started our own POCs before Adobe implements these features.
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.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The search capability in Adobe Experience Manager is superior, as search capabilities are determined by the metadata, and it also has metadata automation using AI."
"The integration of customer behavior and website setup is impressive."
"The best feature is the experience fragment; if you want to replicate content across multiple websites with 1,000 or 20,000 pages, this feature helps accomplish it in a fraction of seconds."
"Adobe Experience Manager is one of the best enterprise-level content management and digital experience platforms available."
"I like the profiling and segmentation."
"Adobe Experience Manager has made document management smoother because many people use Adobe, making it simpler for me to modify and resend PDF documents."
"It's a complete package. You don't need to look elsewhere for digital marketing."
"Adobe Experience Manager is quite a powerful product that you can use to design files and export them."
"The feature I find most valuable is that Drupal is a framework and not only a CMS."
"We use a part of the solution called Acquia. The personalization portion of this is the most valuable aspect fo the solution."
"It is good for big projects."
"You can build websites on it very quickly."
 

Cons

"The licensing plus implementation and maintenance cost is very expensive, making it not suitable for small organizations, and the setup is very complex."
"Programming model could be improved, it's a monolithic solution."
"Adobe Experience Manager needs more optimization. The frequency of components where we have vitals of a page or an app needs to be optimized because these are heavy Java codes along with some AEM developments."
"There is a feature missing where if content is created on the UAT environment and needs to be transferred or synced to the production environment, there is no direct way of doing the sync."
"Adobe's technical support is so-so."
"The licenses are very expensive."
"The latest trend is to render everything in the client-side framework. For example, SPA or single page application. This is a feature that needs improvement. The cloud deployment pipeline needs to be improved as well."
"In comparison to other CMS products, Adobe Experience Manager is missing some capabilities such as proper versioning or a better versioning system and backend connectivity. If something is deleted in AEM, the user cannot recover it. You have to call technical support, and they will need to recover the whole instance. So, it's really difficult. For example, if you delete a page, you cannot recover it. There should be an option to recover it. In AEM, you have to go to the previous state of the instance itself or the virtual machine, and you have to restore everything, which is not good."
"It is a little bit simplified."
"The user experience in designing layouts should be much easier or much more helpful."
"I think the support needs to improve, as well as the integration with tracking and analytics systems."
"Digital experience features like target, segmentation, and campaign management have a long way to go."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a costly solution. I would rate the price at two out of five on a scale from one to five, where one is the most expensive and five is the most competitive."
"There's a free trial for one month for Adobe Experience Manager, which you can use for learning purposes, then, after the trial period, you'll need to purchase the license. Adobe offers a few plans for Adobe Experience Manager, but I'm unaware of how much my company is paying."
"It's really costly."
"Users have to pay a yearly licensing fee to use the solution, which is highly-priced."
"I would like to see better pricing."
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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
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
7%
Government
14%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Adobe Experience Manager?
It is easy to learn. You don't need to be an advanced Java developer.
What needs improvement with Adobe Experience Manager?
I think Adobe Experience Manager can be improved by making it simpler to use. I do not have anything specific in mind regarding needed improvements. I chose seven because if the app were simpler, I...
What is your primary use case for Adobe Experience Manager?
My main use case for Adobe Experience Manager is to share papers with colleagues and to edit PDF files. I use Adobe Experience Manager to share or edit documents with my colleagues because we work ...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Adobe Day CQ5, Ektron Social Marketing, Episerver Content Cloud, Adobe CQ5
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Metra
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Adobe Experience Manager vs. Drupal and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.