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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 (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) category, the mindshare of Drupal is 17.4%, up from 14.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HCL Connections is 6.0%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Drupal17.4%
HCL Connections6.0%
Other76.6%
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

"You can build websites on it very quickly."
"Drupal is the opposite, since it is not closed software and it does not rely on only one company."
"It is a very powerful tool for the developer's hands and also, it's very easy for the content editors to use."
"Drupal CMS helped in the realization of content-rich web sites that combine article presentation with sophisticated, back-end admin functionality."
"Previously, I have used a variety of solutions, including the custom ones, and I switched solutions because Drupal provides all the features that I need."
"Drupal’s extensible nature allows me to easily integrate with third-party hosted systems and pull or push data to those systems."
"Because of Drupal, we now have the ability to provide our customers with multilingual, multi-regional content to an extent that would not have been possible otherwise."
"Drupal 8 has an architecture that will scale well and better than previous versions, especially given big pipe."
"We just found this one to be the most feature-rich and also it fit our organization's needs."
"All the features above improve collaboration among employees."
"Sharing knowledge on IBM Connections will give you access to tap into all the knowledge that is accessible in your organization across the world."
"All social interaction between users is really great, and I also like the Community feature and that everything is accessible via mobile devices."
"IBM Connections Cloud gives us the opportunity to put files in one location for the people to get access to."
"Basically, Connections saves me time, lots of it."
"Communities are a popular way of combining blogs, wikis, files, and activities centered on a common objective or subject which proves popular and increases collaboration across people and teams."
"File sharing is the number one feature, as I can have a document or whatever live file I want everywhere, following me like a private cloud."
 

Cons

"I think Drupal has to improve the UX for some administrative pages, such as the modules list page."
"There were some stability issues, i.e., only with the new version, the main changes are not stable."
"Drupal 8 is only 1.5 years old. It has stability issues, but not major ones."
"Sometimes, you just have to read the code to understand how it works or how to use an API, which is not the best way to learn for everyone."
"Migration from one major version to the next major version requires significant effort."
"Unfortunately, with Drupal, there is a number of learning paradigms that you have to discover, which can make it difficult to understand as a newcomer."
"Overall business friendliness of the product: Digital experience features like target segmentation and campaign management have a long way to go."
"The version upgrading process is very painful. Moving to a new Drupal version involves much more than building and configuring the new site."
"It's a complicated setup, but then again it's built for enterprise and volumes."
"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."
"For instance, when you open a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, you just get a copy of it; you can't put it up again."
"It is complex. The way IBM sets up its product, you can never find one thing in one place."
"The product has a pretty flat structure for communities; they are in principle a long list."
"Their testing, when they release new packs, is not where it should be. Their technical support suffers because of it."
"Technical support is hit-and-miss. In general, the support staff is willing, but there is a large range of capabilities among them, from mediocre to excellent."
"I would like to have more control over the news delivery on the homepage. You now need a third-party app (we use XCC from Time To Act) for this."
 

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
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
18%
Construction Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Performing Arts
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: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.