Drupal Starshot: Setting new standards in CMS market

New competition

The power of Drupal is its flexibility: you can use the CMS for any type of project – simple content sites, but also multisites or headless omnichannel ecosystems. However, if we look at large enterprise customers, we see that Drupal is no longer the first choice. Roughly 10 years ago, Drupal was always an excellent choice to meet the needs of a large enterprise. But as technology (MACH) and customer needs (DXP) evolved, new CMSs came into the picture. They responded better to these new needs and Drupal lost ground.

Even for smaller SME projects with more limited budgets – such as simple content sites – Drupal was suddenly no longer number one. It lacked the out-of-the-box options to convince these customers, who often found the investment costs a bit too high. Add a lack of real marketing tools (visual building, SEO feedback...) and you understand why Drupal was suddenly a lot less popular. From being the better choice for almost every project, Drupal became one of the many CMS options, shoulder to shoulder with WordPress, Sitecore, AEM ...

Loyal Drupal partner

At iO we still strongly believe in the power of Drupal. That is why we offer an out-of-the-box set of functionalities that we can use for the different tiers of projects. This way, we not only reduce the cost price when developing a new website, we can also compete with enterprise CMS systems. This approach pays off: by showing our solution we often convince customers to choose Drupal.

If we don't do that, customers might choose Drupal less often. It makes sense: the CMS pool from which they fish is bigger than ever. In our opinion, those who have no experience with Drupal as a CMS and still need to be convinced through research, will easily opt for other – better marketed – solutions.

More about our Drupal partnership

New standard for Drupal projects

This is precisely why we are so excited about the arrival of Starshot: it proves that Drupal is investing more in marketing and out-of-the-box functionalities that can convince people of the power of the CMS. Starshot is a great first step towards regaining that top-of-mind position. Moreover, it will also give the core principles of a CMS more direction for the Drupal community. It sets a new standard for Drupal projects.

From the words of Dries Buytaert we can understand that Starshot is mainly aimed at making it easier for people to build relatively simple content websites. How big is the impact for us as an agency? iO has actually been working with its own kind of Starshot for years, so we don't think we will immediately feel the added value of Drupal Starshot. We already offer the out-of-the-box functionalities and many of our customers are moving towards enterprise customers.

Promising first step

Is Drupal now on track to once again become the CMS reference?
With Starshot, it is clearly positioning itself as a CMS for simpler content sites.

So Drupal seems to want to compete primarily with CMS systems aimed at the more simple content sites.

For me, Drupal has always fallen between the various choices on the CMS market in recent years, and this doesn't really seem likely to change anytime soon. But it is clear that it is a first step in working toward a more comprehensive toolset.

Two things stand out in this regard. A concrete plan of action, and a firm deadline they have set themselves.

So it is clear that Dries & the Drupal community feel the same urgency as we do. To put Drupal back at the top of the leaderboard, it's time to act.

Any questions or comments? Contact me using the form below.

Image source: drupal.org