What is Drupal?
Drupal is an open source content management system that allows the development of websites offering a wide range of functionality. Globally there are over 1 million websites developed on the Drupal platform. Being Open source, Drupal is maintained by a global community of developers, this is estimated at more than 100,000.
Functionality delivered by Drupal includes eCommerce solutions, Booking engines, Intranets, Learning Management Systems, Training sites as well as basic information websites. It is fair to say that the solutions able to be delivered by Drupal are constrained only by your imagination. The Drupal platform offers a framework for development that ensures consistency between developer contributions, meaning the solutions delivered are robust and work seamlessly together.
Proprietary CMS
Proprietary content management systems while still available in a range of guises are quickly becoming legacy alternatives for people wishing to develop a cutting edge web experience for their visitors. These content management systems while offering some custom functionality suffer in comparisons made against open source alternatives, the sheer development power able to be harnessed on an open source project can never be matched on a Proprietary platform and as an example Drupal 7 currently has over 10,000 actively maintained modules available to it.
Proprietary Content Management Systems are scrambling to add features that allow them to remain attractive to customers; their main objective being to lock their customers into long term contracts with limited options to move.
Choice
An open source solution differs from a proprietary solution in that you, the customer owns the delivered solution. With a proprietary site you often only own the content and this means you are tied to your developer. Choice is limited when you want to change direction or partners. For this reason alone the Open source alternative offers a compelling reason to be selected as your development platform.
At Koda we are firm believers that by using Open Source solutions we are always delivering our best, we are measured on our service, and if we don't deliver consistently on our commitments then our customers have a choice. As a result we'd like to think our delivery exceeds our customers expectations more often than not. With proprietary solutions, you are restricted from moving and you get a service experience that may not be quite what you would expect.
Compare
As the customer you have an opportunity before you make the commitment to invest in your new website to compare what is available. For the non technical person this can be daunting, however we firmly believe that it will be worth your while doing so. Based on a comparison between the features offered, flexibility to change and expected costs to support and maintain we are 100% confident that you will have no doubt about Open Source platforms for the development of your new Website.
If you'd like to take advantage of our expertise and discuss the options available with an open source solution for your new website we would welcome the chance to discuss available options in more detail: