CMS battle between Drupal and EPiServer. Summary: If online service is your core business, Drupal is a strong platform for accelerating your own type of development—even a very unique and magnificent one. It is no coincidence that media companies are big players in the Drupal camp. Drupal's model is also well applicable to extremely multi-channel publishing and performance. If your online service is primarily sales and marketing oriented, EPiServer's product features should get you excited. Web teams producing multi-language marketing sites, in particular, should consider EPiServer as a power tool.

1. Drupal vs.
EPiServer
– CMS battle between two strong
players in Finland (2014)
2014-05-19 / Helsinki, Finland
Perttu Tolvanen, Web & CMS Expert, @perttutolvanen

2. CMS market in Finland
North Patrol Oy2
Local
CMS
players
Liferay
WordPress
SharePoint
Drupal
eZ
Publish
EPiServer
Sitecore
Heavy-weight
CMSs (eg.
Oracle, SDL
Tridion)

3. Decision criteria
1. Typical scenarios (web / extra / online store / etc.)
2. Product "character" (platform / product / service / ecosystem)
3. Expectations for customer's team
4. Partners in Finland
5. Other support and service network
6. Hosting solutions and pricing
7. Developers' view (coder requirements)
8. Ecosystem (add-ons, global network)
9. The future
10. Project price range and licenses

4. 1. Typical scenarios
• Drupal
– Extensive online service entities comprising
several sites, such as large media companies
– Centralized content management typical, for
example media company videos and similar
common content
– Extranet-type services requiring log-on that
include large amounts of structured content
(for example, data banks)
– Custom-made community sites
– Custom-made online stores
• EPiServer
– Extensive, multi-language online service
entities, such as the main sites of large
corporations
– Content producers often dominate site
content management as structural
management and multi-language
management well supported by system
– Some intranets (especially in Sweden) and
simple online stores (especially in Sweden)

5. 2. Product "character"
• Drupal
– Includes almost nothing out-of-the-box, not
even a WYSIWYG editor
– Package assembled for each individual
customer case from the viewpoint of the
service, things can be solved in many ways
– Ecosystem includes thousands of versatile
plugins with wide expandibility (if
competencies available)
– Between a framework and CMS
– "Everything can be made to work with some
plugin or add-on"
– Aptly described as "a set of building blocks"
– There is no one single "Drupal way"
• EPiServer
– A strongly performing product for content
editing and site structure management
– Has clear "construction principles"
– A few dozen commercial and free add-ons,
some very versatile and valuable (for
example ActiveStandards, SiteAttention)
– Consistent, steady product development,
product management works reasonably well
– The product has clear-cut models to achieve
a multitude of goals, which are worth
making use of—unfortunately, though, even
integrators don't always know which is a
good model to use and which isn't

6. 3. Expectations for customer's team
• Drupal
– Content producers focus on content, not
appearance or optimization
– Content producers usually have limited
possibilities to manage things like front
pages or how the site works in general
– The service is a system running like a
machine, preferably developed through a
"product owner" like a software product
– The best efficiency is achieved if in-house
Drupal coding competency available, but an
active partnership gets you far and gets
done whatever you wish!
• EPiServer
– Content producers are also editors who
optimize, preview and experiment
– Content producers are able to, for example,
manage front pages and creating "highlight
systems" of their own
– The service is a website that content
producers and web producers can manage
and develop very independently, for
example build a variety of targeted content
highlights, content blocks visible only in
certain situations etc. (if they know how to)
– Partners needed mainly for creating
additional apps and customization

7. 4. Partners in Finland
• Drupal
– The strongest: Exove, Wunderkraut
– Others: Activeark JWT, Druid, Tieto plus
dozens of smaller organizations
– To be noted: A relatively strong Finland-
centered community that gets together,
organizes, discusses; including clients
• EPiServer
– The strongest: Solita, Tieto, Sininen
Meteoriitti, Creuna Finland, KnowIt
– Others: CGI, HiQ, Tietotalo and about a
dozen smaller companies
– To be noted: EPiServer country office with
three employees is exceptionally active

8. 5. Other support and service network
• Drupal
– A worldwide community that discusses,
distributes code, develops the platform and
organizes gigantic seminars
• EPiServer
– Has its own support organization that
provides education and support when
needed; however, rather sporadically in
practice

9. 6. Hosting solutions and pricing
• Drupal
– Hosting requires specialist know-how, and
good hosting costs money
– Few off-the-shelf solutions despite platform
popularity
– Requires in-depth familiarization and often
building your own environment
• EPiServer
– EPiServer's own Everweb is the choice of the
overwhelming majority, the specialized
hosting includes CDN support and
application-level support
– Absolutely not cheap but a good deal
considering the price-quality ratio—which is
why Everweb is usually chosen by even large
corporations

10. 7. Developer view
• Drupal
– Learning curve several months even for
experienced PHP developers due to
extensive system
– Somewhat similar to SharePoint in its
layered construction, because many times
"things just have to be done like this,
because it's Drupal"
– Add-on experience is developers' most
valuable intangible capital, which is why
developers like big companies (Drupal is not
a lone rider's tool)
– Best Drupal developers are front-end/back-
end hybrids, because Drupal's theme layer is
inseparably married to its functionality
• EPiServer
– An experienced .Net developer will get the
hang of the system in a couple of weeks
– .Net development competencies are totally
applicable in the EPiServer environment (if
totally customized results are sought after)
– The best EPi coders are also well versed in
front-end development; in general, template
creation and system setup is a front-end
coder's job anyway  a potential problem is
that there are few such people available

11. 8. Ecosystem
• Drupal
– Thousands of add-ons, new ones being
created all the time
– Genuinely open-source code
– If the community includes others trying to
solve the same problem, your add-on may
be taken further by others
• EPiServer
– Not a working market for extensions and
add-ons  focuses on commercial
extensions
– Some code snippets and instructions
available online, but not much

12. 9. The future
• Drupal
– Will challenge big players, with a mission to
reach world dominance for big sites
– Strong community, but with a very
developer-driven culture  all-embracing
generalism instead of precision solutions
• EPiServer
– Strong in the Nordic countries, no success to
speak of in the US or Central Europe
– Business relies on hosting, some analysts
even say license business is going down
– In Finland, very strong

13. 10. Project price range and licenses
• Drupal
– The market in earnest begins at €70k
projects
– Typical projects around €100–200k
– Necessary to pour more money into
development and maintenance than the
average CMS; generally we're talking about
minimum budgets of a few thousand per
month
• EPiServer
– The market starts at the €100k level because
the licenses alone require usually tens of
thousands of euros
– Typical projects usually around €100-200k
– Price for large projects head-to-head with
Drupal
– EPiServer typically less expensive in the long
run as clients can use product features more
independently

14. To summarize:
• If online service is your core business, Drupal is a strong platform for accelerating
your own type of development—even a very unique and magnificent one. It is no
coincidence that media companies are big players in the Drupal camp. Drupal's
model is also well applicable to extremely multi-channel publishing and
performance.
• If your online service is primarily sales and marketing oriented, EPiServer's product
features should get you excited. Web teams producing multi-language marketing
sites, in particular, should consider EPiServer as a power tool.

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