Drupal vs Network Solutions: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

Between Drupal and Network Solutions, Drupal emerges as the more versatile and powerful option, despite its steeper learning curve.

• 
  Drupal (Overall Grade: 6.4/10)
  
  excels in providing a flexible and extensive platform for web development. Its open-source nature allows for a high degree of customization, supported by a vast array of modules and themes. Drupal is particularly strong in areas like ecommerce, website editors, plugins and integrations, and security, making it suitable for users looking for a robust CMS capable of creating complex websites. However, its complexity may pose challenges for beginners.
• 
  Network Solutions (Overall Grade: 5.4/10)
  
  offers a more user-friendly approach, with a focus on simplicity and ease of use, making it a good choice for small businesses and individuals. While it scores lower in customization and advanced features compared to Drupal, it provides solid hosting quality and website speed optimization. Network Solutions is designed for users who prefer a straightforward platform for creating and managing their websites without the need for extensive technical knowledge.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: For those seeking a robust and customizable ecommerce platform, Drupal is the superior choice, offering extensive features and flexibility. Network Solutions, while more user-friendly, is better suited for smaller ecommerce projects.

• 
  Drupal
  
  : With a score of 7.5, Drupal shines for its powerful customization capabilities and a wide range of ecommerce features, making it ideal for complex online stores that require detailed product management and customization.
• 
  Network Solutions
  
  : Scoring 6.3, it offers a simpler, more straightforward ecommerce solution, focusing on ease of use and essential features for small to medium-sized businesses, but lacks the depth and flexibility of Drupal.

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: With Drupal scoring 7.5 and Network Solutions closely behind at 7.4, both platforms offer strong capabilities for building informational and business websites. However, Drupal’s slight edge in flexibility and customization options makes it a marginally better choice for those with specific or complex needs.

• 
  Drupal
  
  : Known for its open-source flexibility, Drupal is ideal for creating complex informational websites that require extensive customization. Its vast array of modules and themes allows for a tailored web presence, making it a top choice for developers and businesses with specific website functionality requirements.
• 
  Network Solutions
  
  : While slightly trailing behind Drupal in score, Network Solutions offers a user-friendly platform that caters well to small businesses and individuals. Its comprehensive solution, including hosting and domain services, makes it a convenient choice for those looking for an all-in-one package with less technical involvement.

Detailed comparison

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Winner: Drupal.

If you’re looking for a platform that offers more creative control, a wide array of design features, and a vast array of templates and designs, Drupal is the preferred choice.

Drupal, as a highly flexible and powerful content management system, offers a vast array of templates and designs to cater to virtually any website need. With thousands of themes available, users can choose from minimalist designs, industry-specific layouts, and highly customizable multipurpose themes. These templates are designed to be responsive, ensuring that websites look great on any device. Moreover, the Drupal community continuously contributes new designs and templates, expanding the options for users to keep their websites modern and engaging.

Drupal Themes

Compared to Drupal, Network Solutions offers a wide variety of templates and designs tailored to meet the diverse needs of its users. Whether you’re setting up a website for a small business, a personal blog, or a large e-commerce platform, you’ll find an extensive selection of options to choose from. With hundreds of professionally designed templates, users can easily find a style that perfectly matches their vision and brand identity. Moreover, these templates are customizable, allowing for a high degree of personalization in terms of layout, color schemes, and functionality, ensuring that each website can be unique and fully optimized for its intended purpose. However, Network Solutions does not provide a link to the themes page and screenshots of the template page and template example.

🏆 Winner: Network Solutions

. Scoring 6.8, Network Solutions is designed with simplicity in mind, making it accessible for users with varying levels of technical expertise. Drupal, with a score of 5.4, offers a robust platform but with a steeper learning curve, especially for those new to web development. If ease of use is a priority, Network Solutions is the clear winner in this category.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: Drupal

. While both platforms offer solid learning resources, Drupal goes a step further with its wide array of detailed tutorials and active community forums, making it easier for users to learn and adapt.

When it comes to ecommerce, Drupal and Network Solutions offer different strengths. Drupal, with its Drupal Commerce module, provides a flexible ecommerce solution that can be seamlessly integrated into its content management system. It offers a wide array of features including product management, shopping cart, payment gateway integration, and customizable workflows. Network Solutions, on the other hand, offers a range of ecommerce features suitable for small to medium-sized businesses. Their platform includes customizable templates, an easy-to-use shopping cart, secure payment processing, and inventory management tools.

Drupal ecommerce features:

• Shopping Cart and Checkout Process
• Payment Gateway Integration
• Order Management and Invoicing
• Tax Calculation and VAT Support
• Shipping and Fulfillment
• Promotions and Discounts
• Reporting and Analytics
• Security and Compliance

Network Solutions ecommerce features:

• Marketing Tools
• Personalized Email
• Product Listings

Ecommerce themes & templates

Drupal offers a wide array of eCommerce themes designed to cater to different types of online stores, from clean and simple designs to more sophisticated and feature-rich options. These themes are built with responsiveness in mind, ensuring that stores function seamlessly across various devices. Network Solutions offers a variety of ecommerce templates designed to cater to businesses of different sizes and industries. Their templates are crafted to be responsive, ensuring a seamless shopping experience across various devices, including smartphones, tablets, and desktops.

Product page customization

Drupal offers extensive customization possibilities for product pages through its modular architecture, allowing for detailed content types, flexible displays with Views, and theme customizations. The Drupal Commerce module enriches e-commerce functionalities, enabling tailored product management, checkout flows, and payment systems. Network Solutions offers a range of ecommerce product page customization options to enhance the online shopping experience. Users can personalize product descriptions, images, and videos to showcase their items effectively. Additionally, the platform allows for the customization of product options such as size, color, and material, enabling a more interactive and tailored shopping experience for customers.

Payment processing

Drupal supports a wide range of payment gateways through third-party modules, including popular ones like PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.Net. These modules enable seamless integration for e-commerce functionalities on Drupal sites. Network Solutions’ website builder is designed for online stores, small businesses, and personal websites, offering essential e-commerce features including a built-in shopping cart and support for a wide range of payment options such as PayPal, PayFlow, USA ePay, CyberSource, PlugNPay, making it convenient for businesses to process transactions.

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Winner: Drupal

. Drupal, with a score of 7.5, offers a wide range of features tailored for content creation and management. It supports rich text editing, enabling users to format text, insert links, images, and media, as well as create tables and lists with ease. The editor is highly customizable, allowing administrators to configure toolbars and options according to the needs of their site. Furthermore, it integrates seamlessly with Drupal’s content management system, supporting features like automatic content saving, version control, and access control, making it a powerful tool for building and managing diverse web content.

Network Solutions’ editor, scoring 6.3, provides an intuitive website editor that allows users to design, edit, and publish their websites without needing advanced technical skills. With a wide array of templates and customization options, users can create professional-looking websites that are responsive and optimized for search engines. Additionally, Network Solutions offers domain registration, web hosting, and security services to support and protect online presences.

Mobile editor/app

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Winner: None

. Both Drupal and Network Solutions do not offer a dedicated mobile editor app. This means that users cannot edit their websites directly from a mobile device, which can be a limitation for those who prefer to manage their websites on the go. Therefore, if mobile editing is a crucial feature for you, you might want to consider other website builders that offer this capability.

Overall Result

:

Drupal Wins

. Drupal scores 7.1, significantly higher than Network Solutions’ 0.5. Drupal, being an open-source CMS, is free to use and allows users to explore its functionalities without any time limit. However, it does not offer a trial version or the possibility to test premium features. Network Solutions, on the other hand, does not offer a free or trial version. Access to its features is only possible after purchasing one of the plans, although it does offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

While Drupal is free, it requires separate purchases for domain, hosting, and website builder subscriptions. Network Solutions, on the other hand, offers a range of paid plans with varying features.

Winner: Network Solutions

. Network Solutions offers a variety of hosting options, including shared, VPS, and WordPress hosting, with a 99.99% uptime guarantee. Drupal, on the other hand, does not offer hosting services directly, so its hosting quality is dependent on the chosen hosting provider.

🏆 Winner: Network Solutions

Both Drupal and Network Solutions prioritize website performance and page speed, but Network Solutions edges out slightly in terms of website speed optimization.

Drupal, an open-source content management system, allows users to optimize almost all aspects of their website. The load times and PageSpeed scores vary depending on the optimization and website complexity. The Core Web Vitals improvements depend on the users, as Drupal offers numerous guides and tutorials on speed optimization.

On the other hand, Network Solutions, a website builder and hosting service, focuses on CDN, Web Caching, Image Optimization, and SEO optimization. The load times and PageSpeed scores also vary widely, depending on the optimization, hosting type, and website complexity. However, Network Solutions emphasizes on LCP, FID, and CLS improvements for Core Web Vitals, giving it a slight edge over Drupal in terms of website speed optimization.

🏆 Winner: Drupal.

With a score of 8.6, Drupal outperforms Network Solutions, which scores 4.8. Drupal’s strength lies in its vast array of over 51,000 modules, which are predominantly free and open source. These modules extend Drupal’s capabilities beyond its core features, enabling functionalities like advanced SEO tools, e-commerce solutions, and custom content types and fields. Key integrations like Commerce for online stores, Views for content display management, and Google Analytics for web traffic analysis exemplify Drupal’s adaptability.

On the other hand, Network Solutions offers a variety of plugins/extensions to enhance the functionality of websites built through their platform. However, it focuses more on providing an all-in-one solution with built-in features rather than a wide range of third-party plugins or extensions. Its top integrations enhance its ecommerce capabilities, allowing for seamless transactions and a better user experience for online stores.

Drupal Applications

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Overall Winner: Drupal

. Drupal’s flexibility and extensive module ecosystem give it an edge over Network Solutions, especially for users who require more advanced and customizable marketing tools. Network Solutions, however, provides a more straightforward and user-friendly approach, making it a good choice for small businesses and individuals.

🏆 Winner: Drupal

. Drupal edges out Network Solutions in this category with a slightly higher customer support score of 6.7 compared to 6.6. Drupal offers a comprehensive range of customer support options, including a community support system through Drupal.org for forums and documentation, and professional 24/7 support services via providers like Drupal Connect with flexible “pay-as-you-go” plans.

Network Solutions, on the other hand, provides 24/7 live chat support. However, it’s worth noting that neither Drupal nor Network Solutions provide enterprise support.

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Winner: Drupal

. Drupal’s open-source nature allows for extensive customization and robust security measures. It offers a wide range of security features, including role-based access control, field permissions, and encryption for data at rest. Regular updates and security audits, along with the use of security-focused modules, help to maintain the integrity of the site. Drupal’s dedicated security team continuously works on identifying and fixing vulnerabilities, further enhancing the platform’s security.

Network Solutions also takes several steps to protect customer data, including encryption, strict security measures at data centers, and careful access controls. They regularly check their security systems for vulnerabilities and use malware protection and SSL/TLS certificates. However, compared to Drupal’s extensive security measures and dedicated security team, Network Solutions falls slightly short.

🏆 Winner: Drupal

. Despite being an open-source CMS, Drupal offers a range of AI capabilities through modules and third-party integrations, enhancing functionalities like content creation, SEO optimization, chatbots, and cognitive services. On the other hand, Network Solutions, a website builder and hosting platform, lacks AI capabilities except for an AI copywriting tool provided on higher plans. With an AI capabilities score of 7.5, Drupal significantly outperforms Network Solutions, which has a score of 1.1.

🏆 Winner: Drupal

. Drupal’s flexible permission and role system allows for an unlimited number of users to manage and edit a website, only constrained by server capacity and practical management considerations. Administrators can create various roles, such as “Editor” or “Administrator”, each with customized permissions. There’s no inherent limit in Drupal on the number of users with administrative or editing capabilities, enabling extensive collaboration and content management possibilities. On the other hand, Network Solutions’ website builder offers very limited multi-user functionality and access levels compared to other platforms.

Drupal User Roles and Access Levels:

Network Solutions does not provide information about user roles and access levels.

Additional Features

User Feedback

Users appreciate Drupal for its ease of use, security, and flexibility as an open-source CMS, highlighting its ability to scale and support a variety of websites and applications with modern technology tools. The community and documentation are frequently mentioned positives, providing ample support and resources. However, criticisms include a relative lack of plugins and themes compared to competitors like WordPress, the learning curve for customization without coding, and some challenges with installation and updates. The platform is praised for its robust content management capabilities, enabling users to manage content and user access efficiently. Overall, feedback underscores Drupal’s strength in creating secure, customizable, and scalable web solutions, despite some desires for more intuitive UI and easier setup.

User reviews of Network Solutions are mixed, with some praising its prompt customer support and variety of domain management options. However, there are widespread complaints about the platform’s outdated business practices, high costs, and poor customer service. Users often find the website’s layout confusing and report instances of misleading promises regarding refunds. Overall, while Network Solutions has some positive attributes, its drawbacks suggest that users may want to consider alternatives.

FAQ