Drupal vs Strikingly: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

Drupal vs Strikingly both offer unique advantages, catering to different user needs and preferences.

• 
  Drupal (Overall Grade: 6.4/10)
  
  is a powerful open-source CMS known for its flexibility and extensibility. It is ideal for developers and users who need to build complex websites with custom functionalities. Drupal’s extensive range of modules and themes allows for significant customization, making it suitable for a variety of websites, from personal blogs to large corporate sites. However, its steep learning curve and the need for separate hosting and domain purchases may be challenging for beginners.
• 
  Strikingly (Overall Grade: 6.6/10)
  
  excels in simplicity and ease of use, making it perfect for individuals and small businesses looking to create professional-looking websites quickly. With its drag-and-drop interface and customizable templates, Strikingly offers a user-friendly experience without the need for coding knowledge. It also provides various features such as ecommerce integration and SEO tools, making it a versatile platform for building and managing websites. However, it may lack the depth and customization options that more advanced users might require.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: Drupal is ideal for those needing extensive customization and scalability, while Strikingly is better suited for users seeking simplicity and ease of use.

• 
  Drupal
  
  : Known for its flexibility and extensibility, Drupal is a powerful platform for building complex ecommerce websites. It offers a wide range of modules and themes, making it highly customizable. With features like advanced product page customization, multiple payment gateways, and robust security, Drupal is well-suited for businesses that require a tailored ecommerce solution. However, its complexity might be overwhelming for beginners.
  
  Score: 7.5
  
• 
  Strikingly
  
  : Strikingly is a user-friendly website builder that simplifies the process of creating an online store. It offers essential ecommerce features like product listings, inventory management, and SEO tools, making it a good choice for small businesses and individuals. While it lacks the depth and customization options of Drupal, its ease of use and modern templates make it an attractive option for those looking to get started quickly.
  
  Score: 7.2
  

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: When it comes to Drupal vs Strikingly for informational business websites, Drupal edges out slightly due to its flexibility and extensive customization options, although Strikingly offers a more user-friendly experience.

• 
  Drupal
  
  : Drupal is a powerful open-source CMS known for its flexibility and extensibility, making it suitable for complex informational websites. It offers a wide range of modules and themes, allowing for extensive customization. However, its steep learning curve can be a barrier for beginners. With a score of 7.5, Drupal is ideal for users who need a highly customizable and scalable platform for their informational websites.
• 
  Strikingly
  
  : Strikingly is a user-friendly website builder that excels in simplicity and ease of use, making it perfect for individuals and small businesses. It offers a variety of modern, customizable templates and a drag-and-drop interface, allowing users to create professional-looking websites without any coding knowledge. Scoring 7.4, Strikingly is a great choice for those who prioritize ease of use and quick setup over extensive customization options.

Detailed comparison

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Winner: Drupal.

If you’re looking for a platform that offers more flexibility and extensibility, 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, Strikingly offers a wide variety of templates and designs for its website builder. With over 60 unique templates to choose from, users can find a design that suits their needs and preferences. The templates are modern, visually appealing, and customizable, allowing users to personalize their websites. Whether you’re creating a portfolio, blog, or online store, Strikingly has a template for every type of website. Additionally, the platform regularly adds new templates to keep up with the latest design trends.

Strikingly Themes

🏆 Winner: Strikingly

. With a score of 8.1, Strikingly is designed for simplicity and ease of use, making it ideal for individuals and small businesses. On the other hand, Drupal, scoring 5.4, is a powerful platform for building complex websites, but its flexibility and extensibility come with a steep learning curve, especially for beginners.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: Drupal

. Despite its complexity, Drupal offers a wealth of learning resources, including extensive official documentation, a vibrant community forum, and a variety of online courses and tutorials. Strikingly also provides tutorials, guides, and a comprehensive support center, but Drupal’s resources are more extensive and cater to a wider range of user expertise.

When it comes to ecommerce, both Drupal and Strikingly offer a range of features to help you build and manage an online store. However, they cater to different needs and skill levels.

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

Strikingly ecommerce features:

• Product Listings
• Inventory Management
• Coupons and Discounts
• SEO tools
• Analytics
• Social Media Integration

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. Themes like Fiora, DrupalMag, and Storefront highlight the diversity available, offering customization options to match the unique needs of each business.

On the other hand, Strikingly offers a variety of eCommerce website templates tailored to meet various website building needs. These templates are designed by a world-class team of website designers and developers, focusing on modern trends and best practices to ensure your eCommerce site stands out. Strikingly’s collection is continuously updated with new designs to match the dynamic nature of online commerce, ensuring your website can remain visually appealing and functionally efficient.

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. With the ability to develop custom modules, Drupal provides a range of possibilities to meet specific e-commerce needs.

Strikingly, on the other hand, allows for easy customization of product pages. Adding products is streamlined through the “Simple Store” section, where you can detail product types, names, descriptions, and manage inventory and pricing. Enhancements include social media sharing, categorization for diverse product ranges, and customization options like unique product URLs and region-specific pricing for a tailored shopping experience.

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. While Drupal itself does not charge any commissions or transaction fees, the individual payment gateways integrated with it do have their own fee structures, which typically include per-transaction charges and may also have monthly fees.

Strikingly supports secure payment processing through Stripe, Square, and other gateways like PayPal, offering a range of options for ecommerce sites. The transaction fees for using these services vary depending on the payment gateway and user location, with specific plans possibly incurring additional Strikingly fees, except for VIP users. The platform emphasizes the importance of selecting a payment gateway that aligns with your business needs, including consideration for international sales and multiple currencies to ensure a smooth checkout experience.

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Winner: Tie

. Both Drupal and Strikingly scored 7.5 for their website editors.

Drupal’s editor, commonly integrated through modules such as CKEditor, 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. However, it can pose challenges for beginners due to its wide range of features and customization options.

On the other hand, Strikingly’s website editor is renowned for its simplicity and user-friendliness, specifically tailored for individuals and small businesses to create stunning websites with minimal effort. It offers a straightforward, single-page layout design that makes it incredibly easy for users to add and edit content, with no prior coding knowledge required. The editor includes a variety of templates and sections that can be customized through simple drag-and-drop actions, enabling quick and easy website creation.

Mobile editor/app

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Winner: Strikingly

. Both Drupal and Strikingly do not offer a dedicated mobile editor app. However, Strikingly allows users to edit their websites using a mobile browser, although the interface is not very convenient. On the other hand, Drupal does not provide any mobile editing capabilities. Therefore, Strikingly has a slight edge over Drupal in terms of mobile editing.

Overall Result

:

Tie

. Both Drupal and Strikingly score 7.1, each with their unique advantages in product testing. Drupal, being an open-source CMS, is free to use and doesn’t offer a trial version or the possibility to test premium features. On the other hand, Strikingly offers a free version, a 14-day trial version, and the possibility to test all features during the trial. However, Strikingly doesn’t offer a money-back guarantee.

While Drupal is free, it requires separate purchases for domain, hosting, and website builder subscriptions. Strikingly, on the other hand, offers several pricing plans with varying features. Neither platform offers an enterprise plan.

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Winner: Strikingly

Strikingly offers managed hosting with a 99.9% uptime guarantee, making it a reliable choice for users. Drupal, being an open-source CMS, does not provide hosting services directly, so its hosting quality depends on the chosen hosting provider. This makes Strikingly the more straightforward and reliable choice in terms of hosting.

🏆 Winner: Strikingly

Both Drupal and Strikingly have strategies in place for website speed optimization. However, Strikingly’s comprehensive approach, including CDN, code minification, caching, optimized server response time, image optimization and compression, and responsive design, gives it an edge over Drupal.

Drupal, an open-source CMS, allows users to optimize almost all aspects of their website. However, the load times and PageSpeed scores can vary significantly depending on the level of optimization and website complexity. The improvement in Core Web Vitals also depends on the users.

On the other hand, Strikingly, a user-friendly website builder, has a comprehensive approach to website speed optimization. It uses CDN, code minification, caching, optimized server response time, image optimization and compression, and responsive design to improve the speed of the websites. The load times can vary depending on different factors, but the average PageSpeed score is between 80 and 90 out of 100. However, Strikingly does not disclose any information about Core Web Vitals improvements.

🏆 Winner: Drupal.

With a score of 8.6, Drupal outperforms Strikingly, which scores 5.1. Drupal’s extensive range of over 51,000 modules, compared to Strikingly’s 20 plugins, gives it a significant edge. 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. Strikingly’s plugins also expand a range of features and functionalities, but Drupal’s breadth and depth give it the upper hand.

Drupal Applications

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Overall Winner: Drupal

. Drupal’s flexibility and extensibility, along with its wide range of modules, make it a more powerful platform for marketing. Strikingly, while user-friendly and offering a good range of features, lacks the depth and customization options that Drupal provides.

🏆 Winner: Strikingly

. In the Drupal vs Strikingly comparison, Strikingly takes the lead with a customer support score of 7.2. Strikingly offers 24/7 customer support via email and live chat, ensuring users can get help at any time. Additionally, VIP users have access to phone support, providing a more direct line of communication for urgent issues.

Drupal, with a customer support score of 6.7, offers a comprehensive range of support options, including community support through forums and documentation on Drupal.org, and professional 24/7 support services via providers like Drupal Connect. While Drupal’s support system is robust, it relies heavily on community-driven assistance, which may not be as immediate as Strikingly’s direct support channels.

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Winner: Drupal

. Drupal’s security is highly configurable and robust, with a dedicated security team continuously working on identifying and fixing vulnerabilities. It offers advanced security features like two-factor authentication, role-based access control, and encryption for data at rest. Regular updates and security audits are essential to maintain the site’s integrity. Drupal’s proactive security approach is bolstered by the use of automated security testing tools and secure coding practices.

Strikingly, on the other hand, also emphasizes the importance of website security through various measures. It offers features like two-factor authentication and DDoS protection, ensuring that sites are well-protected against potential threats. Strikingly employs industry-standard security measures like SSL/TLS encryption for transactions and stores passwords using secure hash functions. However, it falls slightly short compared to Drupal’s extensive security measures and proactive approach.

🏆 Winner: Drupal

. Drupal, with a score of 7.5, has a wide range of AI capabilities through modules and third-party services, making it a versatile choice for web development. Strikingly, with a score of 1.6, lacks a full AI website builder and does not have any built-in AI features or AI ecommerce features. Therefore, Drupal is the clear winner in terms of AI capabilities.

🏆 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, Strikingly allows you to invite up to 10 teammates to edit and manage your site. You can assign different roles to these teammates, such as Admin, Editor, Store Manager, Blogger, and Agent, each with specific levels of access and permissions.

Drupal User Roles and Access Levels:

Strikingly 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. Overall, feedback underscores Drupal’s strength in creating secure, customizable, and scalable web solutions, despite some desires for more intuitive UI and easier setup.

Strikingly users appreciate features like the ability to import data from LinkedIn, a variety of attractive templates, and responsive customer service. However, there are some reported issues, such as unexpected subscription renewals and limitations in customization options. Despite these drawbacks, Strikingly is valued for its ability to quickly create professional-looking websites, making it suitable for personal projects, startups, and small businesses. While pricing and customer service options may not appeal to everyone, those seeking an uncomplicated website building experience with diverse design choices may find Strikingly to be a suitable solution for their needs.

FAQ