Drupal vs Zoho Sites: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

Drupal vs Zoho Sites both offer unique advantages, but they cater to different user needs and preferences.

• 
  Drupal (Overall Grade: 6.4/10)
  
  is a powerful open-source CMS known for its flexibility and extensibility, making it ideal for developers and users who need to build complex websites with custom functionalities. It excels in design functionalities, plugins and integrations, and security. However, its steep learning curve and the need for technical knowledge can be challenging for beginners. Drupal is best suited for users who require a highly customizable and scalable platform for a variety of website types, from personal blogs to corporate and government sites.
• 
  Zoho Sites (Overall Grade: 7.6/10)
  
  is a user-friendly website builder and hosting platform that offers a range of customizable templates and a visual editor for easy website creation without coding. It scores higher in ease of use, hosting quality, and website speed optimization. Zoho Sites is perfect for small businesses, creatives, and users who need a straightforward and efficient way to build and manage their websites. Its seamless integration with other Zoho products and comprehensive customer support make it an attractive option for those looking for an all-in-one solution.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: Drupal vs Zoho Sites both offer robust ecommerce solutions, but they cater to different needs. Drupal is ideal for those who need extensive customization and flexibility, while Zoho Sites is better suited for users looking for an integrated, user-friendly experience.

• 
  Drupal
  
  : Known for its flexibility and extensive module ecosystem, Drupal is a powerful choice for ecommerce. It offers a wide range of features, including product management, payment gateway integration, and customizable workflows. However, it has a steep learning curve and may require significant customization. Best For Ecommerce score: 7.5.
• 
  Zoho Sites
  
  : This platform integrates seamlessly with Zoho Commerce, providing a straightforward solution for ecommerce needs. It offers essential features like product and inventory management, payment processing, and marketing tools. While it may not be as customizable as Drupal, it is user-friendly and efficient. Best For Ecommerce score: 7.4.

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: When it comes to creating informational and business websites, Zoho Sites has a slight edge over Drupal due to its user-friendly interface and efficient hosting services. However, Drupal’s flexibility and extensive customization options make it a strong contender for more complex and tailored website needs.

• 
  Drupal
  
  : Drupal is a powerful open-source CMS known for its flexibility and extensibility. It offers a wide range of modules and themes, making it suitable for various types of websites, from personal blogs to corporate sites. However, its steep learning curve can be challenging for beginners, and it does not offer built-in hosting services, which means users need to rely on third-party hosting providers. Drupal scored 7.5 in the “Best For Informational Business Websites” category.
• 
  Zoho Sites
  
  : Zoho Sites is a user-friendly website builder and hosting platform that provides a collection of customizable templates and a visual editor for easy website creation. It offers efficient hosting with a focus on speed and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. Zoho Sites is particularly suitable for users with basic needs and some technical knowledge, making it an excellent choice for creating informational and business websites. Zoho Sites scored 7.9 in the “Best For Informational Business Websites” category.

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, Zoho Sites offers a diverse collection of over 150 templates, thoughtfully categorized into industries like Restaurants, Architecture, Health, and more. Each template provides a pre-designed layout with responsive design for various screen sizes. Customization options include visual elements such as colors, fonts, and images, as well as the ability to modify layouts and content using the visual editor. For advanced users on the Advanced Plan, there’s the option to leverage HTML and CSS for deeper customization.

Zoho Sites Themes

🏆 Winner: Zoho Sites

. With a score of 7.0, Zoho Sites is more user-friendly than Drupal, which scored 5.4. Zoho Sites offers a clean interface, logical workflows, and helpful guides, making it suitable for those with basic needs and some technical knowledge. On the other hand, Drupal’s flexibility and extensibility make it a powerful platform for building complex websites and applications, but its steep learning curve can be challenging for beginners.

Learning Resources

Both Drupal and Zoho Sites offer a wealth of learning resources. Drupal provides extensive official documentation, a vibrant community forum, and a variety of online courses and tutorials. Zoho Sites offers a detailed beginner’s guide, comprehensive user guides, video tutorials, blogs, FAQs, community forums, and webinars.

Drupal and Zoho Sites both offer ecommerce capabilities, but they approach it differently. Drupal, with its Drupal Commerce module, provides a flexible ecommerce solution that integrates seamlessly with its content management system. It offers a wide array of features including product management, shopping cart, payment gateway integration, and customizable workflows. However, it has a steep learning curve and may require extensive customization to meet specific ecommerce needs.

On the other hand, Zoho Sites lacks built-in ecommerce features but integrates seamlessly with Zoho Commerce, a dedicated platform for online store management. This allows users to create a website with Zoho Sites and easily incorporate ecommerce functionality through Zoho Commerce.

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

Zoho Sites ecommerce features:

• Product and Inventory management
• Order management
• Payment Processing
• Marketing and Promotions
• SEO and Analytics
• Security

Ecommerce themes & templates

Drupal offers a wide array of ecommerce themes designed to cater to different types of online stores. These themes are built with responsiveness in mind, ensuring that stores function seamlessly across various devices. On the other hand, Zoho Sites offers a range of ecommerce website templates and themes designed to cater to various industries and business needs. These templates are customizable, allowing businesses to tailor their online stores to their brand and product offerings.

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 ecommerce functionalities, enabling tailored product management, checkout flows, and payment systems. Zoho offers extensive product page customization options, allowing users to tailor the display of their products. This includes features like image galleries, sliders, and video integration, enabling businesses to present their products in a visually appealing manner.

Payment processing

Drupal supports a wide range of payment gateways through third-party modules, including popular ones like PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.Net. While Drupal itself does not charge any commissions or transaction fees, the individual payment gateways integrated with it do have their own fee structures. Zoho Sites, in conjunction with Zoho Commerce, offers robust payment processing capabilities and supports integration with multiple payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, and Square, facilitating secure online transactions.

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Winner: Tie

. Both Drupal and Zoho Sites 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, Zoho Sites offers a user-friendly website editor with an intuitive, drag-and-drop interface that makes website design straightforward and accessible, even for those with no technical background. The visual editor further simplifies the customization process, enabling users to tweak the look and feel of their website sections without any coding knowledge. This approach to website building emphasizes simplicity, allowing for the quick and easy creation of professional websites.

Mobile editor/app

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Winner: Zoho Sites

. Both Drupal and Zoho Sites have limitations when it comes to mobile editing. Drupal does not have a dedicated mobile editor app, which means users cannot edit their websites on the go using a mobile device.

On the other hand, Zoho Sites does not have a dedicated website editor app either, but it does allow users to edit the visual aspects of the mobile version of their website, such as font size, color, background, and shadow. However, it does not allow content changes through the mobile interface.

Despite this limitation, Zoho Sites still offers more mobile editing capabilities than Drupal, making it the winner in this category.

Overall Result

:

Zoho Sites Wins

. Zoho Sites scores 8.8, outperforming Drupal which scores 7.1. Zoho Sites offers a 15-day free trial with access to all features of each plan, providing a comprehensive testing experience. Drupal, being an open-source CMS, is free to use but does not offer a trial version or the possibility to test premium features.

Drupal is a free, open-source platform, but requires separate purchases for domain, hosting, and website builder subscriptions. Zoho Sites, on the other hand, offers tiered pricing plans with varying features.

Winner: Zoho Sites

. Zoho Sites offers efficient hosting with a focus on speed, demonstrated by a high Google PageSpeed Insights score. The platform supports different needs through its shared web hosting service, with storage and bandwidth varying by plan. It also has a 99.9% uptime guarantee and 12 global data centers. On the other hand, Drupal does not offer hosting services directly, so it doesn’t have a hosting quality score.

🏆 Winner: Zoho Sites

Both Drupal and Zoho Sites prioritize website performance and page speed, but Zoho Sites edges out Drupal in this category due to its more streamlined approach to speed optimization and better average load times and PageSpeed scores.

Drupal, an open-source CMS, allows users to optimize almost all aspects of their website. However, this means that the load times and PageSpeed scores can vary widely depending on the optimization and website complexity. Core Web Vitals improvements are also dependent on the users, as Drupal offers numerous guides and tutorials on speed optimization.

On the other hand, Zoho Sites, a website builder and hosting platform, takes a more streamlined approach to speed optimization. It regularly tests and implements updates, uses optimized code and libraries, and balances cache to improve website speed. As a result, Zoho Sites has an average load time of below 2-5 seconds and an average PageSpeed score of 70-80/100. It also implements various performance optimization techniques to improve Core Web Vitals.

🏆 Winner: Drupal.

With a score of 8.6, Drupal leads the way with its extensive range of over 51,000 modules, showcasing the extensive contributions from its community. These modules are designed to enhance and tailor Drupal applications to specific needs, emphasizing the platform’s flexibility and openness. Zoho Sites, with a score of 7.3, offers a diverse range of plugins and extensions spanning various categories like marketing, design, social media, SEO, payments, and more. However, Drupal’s vast array of modules and its commitment to accessible and communal software development give it the upper hand.

Drupal Applications

Zoho Sites Applications

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Overall Winner: Drupal

. Drupal’s open-source nature and extensive module ecosystem provide a more flexible and customizable platform for marketing features. However, Zoho Sites also offers a comprehensive set of marketing tools, with the added benefit of integration with other Zoho applications.

🏆 Winner: Zoho Sites

. In the Drupal vs Zoho Sites comparison, Zoho Sites takes the lead with its 24/7 customer support available through live chat, email, and phone. The platform also offers a comprehensive knowledge base and community forum, ensuring users have access to reliable and prompt support whenever needed. This extensive support system makes Zoho Sites a strong contender for users seeking dependable assistance.

Drupal, on the other hand, provides a range of customer support options, including community support through forums and documentation on Drupal.org, as well as professional 24/7 support services via providers like Drupal Connect. While Drupal’s community support is robust, it may not be as immediately accessible as Zoho Sites’ direct support channels. Additionally, Drupal does not offer dedicated enterprise support, which could be a limitation for larger organizations seeking specialized assistance.

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Winner: Drupal

. Drupal’s open-source nature allows for a high degree of customization and control over security configurations. It offers robust mechanisms for preventing common web vulnerabilities and supports advanced security features like two-factor authentication. Drupal’s dedicated security team continuously works on identifying and fixing vulnerabilities, ensuring a secure environment for website development.

Although it may not offer the same level of flexibility as Drupal, Zoho Sites provides a secure environment for website creation and management. It uses SSL encryption to protect data transmission and offers two-factor authentication for added security. Regular software updates are carried out to address any potential vulnerabilities, ensuring a safe platform for users.

🏆 Winner: Tie

. Both Drupal and Zoho Sites have integrated AI in various functionalities to enhance user experience and have the same AI capabilities score of 7.5. While Drupal uses AI for chatbots, content creation, marketing automation, and cognitive services, Zoho Sites uses AI for delivering unique product recommendations, sales predictions, workflow automation, and customer service enhancements. Both platforms also use AI for content generation.

🏆 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, the number of users who can edit a Zoho Sites website and their access levels depend on the chosen plan. The Free Plan allows only the owner to edit, while paid plans like Pro, Business, and Enterprise offer access for up to 10, 25, and 50 users respectively. Zoho Sites provides four access levels: Admin, with full editing rights and user management; Contributor, who can edit content and create pages but not manage collaborators; and Author, limited to editing text content without access to settings or user management.

Drupal 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.

Zoho Sites receives mixed reviews, with users praising its user-friendly interface, extensive template library, and seamless integration with other Zoho products, which simplifies website development and management for small businesses. However, some users express dissatisfaction with its limited design flexibility and the inability to create custom features. Overall, Zoho Sites addresses the need for cost-effective website solutions, particularly for those without coding knowledge, offering a one-stop-shop for building and managing websites with varying degrees of customization and integration with other business tools.

FAQ