Framer vs Drupal: Comprehensive comparison guide for 2024

Final verdict

Framer and Drupal cater to different audiences with their unique strengths, making the choice between them dependent on the user’s specific needs.

• 
  Framer (Overall Grade: 7.1/10)
  
  excels in providing an intuitive, AI-driven design experience, making it ideal for users seeking a modern, no-code approach to website building. Its strengths lie in design functionalities, ease of use, and website speed optimization. However, it falls short in areas like ecommerce capabilities and customer support compared to Drupal. Framer is best suited for designers and teams looking for a collaborative platform that bridges the gap between design and development.
• 
  Drupal (Overall Grade: 6.4/10)
  
  stands out for its flexibility, extensive customization options, and strong community support. It offers a robust platform for users requiring complex websites with custom functionalities, thanks to its open-source nature and vast array of modules. Drupal excels in ecommerce solutions, plugins and integrations, and security features. It is the go-to choice for developers and organizations looking for a scalable, secure CMS capable of handling diverse web development projects.

Best for ecommerce

Verdict

: For users seeking a flexible and comprehensive ecommerce solution, Drupal is the superior choice, offering extensive customization and a wide range of features. Framer, while innovative with its AI-driven design, falls short in native ecommerce capabilities.

• 
  Framer
  
  : Offers a unique approach with AI-driven design and an intuitive interface, making it suitable for users focused on design and user experience. However, its reliance on third-party integrations for ecommerce functionalities may limit its appeal for users looking for an all-in-one solution.
• 
  Drupal
  
  : Stands out for its robust ecommerce capabilities through Drupal Commerce, including advanced product management, customizable workflows, and a variety of payment gateways. Its open-source nature allows for extensive customization, making it ideal for users with specific ecommerce needs and the technical expertise to implement them.

Best for informational & business websites

Verdict

: With identical scores for informational and business websites, the choice between Framer and Drupal hinges on specific needs: Framer for AI-driven design and ease of use, and Drupal for its flexibility and extensive customization options.

• 
  Framer
  
  : Framer shines for those seeking an intuitive, AI-enhanced design experience. It’s particularly suited for users who prioritize ease of use and innovative design features but may not require the depth of customization and scalability that comes with a CMS like Drupal.
• 
  Drupal
  
  : Drupal is the go-to for users needing a robust, scalable CMS capable of handling complex informational sites. Its strength lies in its flexibility, extensive customization through modules, and a strong community, making it ideal for those with web development experience or access to developer resources.

Detailed comparison

🏆

Winner: Framer.

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

Framer offers a diverse array of over 1,000 customizable website templates and designs, catering to various industries and project requirements. It stands out for its robust design and prototyping features, including responsive design capabilities, real-time collaboration, and extensive import options from other design tools.

Framer Themes

Compared to Framer, 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.

Drupal Themes

🏆 Winner: Framer

. Scoring 7.1, Framer offers an intuitive user interface and AI-driven design, making it accessible for both novices and experienced designers. Drupal, with a score of 5.4, provides a flexible and extensible platform but with a steeper learning curve, especially for those new to web development. If ease of use is a priority, Framer is the clear winner in this category.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: Drupal

. Both platforms offer solid learning resources, but Drupal goes a step further with its extensive official documentation, vibrant community forum, and a variety of online courses and tutorials, making it easier for users to learn and adapt.

When it comes to ecommerce, Framer and Drupal offer different approaches. Framer, while offering an intuitive interface and AI tools, lacks native ecommerce features and relies on third-party integrations like Ecwid for ecommerce functionalities. On the other hand, Drupal, an open-source CMS, offers a flexible ecommerce solution with its Drupal Commerce module, providing a wide array of features including product management, shopping cart, payment gateway integration, and customizable workflows. However, Drupal has a steep learning curve and may require extensive customization to meet specific ecommerce needs.

Framer ecommerce features:

• Ecwid integration

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

Ecommerce themes & templates

Framer offers 97 website templates specifically designed for ecommerce, providing a wide range of options for various business needs. These templates are highly customizable, allowing for easy adjustments to colors, fonts, layouts, and integration with essential ecommerce tools. Both free and paid options are available, catering to businesses of all sizes looking to enhance their online presence and sales capabilities.

On the other hand, 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.

Product page customization

Framer primarily focuses on expanding design possibilities for ecommerce. However, it lacks inherent ecommerce functionalities and instead heavily depends on integrating with platforms such as Shopify and Ecwid. Additionally, while Framer allows for some customization of product pages, these modifications are generally limited to design and layout alterations.

In contrast, 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.

Payment processing

Framer supports Stripe for payment processing, enabling a wide range of payment options including one-time payments, subscriptions, and more, without requiring coding. While specific transaction fees were not mentioned, such fees typically depend on Stripe’s pricing. Framer’s focus is on online transactions and e-commerce integrations, and there’s no explicit mention of native POS functionality.

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. The specific fees depend on the chosen payment gateway and the terms of service agreed upon by the website owner.

🏆

Winner: Framer

. Framer, with a score of 7.6, offers a robust set of tools for creating interactive and responsive designs, including a wide array of pre-built components, real-time collaboration features, and the ability to integrate with other design tools and workflows. Users can leverage Framer’s editor to craft detailed animations, fine-tune interactions, and test their designs across various screen sizes and devices. Additionally, its code export feature allows for seamless transition from design to development, making it a versatile choice for teams aiming to create polished, user-centric websites.

Drupal’s editor, scoring 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.

Mobile editor/app

🏆

Winner: Framer

. Both Framer and Drupal lack a dedicated mobile editor app. However, Framer allows users to modify their website using a mobile browser, albeit with certain restrictions and a noted inconvenience. On the other hand, Drupal does not offer any mobile editing capabilities. Therefore, despite its limitations, Framer is the winner in this category due to the availability of a mobile editor.

Overall Result

:

Drupal Wins

. Drupal scores 7.1 in product testing options, slightly higher than Framer’s 6.2. Both platforms offer a free version, but Framer allows for some premium features to be tested in the free version. However, Drupal, being an open-source CMS, doesn’t require any payments, hence no need for a money-back guarantee. Framer, on the other hand, offers a money-back guarantee only in some regions.

Framer offers a range of pricing plans, including a free option and various paid plans, with discounts available for annual billing. Drupal, on the other hand, is an open-source platform and is completely free, but users may need to purchase a domain, web hosting, and website builder subscriptions separately.

🏆

Winner: Framer

Framer offers hosting included in all their plans, with a 99.9% uptime and data centers in the US, Ireland, and Singapore. On the other hand, Drupal does not directly provide hosting services, and the uptime, uptime guarantee, and data centers depend on the hosting provider chosen by the user. Therefore, Framer has a higher hosting quality score.

🏆 Winner: Framer

Both Framer and Drupal prioritize website performance and page speed, but Framer takes the lead with its emphasis on code minification, pre-rendering, caching, and image optimization.

Framer, a website builder that blends AI-driven design with an intuitive user interface, prioritizes website performance and page speed. It emphasizes code minification, pre-rendering, caching, and image optimization as key strategies for speed optimization. The load times and PageSpeed scores vary depending on the optimization and website complexity. Framer also focuses on improving Core Web Vitals, specifically LCP, FID, and CLS.

On the other hand, Drupal, an open-source content management system (CMS), allows users to optimize almost all aspects of their website. The speed optimization is largely user-guided, with Drupal offering numerous guides and tutorials. The load times and PageSpeed scores vary depending on the optimization and website complexity. The improvement of Core Web Vitals in Drupal depends on the users.

🏆 Winner: Drupal.

With a score of 8.6, Drupal outperforms Framer, which scores 7.6. Drupal’s extensive array of over 51,000 modules, compared to Framer’s variety of 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. 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, Framer offers powerful integrations that can significantly enhance the functionality of websites built with it, including Lottie animations, 3D animations from Spline, a Gumroad “Buy” button for seamless e-commerce transactions, icons from popular libraries for enhanced visual design, and MailChimp email marketing forms. However, Drupal’s extensive range of modules and higher score give it the upper hand in this comparison.

Drupal Applications

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Overall Winner: Drupal

. Drupal stands out for its comprehensive SEO features, extensive social media integrations, and robust analytics and reporting capabilities. Framer, while offering a good range of features, lacks in ads and promotions.

🏆 Winner: Drupal

. Drupal takes the lead in this category with a customer support score of 6.7, compared to Framer’s 5.6. 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.

Framer, on the other hand, primarily offers self-help options through their community forum and knowledge base. Users can also email Framer’s customer support for assistance, though details about their working hours and availability are not provided. While Framer offers dedicated support for enterprise customers, there is no detailed information about it. Drupal does not have customer support for enterprises.

🏆

Winner: Drupal

. Drupal’s security measures are slightly more comprehensive than Framer’s, earning it a slightly higher security score. Drupal’s open-source nature allows for a community-driven approach to security, with a dedicated security team continuously working on identifying and fixing vulnerabilities. It also supports advanced security features like two-factor authentication and provides extensive access control capabilities through user roles and permissions.

Framer, on the other hand, also takes security seriously, utilizing Amazon Web Services (AWS) for hosting its services and ensuring data is encrypted at rest. Framer emphasizes product security through secure development practices, external security testing, and a bug bounty program. However, it falls slightly short of Drupal’s security score, making Drupal the winner in this category.

🏆 Winner: Framer

. Framer, with a score of 7.6, utilizes AI to simplify the process of creating and optimizing web content. Its AI capabilities are focused on content generation and localization, making it a strong choice for businesses targeting a global audience.

Drupal, with a score of 7.5, integrates AI across various functionalities, enhancing e-commerce through chatbots, content creation, marketing automation, and cognitive services. However, it does not have a native AI builder, which may limit its usability for some users.

🏆 Winner: Drupal

. Both Framer and Drupal offer robust user management features, but Drupal’s flexibility and unlimited user capacity give it an edge.

• Framer supports team collaboration with different plans allowing a varying number of editors; the Team Basic plan allows up to 5 editors, while the Team Pro plan supports up to 10 editors. These plans come with additional features like live collaboration, comments, file storage, and extended version history.
• 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.

Framer User Roles and Access Levels:

Drupal User Roles and Access Levels:

Additional Features

User Feedback

Framer is highly rated for its user-friendly, no-code approach to web and prototype design. It offers extensive tutorials, templates, and drag-and-drop functionalities that expedite the design process. Users appreciate its integration with tools like Figma, AI-generated responsive designs, and real-time collaboration features. However, some users have noted a steep learning curve for newcomers and limitations in customer support and features without premium access.

On the other hand, Drupal is appreciated for its ease of use, security, and flexibility as an open-source CMS. Users highlight 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, some users have criticized the 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. Despite these criticisms, Drupal is praised for its robust content management capabilities, enabling users to manage content and user access efficiently.

FAQ