Webflow vs Drupal: What’s the Best Builder in 2024?

Webflow vs Drupal: Final verdict

Webflow and Drupal both offer powerful platforms, but they cater to different user needs and expertise levels.

• 
  Webflow (Overall Grade: 7.9/10)
  
  is ideal for professional designers and developers who seek a visually intuitive interface with robust design tools. It excels in ease of use, design functionalities, and managed hosting, making it a comprehensive solution for creating custom, responsive websites without extensive coding knowledge. When comparing Webflow vs Drupal, Webflow stands out for its user-friendly design experience and powerful CMS capabilities.
• 
  Drupal (Overall Grade: 6.4/10)
  
  is a highly flexible and extensible open-source CMS, suitable for building complex websites and applications. It offers a vast array of modules and themes, making it a versatile choice for web development. However, Drupal’s steep learning curve and need for extensive customization can be challenging for beginners. In the Webflow vs Drupal comparison, Drupal is best suited for users who require advanced customization and scalability for their web projects.

Which one is the best for ecommerce: Webflow or Drupal?

Verdict

: Webflow is ideal for those seeking an easy-to-use, design-focused ecommerce platform, while Drupal is better suited for developers needing extensive customization and flexibility.

• 
  Webflow
  
  : Known for its powerful design tools and ease of use, Webflow is perfect for users who want to create visually stunning ecommerce sites without extensive coding. It offers a range of ecommerce features, including checkout and payment processing, marketing tools, and tax and shipping calculations. However, when comparing Webflow vs Drupal, Webflow may not offer the same level of customization and flexibility as Drupal.
• 
  Drupal
  
  : With its Drupal Commerce module, Drupal provides a highly flexible and customizable ecommerce solution. It supports a wide range of ecommerce functionalities, including payment gateway integration, order management, and detailed reporting. However, Drupal has a steep learning curve and may require extensive customization to meet specific ecommerce needs.

Which one is the best for informational and business websites?

Verdict

: Webflow is the superior choice for creating informational and business websites, offering a more user-friendly interface and powerful design tools compared to Drupal.

• 
  Webflow
  
  : Scoring 8.6, Webflow excels in providing a comprehensive solution for building custom, responsive websites without extensive coding knowledge. Its powerful design tools, flexible CMS, and top-tier hosting services make it ideal for professional designers and businesses looking to create visually appealing and functional informational sites. Webflow’s intuitive interface and robust features ensure a smooth user experience, making it a preferred choice for many.
• 
  Drupal
  
  : With a score of 7.5, Drupal is a highly flexible and powerful CMS suitable for complex websites with custom functionalities. While it offers a vast array of modules and themes, its steep learning curve and reliance on user-dependent optimization can be challenging for beginners. Drupal is best suited for developers and organizations that require extensive customization and scalability for their informational and business websites.

Webflow vs Drupal: Detailed comparison

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Winner: Webflow.

With a score of 8.6, Webflow outperforms Drupal in terms of design functionalities and templates.

Webflow delivers a robust design experience with a diverse range of template and customization options. Boasting over 1000 pre-built templates covering various industries and website types, including free and premium options, Webflow ensures a constantly evolving library for users.

Webflow Themes

On the other hand, 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: Webflow

. Scoring 7.5, Webflow is more user-friendly for experienced designers and developers, offering a visually intuitive interface with drag-and-drop features. Drupal, with a score of 5.4, is a powerful platform for building complex websites and applications, but its flexibility comes with a steep learning curve that can be challenging for beginners or those not familiar with web development principles.

Learning Resources

🏆 Winner: Tie

. Both Webflow and Drupal offer a comprehensive set of learning resources for individuals seeking proficiency in the platform. Webflow University and Drupal’s official documentation, community forum, and a variety of online courses and tutorials provide diverse courses and tutorials covering fundamental to advanced aspects of each platform.

When it comes to ecommerce, both Webflow and Drupal offer robust solutions. Webflow is known for its easy store creation without coding, extensive customization options, and comprehensive ecommerce features. On the other hand, Drupal, with its Drupal Commerce module, provides a flexible ecommerce solution that can be seamlessly integrated into its content management system. However, Drupal has a steep learning curve and may require extensive customization to meet specific ecommerce needs.

Webflow ecommerce features:

• Checkout and Payment Processing with Stripe, PayPal, etc.
• Marketing and Promotions
• Tax and Shipping calculations

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

Webflow offers a diverse range of ecommerce themes and templates designed to cater to various types of online stores. Each template comes equipped with built-in ecommerce functionality, allowing you to easily add products and manage your store without the need for coding. Drupal, on the other hand, 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.

Product page customization

Webflow offers extensive customization options for ecommerce product pages, allowing users to design and personalize their pages without coding. It provides tutorials for creating product pages from scratch, offers responsive templates for various devices, and allows users to add custom code and dynamic content using Webflow’s CMS for maximum customization flexibility. 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.

Payment processing

Webflow provides a flexible and secure platform for payment processing and ecommerce through integrations with leading payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal. This allows users to accept a wide range of payments, including credit card transactions directly from their websites. 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 ecommerce 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.

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Winner: Webflow

. Webflow, with a score of 9.0, is a cloud-based platform that combines web design, CMS, and hosting, enabling users to visually design responsive websites without writing code. It offers a drag-and-drop interface, integrated SEO tools, ecommerce functionalities, and the ability to add animations and interactions, making web development accessible for designers and powerful for developers. Webflow streamlines the process of web creation, from design to launch, offering both high customization and ease of use.

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

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Winner: Webflow

. Neither Webflow nor Drupal have official mobile editor apps. However, Webflow has a third-party app called EditFlow, created by a community member for Webflow users. This app allows users to edit their Webflow sites on mobile devices, providing a level of convenience and flexibility that Drupal does not currently offer.

Therefore, Webflow is the winner in this category due to the availability of a mobile editing solution, albeit a third-party one.

Overall Result

:

Drupal Wins

. Drupal scores 7.1 in product testing options, slightly higher than Webflow’s 6.3. Both platforms offer a free version, but neither provides a trial version or a money-back guarantee. However, Webflow allows users to test some basic features with its free plan, while Drupal does not offer the possibility to test premium features.

Webflow offers a range of pricing plans, including a free starter plan and various paid plans with different features. They also offer discounts for annual subscriptions and have a custom-priced enterprise plan. On the other hand, Drupal is completely free, but users will need to purchase a domain, web hosting, and website builder subscriptions separately. Drupal does not offer any discounts or enterprise plans.

Winner: Webflow

. Webflow offers managed hosting included in all their plans, with a 99.99% uptime and data centers distributed globally through Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Fastly. On the other hand, Drupal, being an open-source CMS, does not directly provide hosting services. The uptime, uptime guarantee, and data centers depend on the hosting provider chosen by the user. Therefore, Webflow has a clear advantage in this category.

🏆 Winner: Webflow

Both Webflow and Drupal prioritize website performance and page speed, but Webflow’s comprehensive approach to speed optimization gives it an edge over Drupal.

Webflow’s approach to enhancing site speed includes custom cache settings, custom element lazy loading, automatic minification, responsive templates, and a content delivery network (CDN). This comprehensive approach results in an average load time of below 2 seconds and a PageSpeed score of 77.2/100. Webflow also focuses on improving components’ usability and emphasizes Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) for Core Web Vitals improvements.

On the other hand, Drupal’s speed optimization is largely user-dependent. Drupal offers numerous guides and tutorials on speed optimization, allowing users to optimize almost all aspects of their website. However, this means that the load times and PageSpeed scores can vary greatly depending on the optimization and complexity of the website. Similarly, improvements in Core Web Vitals are also dependent on the users.

🏆 Winner: Drupal.

With a score of 8.6, Drupal outperforms Webflow, which scores 5.5. Drupal’s strength lies in its open-source nature, offering over 51,000 modules that extend its capabilities beyond core features. This allows for a high level of customization and scalability, making it suitable for a variety of web projects.

On the other hand, Webflow doesn’t have plugins or extensions in the traditional sense. Instead, it offers a built-in library of website elements and functionalities, and integrates with a number of third-party services and tools. However, these integrations are not managed by Webflow, so the number of available options and their pricing structures can vary.

Webflow Applications

Drupal Applications

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Overall Winner: Drupal

. Drupal stands out for its comprehensive SEO features and extensive social media integration capabilities. Webflow is strong in SEO and integrates with popular email marketing tools, ideal for businesses that prioritize these areas.

🏆 Winner: Webflow

. In the Webflow vs Drupal comparison, Webflow takes the lead with a customer support score of 8.3. Webflow offers 24/7 support through live chat, email, and a community forum, along with extensive documentation and video tutorials. This ensures users have continuous access to assistance and resources, making it easier to resolve issues promptly.

Drupal, with a customer support score of 6.7, provides a range of support options, including community forums and professional 24/7 support services via providers like Drupal Connect. While Drupal’s community support is robust, it lacks the direct, always-available support channels that Webflow offers, which can be a drawback for users needing immediate assistance.

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Winner: Drupal

. Drupal’s security measures are more comprehensive and robust, offering a wide range of configuration options for enhanced protection. It includes built-in mechanisms for preventing common web vulnerabilities, such as data validation and sanitation to guard against SQL injection and XSS attacks. The platform supports advanced security features like two-factor authentication and provides extensive access control capabilities through user roles and permissions. Drupal’s proactive security approach is bolstered by a dedicated security team that continuously works on identifying and fixing vulnerabilities, alongside encouraging the use of automated security testing tools and secure coding practices.

Webflow also prioritizes security, implementing robust encryption techniques and strict access controls. They regularly update their systems and conduct audits to identify and address any potential vulnerabilities. However, compared to Drupal, Webflow’s security measures are not as extensive, which is reflected in their lower security score.

🏆 Winner: Drupal

. Drupal’s AI capabilities, particularly in enhancing e-commerce and content creation, are currently more advanced than Webflow’s. Drupal also offers a range of advanced features through AI integrations. However, Webflow has announced plans to introduce AI capabilities in the future, which could potentially level the playing field.

🏆 Winner: Drupal

. Both Webflow and Drupal offer robust user management capabilities, but Drupal’s flexible permission and role system edges out Webflow’s plan-based user limits.

• Webflow’s number of users who can edit a website and their access levels vary by plan. Core, Growth, and Enterprise plans offer unlimited editors, while others limit content editors to 3 or 10 per site. Access levels include Designer for full access and Editor for content editing. Workspace roles like Admin, Designer, and Editor ensure collaboration and security through features like the Site Activity Log and role-based permissions.
• Drupal 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.

Webflow User Roles and Access Levels:

Drupal User Roles and Access Levels:

Additional Features

Webflow vs Drupal: User Feedback

Webflow receives high praise for its user-friendly interface, eliminating the need for coding while offering extensive design flexibility. Users appreciate its scalability, cost-effectiveness, and seamless integration of essential features like forms and CMS. However, some users note a slight learning curve and occasional limitations, particularly in ecommerce functionalities and content management. Overall, Webflow proves to be a powerful tool for building and managing websites, offering robust features for both beginners and experienced developers, albeit with some room for improvement in certain areas like collaborative editing and content management.

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.

Webflow vs Drupal: FAQ