Why is Acquia Drupal a Better CMS Choice Than Adobe AEM?

Adobe Experience Manager has long been a popular choice for enterprises because of its comprehensive suite of tools for managing digital experiences. But, as customer demands grow and digital ecosystems become more complex, some businesses may find that AEM's high cost and complexity are restrictive. By migrating to Drupal, an open-source CMS, businesses can achieve the efficiency, flexibility, and scalability they need to build a dynamic digital presence.

If you're also considering a switch, this blog compares AEM vs. Drupal to help you make an informed CMS migration.

AEM vs Acquia Drupal

Drupal has secured a strong market position as a leader, with its popularity increasing rapidly, due to its robust capabilities and growing adoption. Drupal is an open-source CMS renowned for its flexibility, scalability, and extensive community support. It allows for extensive customization through its modular architecture and is suitable for a wide range of websites, from small blogs to large enterprise solutions. Acquia's suite of tools – Cloud Platform, Site Studio, and Site Factory – further empowers Drupal, offering a robust and adaptable digital experience platform.

In contrast, Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), while still a market leader, has seen its popularity decrease steadily, with Forrester rating it as a strong performer. AEM is known for its powerful content authoring and digital asset management capabilities and is widely used by large enterprises due to its integration with Adobe Marketing Cloud.

Now let's look at the key differences between AEM CMS and Acquia Drupal:

1. Architecture and scalability

AEM CMS is a proprietary system from Adobe that offers a layered architecture with OSGi, Apache Sling and proprietary components like Granite UI and workflow engine. It has a more rigid structure with pre-built functionalities. Designed for high scalability with features like clustered deployments and load balancing, it requires specialized knowledge for scaling effectively.

Drupal, on the other hand, has a modular, decoupled architecture with a flexible PHP stack. It allows for effortless scaling and deployment, resulting in better performance, and reliability, with minimized downtime risk. Acquia Cloud Platform further strengthens this by providing a fully managed, high-availability platform specifically designed for Drupal's needs.

2. Content management

AEM offers content management functionalities, navigating its administrative interface might require a deeper understanding of the system. Managing different content types and revisions within the platform could be more demanding for non-technical users.

Whereas Drupal offers an intuitive interface, flexible content modeling tools, and customizable workflows, making content organization efficient. Collaboration is enhanced, and training time is reduced. Acquia Site Studio empowers marketers and content creators to build and update pages quickly using drag-and-drop tools, further simplifying content management.

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3. Customization and extensibility

Drupal is highly extensible with an open-source codebase and extensive access to core functionalities. It enables easy customization, rapid development of new features, and reduced development costs. Acquia Site Studio enhances the website customizability by allowing the creation of reusable components that can be easily incorporated into different pages, ensuring brand consistency.

Customizing AEM often requires working within the confines of pre-built components. Although they provide consistency, customizing them is more challenging and potentially more expensive to achieve unique functionalities.

4. Integration and APIs

AEM CMS readily integrates with Adobe Marketing Cloud but integrating with third-party services is difficult due to limited API access and restricted connectivity options, minimizing automation and increasing manual effort.

Acquia Drupal integrates seamlessly with an extensive API ecosystem and flexible connectivity options. It allows for effortless integration, automated workflows, and reduced manual effort. Acquia Cloud Platform provides additional integration capabilities with pre-built connectors and functionalities.

5. Security and compliance

Acquia Drupal benefits from open-source security. Its transparent, community-driven approach provides readily available security updates, enhancing overall security, simplifying compliance, and minimizing maintenance costs. Acquia Cloud Platform further strengthens security with its enterprise-grade infrastructure and automated security patching. While AEM offers a robust security framework, the update process might involve internal procedures, leading to a longer update cycle compared to open-source platforms.

6. Cost and licensing

AEM incurs higher licensing costs and potential vendor lock-in due to its proprietary nature. It offers comprehensive marketing suite integration but has additional costs for advanced features and requires a separate platform for multi-site management.

Acquia Drupal's open-source core eliminates licensing fees. Flexible pricing models and extensive feature access contribute to a lower total cost of ownership, improved flexibility, and a greater ROI. Acquia Site Factory offers a cost-effective solution for managing multiple websites and languages, with features like centralized deployment and role-based access control.

7. Community and support

Acquia Drupal boasts a vast open-source community, diverse support options, and open access to knowledge bases. Acquia additionally provides comprehensive support options for its Cloud Platform and Site Factory products. While AEM offers expert support for Adobe products, it has limited support options outside vendor ecosystem. Drupal's extensive community provides a broader range of expertise and potentially reduced support costs due to readily available resources.

9. Content delivery and performance

Acquia Drupal offers flexible content delivery options, high-performance capabilities, and extensive access to CDNs for efficient content delivery, enhanced performance, and reduced latency. Acquia Cloud Platform can be further leveraged to optimize content delivery with features like built-in caching and load balancing.

AEM integrates with Adobe Experience Cloud Delivery (AECD) for content delivery. While basic integration with AECD might be straightforward, advanced configurations require extensive technical expertise of AEM, AECD, and potentially network infrastructure.

10. Customer experience

Acquia Drupal prioritizes CX with built-in tools for personalization, segmentation, and journey mapping. Its open architecture allows for easier access and integration of customer data, leading to deeper customer insights. Its lower implementation costs make it easier to invest in additional tools or development resources specifically tailored to your unique CX needs.

AEM excels at integrating with Adobe marketing automation tools, allowing for streamlined campaign management and data analysis. However, this might require a significant investment in the Adobe ecosystem. Accessing and utilizing customer data within AEM might require some additional configuration, potentially slowing down personalization efforts.

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Which CMS platform is better for you?

AEM CMS works great when integrated with other Adobe products, streamlining workflows and boosting efficiency. Its comprehensive suite of marketing tools and asset management empowers you to create and manage integrated marketing campaigns. But be prepared for significant investment – AEM requires specialized expertise and carries licensing costs. This powerful platform is best suited for large organizations with established Adobe ecosystems and budgets to match.

Acquia Drupal, based on the open-source Drupal CMS, is renowned for its flexibility, extensive customization options, and robust security features. It is an excellent choice for organizations that need a highly adaptable, low TCO and high ROI CMS platform that can be tailored to specific requirements.

What’s Next?

Migrating to Acquia Drupal is a strategic decision that can deliver long-term benefits. It provides a scalable, secure foundation that can adapt to your organization’s evolving needs and helps ensure a robust digital experience for your users.

Partnering with certified Drupal experts like Altudo minimizes the risk of errors during the Drupal migration process. With extensive CMS and CX expertise, we adopt effective strategies for a stable and secure CMS transition with minimum downtime. Contact us at marketing@altudo.co today to learn how Acquia Drupal can benefit your business and plan a systematic CMS migration.