Drupal is an open-source content management framework for website builders. The first release of Drupal was in May 2000, and they continue to publish updates and announcements almost 20 years later. Many hosting providers still offer Drupal hosting as an option, so it’s undoubtedly still used by web developers as an option for developing their applications.
A declining market share?
A few years ago, Drupal was amongst the most popular frameworks for developers, but as other methods and tools become available, it is inevitable that older solutions become less favorable for new developers and modern applications.
According to W3Techs, Drupal is used in around 1.7% of all websites. While this number might seem on the low side, it’s still the 4th most popular CMS. With only Shopify, Joomla, and WordPress beating it.
Drupal is continuously developed
In 2019 alone, Drupal has evolved from version 8.6.5 through many patches to 8.6.48. These patches include various bug and security fixes plus product enhancements. Updates in October 2019 alone were downloaded over 3 million times, and this doesn’t include data from all download sources.
A sign of decline for any web framework or software is when the number of downloads decreases. Looking at Drupal’s last few updates it appears from their data that the number of download per update is stable, remaining around the 1 million mark.
Drupal works for small projects
Drupal is certainly used by larger organizations throughout the world but does anyone use Drupal for smaller projects? The answer is yes.
One of the main reasons why drupal has a lower market share than others is that it is designed as a tool for developers to use. Unlike WordPress, it wasn’t really intended to be used by everyone. So unless you have a development background, you are unlikely to consider using Drupcla for your project.
If you are a developer or have a small development team that knows PHP well, then Drupal is a good contender for your project.
Who uses Drupal
Even though Drupal is suitable for small development teams, it’s also highly extensible via its built-in API and the use of the still popular PHP language.
Based on information from Drupal’s own website, various Universities and Government departments choose Drupal. This is most likely due to its secure nature.
Drupal is also commercially used by some of the largest companies, including The Economist, Timex, RedHat, and London Gatwick Airport.
Security is key
Drupal has it’s own dedicated security team to handle the ever-increasing threats to web applications. Drupal is fortunate to have a good community following and strong coding standards. In addition to this, they boast a strict code review process to eliminate as many security flaws as possible from their code.
The fact that Drupal can maintain this level of commitment from the coding community is more evidence that, while having a “small” market share, are still a good fit for building websites.
Summary
It’s true that since other frameworks and content management systems have been born more recently than Drupal. Drupal, however, maintains a very active code release schedule and good security practices. The number of downloads of their most recent update is in the millions which show that people are still using and installing their solution.
In summary, there are millions of users of Drupal, so many people are still using it. The real question is will Drupal continue to be relevant in the upcoming years. The answer to this is going to depend on what the next major version (Drupal 9) looks like and how it aims to fix modern web application challenges.
