Drupal vs Plone
Drupal
drupal.orgPlone
plone.orgSide by side
| Figure | Drupal | Plone |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Content Management Systems | 9.0 (#10) | 9.0 (#12) |
| Spec score · Web Content Management Software | 8.8 (#3) | 8.5 (#8) |
| Custom content types | Yes | Yes |
| Custom user roles | Yes | Yes |
| Editorial workflows | Yes | Yes |
| Founded | 2007 | 2004 |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Media library | Yes | Yes |
| Multilingual content | Yes | Yes |
| Platform type | hybrid | hybrid |
| SEO tools | Yes | Yes |
Plans
In their own words
Drupal
Drupal is content management software for building websites and applications. Drupal CMS is a ready-to-use platform for marketing teams, content creators, and site builders, built on Drupal 11 core. Included tools cover media management, SEO, AI-driven website building, consent management, analytics, search, and automatic updates. Drupal supports structured content, multilingual publishing, editorial workflows, custom user roles, and APIs for serving web, mobile, and other channels from one source. Thousands of modules, themes, and distributions can extend it, and it can connect with external services and organizational applications. Drupal identifies accessibility, API-first architecture, security, performance, and scalability as core capabilities. The software is free open-source software with no licensing fees, but self-hosting and technical setup are required. Linux or a similar system is recommended for hosting; Windows is supported only for development, not production. Drupal CMS offers temporary browser-based trial sites. After setup, Drupal CMS itself is not updated, although installed modules and themes are updated like other Drupal sites.
Plone
Plone is a free, open-source content management system for websites, intranets, and custom applications. Plone 6 provides a block-based editing interface for text, images, video, maps, forms, and search; its layouts can create flexible multi-column pages that adapt to different devices. Editors can define content types through the web without code and build forms by drag and drop, with submissions sent by email or stored as CSV. A faceted search block filters results by facets. Plone also supports editorial workflows, custom roles, multilingual content, SEO tools, and a media library. A React-based frontend and REST API are supported, and the ecosystem includes more than 100 add-on products. It can run on UNIX-based systems, Windows, and macOS, on premises or in cloud deployments. The site says users retain control of their data. Each major version receives five years of security support; Plone 6 support is listed through 2027-12-31. Service providers offer development, training, customization, and deployment help.