Most organisations do not need Drupal.

If your website mainly explains what you do, publishes news and provides a contact form, platforms such as Squarespace, Wix or WordPress may be simpler and cheaper.

That isn't a criticism of Drupal. It is about choosing technology appropriate to the job.

Drupal starts to make sense when your website stops being simply a place to publish information and becomes part of how your organisation actually works.

When a simple website is enough

A typical brochure website might contain:

• information about the organisation
• services or programmes
• news and articles
• staff or team pages
• downloadable documents
• a contact form

Almost any modern website platform can handle this well.

Building something more sophisticated simply because you can usually means paying for complexity you don't need.

When the website becomes operational

The calculation changes when people need to do things through the website.

Perhaps:

• members log in and see information specific to them
• different users have different permissions
• people register and pay for events
• applications go through an approval process
• users update information held in your CRM
• staff manage directories or structured information
• website access depends on membership status
• data needs to move between several systems

At that point, you are no longer dealing with a straightforward publishing website.

You are building an application.

That is where Drupal becomes much more interesting.

When your content isn't really "pages"

Drupal is particularly strong when an organisation manages structured information.

Imagine a site containing events, services, locations, organisations and resources.

Those things may relate to one another. A resource may belong to several topics. An event might be associated with a programme and location. Information may need to appear in directories, maps, searches and filtered listings.

Rather than maintaining separate pages for everything, Drupal can store the information once and present it in different ways.

That capability becomes increasingly valuable as a site grows.

When your CRM is part of the website

For membership organisations, charities and associations, this can be the deciding factor.

The website might need to know:

• whether someone is a current member
• which events they have booked
• what information the organisation holds about them
• whether they are allowed to access something
• what payments they have made

This is particularly relevant for organisations using CiviCRM.

Drupal can provide the website and user experience while CiviCRM manages contacts, memberships, events, payments and relationships behind it.

The result can feel like one system to the user without maintaining the same information in multiple places.

Watch for the workarounds

A good sign that a simpler website is reaching its limits is the number of workarounds appearing around it.

Perhaps:

• form submissions are manually copied into the CRM
• staff regularly export and import spreadsheets
• the same event is maintained in several systems
• one plugin has been added to connect another plugin to a third-party service
• processes that should be automatic require staff intervention

Any one of these may be perfectly reasonable.

But if they keep accumulating, the website may have become part of an operational system without being designed as one.

Drupal isn't automatically the answer

Drupal's flexibility comes at a cost.

It needs proper hosting, maintenance, updates and technical expertise.

If an organisation can achieve everything it needs with Squarespace, Wix or a straightforward WordPress site, there may be little reason to take on that additional complexity.

WordPress also occupies a substantial middle ground. With the right development and plugins it can handle memberships, events, ecommerce and integrations perfectly well.

The question is not whether Drupal can do more.

It usually can.

The question is whether you need what it can do.

A useful test

Ask what would happen if your website disappeared tomorrow.

If the answer is:

"People wouldn't be able to read about us for a while."

you probably need a good publishing website.

If the answer is:

"Members couldn't access services, registrations would stop, applications couldn't be processed and information wouldn't reach our CRM."

your website has become operational infrastructure.

That is when Drupal deserves serious consideration.

Sometimes the right recommendation is Drupal.

Sometimes it is WordPress.

And sometimes the best advice we can give an organisation considering Drupal is:

You don't need Drupal. You just need a better website.