The Drupal alternative you will be familiar with

The powerful data model of Drupal. The ease of WordPress.

You might have been using Drupal for years. So did we, and we still love the platform. But the current version of Drupal is not for websites anymore. It’s for digital experiences. And you better have a development team at your side. Here’s where Backdrop CMS comes in – as a true alternative to Drupal when the customer asks for a website.

What’s wrong with Drupal?

Absolutely nothing. We still love and use Drupal. Nothing beats Drupal when it comes to creating platforms for thousands of users – per minute. But when our customers ask for websites on a budget, Drupal is not our tool of choice anymore.

Backdrop is Drupal 7… reloaded

Backdrop at its core is still Drupal 7. But it has hundreds of improvements and even completely new functionality like a powerful layout system, and state-of-the-art configuration management. And Backdrop CMS is fast. Really fast.

Mature and stable

Backdrop CMS is not a new product. Instead, it’s an evolution of the Drupal 7 software, with a lot of improvements for both website builders and editors. It might be the most stable platform to come from the Drupal architecture.

Easily upgrade from Drupal 7

Backdrop CMS has an upgrade path from Drupal 7. It will use the same database as your current Drupal 7 project. More than 60 Drupal 7 contrib modules are in core: Views, CKEditor, Context, Pathauto, Token. Just to name a few.

This CMS is for people who build websites

The Backdrop team is continually working hard to make the out-of-the-box experience even more pleasant. At the same time, it is also a very powerful tool for the folks who like to dive deeper into the code. Backdrop aims for the former Drupal “sitebuilder” and non-coder (in Backdrop, we call them “website architects”) – a species which seems to have disappeared from the Drupal landscape.

Drupal «Features» reinvented

Configuration management is one of the hottest new tools in Backdrop, taking the former Features module to the next level: any configuration can be exported from one website and used on other projects. Never create a blog or an image gallery from scratch again –  reuse and refine what you have already created.

A powerful layout system

Backdrop CMS took the best of Panels and Context modules in order to build a flexible layout system with drag and drop functionality. Everything you see on the page, including the header and navigation, is placed into a responsive layout.

Backdrop CMS runs on shared hosting

Yep. And it will always aim to keep the server requirements low – don’t try shared hosting with Drupal 9. Running Backdrop CMS with composer is possible, but it will never be a requirement.

Backdrop is here to stay

Backdrop CMS has been around for 5 years now, and has a proven track-record of on-time releases. We are a small, but very active and dedicated community. And we have plenty of plans for Backdrop’s future.

There are a number of Drupal alternatives. But Backdrop beats most of them.

It seems that thousands of Drupal 7 users are currently looking for alternatives to Drupal 7. The looming EOL (End of Life) date for Drupal 7 is in November 2022. There are some great alternatives out there, but which one is right for you will depend on your project requirements.

You might take WordPress or Joomla into consideration. Maybe you tend to prefer SaaS-based solutions like SquareSpace or WIX. Or maybe you want to explore into the headless CMS world (in this case, Drupal 9 might be a pretty hot candidate ;-).

All of these may sound like good options…. but keep in mind: a lot of those Drupal alternatives do not have functions like

• world-class visual database query builder… yes, we mean “Views”, now in core
• incredibly flexible data model with an unlimited number of content types
• very powerful categorization system (don’t try to manage 10 vocabularies in other tools)
• flexible concept of View Modes, and you need them in any of your projects, right?
• easy re-use of configurations (formerly “Features”)

You should use Backdrop CMS if:

• you love the unmatched flexibility of Drupal’s architecture
• you create websites – rather than planning the «next big thing»
• you want to create those websites fast
• you want to reuse configuration across your website projects
• you are a small agency, a solopreneur or a non-profit organisation
• you need to create websites on a budget
• you need good support for multilingual sites and GUI

Want to learn ore about Backdrop CMS?

• Visit the official website at backdropcms.org
• Create your Backdrop CMS Demo Site