Adobe Experience Manager vs Drupal

AEM is a commercial product, so the license or subscription is a recurring cost paid to Adobe or its reseller, and its price depends on the deployment model and contract terms. Neither this page nor DeployOpen publishes AEM prices. Request a written quote that separates AEM Sites, AEM Assets, AEM Forms, environments (production, stage and development), the number of sites and any add-ons. For AEM 6.5 on-premise, ask whether the quote includes continued support after February 28, 2027, and what extended support costs. Drupal itself has no license fee because it is GPL-2.0-or-later with no paid edition, so the comparison shifts to hosting, build, support and maintenance.

Partner rates are recurring when you rely on an external team for AEM development, configuration, upgrades or hosting operations. Rates depend on role mix, location, contract length and whether the work is fixed-scope or time-and-materials. Ask for a rate card by role, an estimate of hours per release cycle, and the cost of a support retainer. These fees are separate from the license, so a quote that looks low on licensing can still carry a large services line. Compare that line with the cost of an internal team or a fixed-scope Drupal build.

Drupal hosting is recurring and covers compute, database, storage, content delivery, backups, staging environments, monitoring and security tooling. Drupal runs on Apache or Nginx with MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite, so you can choose infrastructure you already run or a managed platform. Costs rise with traffic peaks, number of sites, asset volume, search indexing and the number of non-production environments. Ask a hosting provider or your platform team for a per-environment breakdown, backup retention terms and the cost of a disaster recovery copy in another region.

The build and migration cost is one-time, but it is often the largest line in an AEM exit. It covers information architecture, theme and component development, content migration from AEM packages, redirects, testing and training. Costs rise with the number of templates, the depth of custom components, the volume of content and assets, multi-language requirements and the number of sites. Drupal 6 and 7 sites cannot be updated in place, so if the source is an older Drupal site, themes must be rebuilt. Ask for the work broken into discovery, build, migration runs and cutover, each with its own deliverable.

Replacing AEM Assets means choosing a digital asset management system or building asset handling into Drupal media, then paying for setup, metadata mapping, asset transfer and any integrations with creative tools. Setup is one-time, while storage, licensing for the DAM component and its maintenance recur. Cost drivers include asset volume, renditions, metadata complexity, rights management and whether marketers need a workflow for approvals. Confirm how many assets will move, which renditions are required, and whether usage rights data must be preserved before you request a quote.

Module selection is a one-time decision, and maintenance is recurring. Contributed modules are GPL projects on Drupal.org, so each one needs review for security history, maintenance activity and compatibility with your Drupal version before you adopt it. Each module you add increases testing and update effort. Plan for a regular update cycle, a staging environment for testing updates, and a named owner for each dependency. Costs rise with the number of custom modules, integrations with marketing tools, and the number of modules that lack recent releases. Ask for a dependency inventory as part of the scope.

Each Drupal major version requires a newer PHP version, so upgrades carry a recurring cost whenever the platform moves forward. Drupal 10 requires PHP 8.1 or later, Drupal 11 requires PHP 8.3 or later, and Drupal 12 requires PHP 8.5 or later. Upgrade work includes testing contributed modules and custom code against the new PHP version, updating hosting images and reviewing the Drupal release schedule. Drupal 10 reaches end of life on December 9, 2026, and Drupal 12 is scheduled for the week of December 7, 2026, so plan the upgrade window early. Ask your team or partner for an upgrade plan that names the PHP and Drupal versions it covers.

Extended security support is a recurring cost used only when a site must run an unsupported Drupal version for longer than planned. Drupal 7 security support ended on January 5, 2025. The Drupal Association's Extended Security Support Provider Program lists HeroDevs and Tag1 Consulting as certified vendors for such sites. Pricing is set by each provider, so request a quote that states the coverage window, the advisories covered, response expectations and what happens when the site migrates. Treat this as a bridge, not a plan, because the underlying site still needs a migration budget.

The cost depends on the size and shape of the estate, and no figure in this answer is a quote. Main cost components are the one-time work of scoping, content export, schema mapping, theme rebuild, asset migration, redirects and testing, plus recurring hosting, Drupal maintenance and support. Costs rise with the number of templates and components, the volume of DAM assets, the number of sites and languages, and the amount of custom Java code tied to AEM. Ask for a written, fixed-scope quote that lists each deliverable, the assumptions behind it, and which costs recur after launch. Your AEM license or subscription costs and any specialist partner fees should be compared against the same scope, not against a headline figure.

Duration depends on estate size and scope, so confirm it during scoping rather than relying on a generic estimate. The main variables are the number of content types and page templates, how many sites and locales must be migrated, how much DAM and form content is involved, and how many integrations must be rebuilt. Your AEM 6.5 support dates set the outer deadline: core support on-premise ends February 28, 2027, and extended support ends February 28, 2028. Work backward from those dates to decide whether a phased cutover is needed, and ask any implementation partner for a timeline tied to written deliverables.

A team can do the work in-house if it already has the right skills, and many teams combine internal staff with outside help. The core skills are PHP and Drupal administration, including content types, views, the Migrate framework and configuration management, plus front-end development for themes and templates. Teams also need operations skills for web servers, databases, backups and patching, and content modeling skills to map AEM components into Drupal paragraphs or blocks. Audit your current team against this list, identify gaps, and decide whether to train, hire or contract for specific phases such as the theme rebuild or the asset migration.

Drupal can manage media and host forms, but it does not provide AEM Assets' full digital asset management feature set or AEM Forms' document-centric capabilities out of the box. For DAM, you typically use Drupal's media system with a contributed or external DAM, and you should confirm metadata, rendition, rights and approval needs against your current workflows. For forms, Drupal's form tools or a separate self-hosted form product can cover many use cases, but complex document generation and signing may need additional components. List every AEM Assets and Forms feature your teams rely on before choosing replacements.

Yes, Drupal is designed for multi-site and multilingual sites, and the core translation and content language features are part of the platform. Large estates usually use a shared codebase with a multisite setup or a single site with multiple language and content structures, and the right choice depends on how independent each site's content, editors and themes must be. Confirm the translation workflow with your translation vendor, the number of languages, and whether machine translation or a translation management connector is needed. Load testing and editorial workflow testing should happen against your real content volumes before you commit to a structure.

Plan to start on Drupal 11 or confirm the current supported major version when you begin, because Drupal 10 reaches end of life on December 9, 2026 according to the Drupal core release schedule. Drupal 11 requires PHP 8.3 or later, and Drupal 12 is scheduled for the week of December 7, 2026 and requires PHP 8.5 or later. Check your hosting and PHP versions early, since they often need upgrading before the code does. Build the upgrade cycle into your operating budget, because each major release brings a planned upgrade effort that recurs over the life of the site.

A bridge can make sense if the move cannot finish before AEM 6.5 support ends, but it adds cost that you will not reuse once the content is on Drupal. Adobe lists AEM 6.5 LTS as one of the 6.5 offerings alongside AEM as a Cloud Service, so confirm with Adobe what the LTS option covers and for how long before you decide. Compare the cost of a bridge contract and its operating effort with the cost of accelerating the migration. Ask any vendor to show which AEM 6.5 features remain supported through the bridge period and which ones will not be patched.