Optimizely CMS vs Drupal: which to choose

Optimizely CMS vs Drupal: when each platform fits a multi-site estate

If your Optimizely renewal is driven mainly by hosting control, data residency or a wish to standardize on one open-source codebase across many sites and languages, Drupal is the stronger candidate. If your developers are already productive in .NET and your main constraint is keeping the same skills and a single Microsoft stack, Optimizely CMS or a .NET option such as Umbraco will usually cause less disruption. Drupal fits well when the estate is large and multilingual and the organization wants to run one codebase on infrastructure it controls, since Drupal is GPL-2.0-or-later with no paid edition of Drupal itself, so the software cost is not the question. The real cost lies in people, hosting and the partners you hire.

The decision turns on three factors. The first is skills: moving from .NET to PHP means new hiring or retraining, new deployment tooling and a new set of Drupal developers to review code, so ask each candidate platform for a named, realistic staffing plan. The second is scope: count the sites, domains, languages and content types that must share one codebase, because Drupal's multisite and translation model is designed for that scale and the answer changes the migration plan. The third is hosting control: confirm where your residency and audit obligations require data and logs to live, and whether your current Optimizely deployment, whether SaaS or DXP, can be reproduced on your own servers.

Before you commit, confirm the Drupal version you will target. Drupal 11 is the current major version, Drupal 10 reaches end of life on December 9, 2026, and Drupal 12 is scheduled for the week of December 7, 2026, according to the Drupal core release schedule. Plan PHP upgrades alongside it, because Drupal 11 requires PHP 8.3 or later. Ask partners for references on comparable multi-site builds and for a written scope that covers content migration, theme rebuilding and authentication, which can be handled with contributed modules such as the SAML Authentication module. DeployOpen plans and implements such projects under a written scope, but the right partner for you should be chosen on evidence from your own evaluation.

Which scenario favors Optimizely CMS or Drupal

This table maps common buyer situations for large multi-site, multilingual estates to the platform that usually fits better. Read each row as a condition check: if the stated condition describes your estate and team, the better fit column is the starting point, and the test that follows it is what to validate before deciding.

Scenario	Better fit	Condition that makes it so
Deep .NET and Optimizely skills in-house	Optimizely CMS	Developers already maintain Optimizely sites, and retraining onto PHP would take longer than the content and integration gains justify.
Drupal-skilled team already running PHP estates	Drupal	Your engineers and partners already build and operate Drupal, so the move from .NET to PHP adds no new skill set for the team.
Self-hosting on any cloud or data center	Drupal	You need to run the same codebase across several clouds or on-premises sites, and Drupal's GPL licensing places no fee on that hosting choice.
Heavy use of Optimizely personalization and visitor groups	Optimizely CMS	Visitor-group rules, experimentation and personalization are central to your business, and rebuilding them in Drupal would be a large project. Confirm current feature coverage against your own requirements.
One codebase across many sites and languages	Drupal	You want a shared distribution with multisite configuration and common content types. Confirm how your languages, translation workflow and site count fit Drupal's multilingual modules before committing.
Content teams need visual page building with minimal developer input	Either, depending on proof	Assess Optimizely's editing tools against Drupal CMS with Drupal Canvas in a pilot using your own pages. Neither choice should rest on a demo alone.
Long-term support and upgrade planning	Drupal	You need a clear major-version path. Drupal 11 is the current major version, Drupal 12 is scheduled for the week of December 7, 2026 and Drupal 10 reaches end of life on December 9, 2026, per the Drupal core release schedule.

How content modeling differs across many sites and languages

Multi-site and multilingual estates stress a CMS in the same places: how content types are shared, how translations fall back, and how components travel between sites. Drupal and Optimizely CMS handle these differently, so the model you choose will shape editing and maintenance for years.

Content types and blocks

Optimizely models pages and blocks as typed .NET classes, which developers version alongside the code. Drupal models content as entity types with fields, view modes and content types configured in the site and exported as configuration. The main difference is who changes the model: a developer in code for Optimizely, or site builders in the admin interface for Drupal, with changes exported to version control. Check how many block types your estate reuses and whether editors need to create new ones without a release.

Shared content across sites

Many estates keep one brand, product or legal text used on several sites. Drupal supports this through multisite setups, shared content types and cross-site references, but each choice affects permissions, caching and deployment. Optimizely handles shared content through its own site and content structures in the CMS. Map which content must be a single source of truth, which may be copied per site, and who may edit each shared item before choosing a pattern.

Language variants and fallbacks

Each language version of a page is a translation of the same content item, or a separate item, depending on the design. Fallback rules decide what a visitor sees when a translation is missing. Test whether Optimizely and your Drupal configuration can express your fallback chain, such as regional variants falling back to a parent language, and whether editors see translation status on each item. Confirm these multilingual features against your exact Optimizely version and Drupal configuration.

Taxonomy and cross-site classification

Categories, tags and product codes often need to mean the same thing on every site. Drupal uses vocabularies and taxonomy term references that can be shared across content types. Optimizely uses categories that can be applied to content. Decide early whether one global taxonomy governs all sites or each site owns its terms, because a change to a shared term list affects every consumer. Ask for a sample of your real taxonomy to test in a proof of concept.

Reuse of components across sites

Reusable components such as banners, forms and navigation are the main reason estates grow complex. In Drupal, reusable pieces are often blocks, paragraphs or components placed through layouts, and their reuse depends on how the theme is built. In Optimizely, reusable blocks and shared layouts are defined in the application code. Count how many components appear on more than one site and how often each changes, since frequent changes to shared components raise the cost of either platform.

Proving the model before committing

Vendor feature lists rarely show how a model behaves under your own volume of sites, languages and editors. Build a short proof of concept with a representative slice of your content model, including one shared block, one fallback chain and one taxonomy shared across two sites. Record what editors must click, what developers must code and what the site builds from. Use that evidence in the migration and cost comparison.

How Optimizely CMS and Drupal compare on capabilities

This table sets Optimizely CMS editions against Drupal across licensing, hosting, runtime, authentication, languages and release cadence. Use it to see where each platform asks for a commercial contract or a specific skill set, and confirm the Optimizely rows against current vendor documentation before you decide.

Capability	Optimizely CMS	Drupal
Licensing	Commercial license for the CMS, sold per edition or as a subscription. Confirm terms and what is included with your contract.	GPL-2.0-or-later for Drupal core and contributed modules, with no paid edition of Drupal itself
Editions	CMS 12 and CMS 13 for self-hosted .NET deployments, plus SaaS and DXP hosting. Confirm feature differences per edition with Optimizely.	One open-source core. Drupal CMS is a distribution on the same core for marketing and content teams, with recipes and a visual page builder
Supported hosting	Customer-hosted .NET applications, Optimizely DXP, or Optimizely SaaS. Confirm which options your contract covers.	Any infrastructure you control, including your own cloud accounts, data centers or air-gapped networks
Database options	Confirm the supported SQL Server versions and any other database support against current Optimizely system requirements	MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite
Web server options	Confirm supported Windows and IIS configurations with Optimizely before planning	Apache, Nginx and other web servers
Runtime	Microsoft .NET, with versions set by each CMS release. Confirm the exact framework version for CMS 12 and CMS 13	PHP 8.3 or later for Drupal 11, PHP 8.5 or later for Drupal 12
Authentication options	Confirm SAML, OpenID Connect and directory integrations in the current Optimizely documentation	Contributed SAML Authentication (samlauth) and OpenID Connect modules, maintained on Drupal.org
Multilingual support	Confirm language and translation features for your edition with Optimizely	Core multilingual capabilities, with contributed modules available for more advanced workflows. Test your language set during evaluation
Release cadence	Vendor-set release schedule per edition. Confirm support dates for your version in writing	Bugfix releases on the first Wednesday of each month, security releases on the third Wednesday, and Drupal 12 scheduled for the week of December 7, 2026. Drupal 10 reaches end of life on December 9, 2026

How editorial workflow and visual building compare for content teams

The first decision for content teams is whether editors can do their daily work without developer help. In Optimizely CMS, editors work in the on-page editing and content tree views that the platform provides, and approvals, scheduled publishing and previews depend on how your site is configured and which add-ons you have licensed. In Drupal, the equivalent controls come from core and contributed modules: content moderation with workflow states, scheduled publishing through contributed modules, and preview of unpublished revisions. Drupal's content moderation is powerful for multi-step approvals across many sites, but the exact roles, transitions and preview behavior depend on how your team configures them. Map your current approval chain, including who can move content from draft to legal review to publish, and test that chain in a Drupal sandbox with your own editors.

Visual page building is where the two products differ most in practice. Drupal CMS is a distribution built on Drupal core for marketers and content teams. It ships with recipes and site templates, the Drupal Canvas visual page builder (previously Experience Builder), and optional AI tools. Drupal CMS 2.0 is the current major release. Confirm with the Drupal CMS documentation which of these features your target version includes, and whether Drupal Canvas meets your layout needs for landing pages, campaign blocks and reusable components. Page-building depth depends on the modules and components you choose, so the reader should not assume that a feature listed on the distribution page will match the editing experience their team expects.

Run a short editorial pilot before you commit. Give three or four editors a representative set of tasks: create a multi-language landing page, schedule it for a future date, send it through two approval steps, and preview it on mobile and desktop. Record where they need developer help, which permissions they lack and how long each task takes in both environments. Ask your Optimizely partner for a fair comparison of its authoring tools, and ask the Drupal implementation partner to demonstrate the same workflow in a sandbox that matches your site structure. The results will show whether the gap is in the platform, the module choices or your team's training.

What the move from .NET to PHP means for your team

Moving from C# and .NET to PHP and Drupal changes the language, the module model and the theme system at the same time. Your developers will work with PHP, Drupal's plugin and service architecture, Twig templates and the Drupal configuration system instead of ASP.NET MVC conventions, NuGet packages and Optimizely's add-on model. Contributed modules on Drupal.org replace many of the libraries your team wrote or bought, so part of the work is evaluating what already exists and what must be built.

Language and tooling: PHP, Composer and Drush replace C#, MSBuild and Visual Studio workflows.
Module model: Drupal modules hook into core services, so custom code is usually a module rather than a plugin in an Optimizely add-on.
Theme system: Twig templates and Drupal theme libraries replace Razor views. Drupal 6 and 7 themes cannot be migrated and must be rebuilt.
Configuration: site structure is managed through exported configuration files that go through version control.
Testing: confirm which PHPUnit, Behat or browser test tools your team will adopt.

Before committing, ask your senior developers to build a small proof of concept for one content type and one template, and measure how long it takes them to reach a working result.

Hosting freedom, licensing and identity under your control

Drupal moves the question of where a site runs, who may change it and how it signs users in onto your side of the table. Each card below covers one part of that control, with the checks to make before a decision is signed off.

Where code and data run

Drupal runs on Apache, Nginx and other web servers, with MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite as the database. The same codebase can run in your cloud account, a data center or an air-gapped network, so hosting becomes a design choice rather than a contract term. Confirm which region holds the database, file storage and backups, and who holds administrative access to each layer.

GPL-2.0-or-later licensing

Drupal core and contributed projects on Drupal.org are licensed under GPL-2.0-or-later, and there is no paid edition of Drupal itself. Your licensing cost sits in the people, hosting and vendors you choose, not in a per-site or per-seat fee. Ask your legal team to review the licenses of any commercial modules or themes you add, since those may carry their own terms.

GPL terms for site-only code

The GPL does not require you to share code that is only used to run a website. Custom modules and themes kept inside your organization can stay private, although any copy you distribute to others, such as a partner or a product you sell, triggers the GPL's source obligations. Agree on this boundary with your legal counsel before an implementation partner writes code for you.

Identity through SAML and OpenID Connect

The contributed samlauth module lets Drupal act as a SAML service provider, and the OpenID Connect module lets external providers authenticate users and create accounts on first sign-in. For an estate that uses an existing identity provider, confirm which module version supports your Drupal release, how group or role claims map to Drupal roles, and what happens to accounts when someone leaves.

Security advisories and patch ownership

The Drupal Security Team coordinates advisories for core and contributed projects, and security releases follow a fixed monthly rhythm. Because you host the site, you own the patch window, the staging test and the rollback plan. Document who receives advisory notices and who approves emergency patches, since an unpatched contributed module is a risk you carry directly.

Compliance scope follows the design

The audit scope of a Drupal estate depends on how it is hosted, which identity provider it trusts, where logs are kept and which team administers each layer. DeployOpen plans and implements these controls and prepares the evidence, but it does not issue audit reports, attestations or certifications. Ask your independent auditor early which architecture diagrams, access records and change logs they will need.

What Optimizely CMS vs Drupal costs to own over the long term

The main cost difference sits in who is paid for the software. Drupal and its contributed modules are licensed under GPL-2.0-or-later, and there is no paid edition of Drupal itself, so the license line is zero. Optimizely CMS is different: its licenses or SaaS and DXP subscriptions are negotiated per contract, and the price is set by your agreement, not by a public list. Ask Optimizely for a written breakdown of what the subscription covers (CMS entitlements, environments, hosting, support tier and any add-ons such as personalization or analytics) so you can compare it line by line with the Drupal components below. Drupal's zero license cost does not mean zero spend. The money moves to hosting, development, support and staffing, and those costs recur every year.

Some costs are one-time and some recur. The one-time work includes the content and schema mapping, the rebuild of themes (Drupal themes cannot be migrated and must be rebuilt), the migration of content, media, users and redirects, and the testing of each site in a multi-site estate. Recurring costs include hosting and environments, security and bugfix updates, the yearly work of moving to new major versions, and maintenance of contributed modules for SSO, workflow and multilingual needs. 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 path into your budget now. Confirm with each agency or partner how they price major upgrades, whether they charge per site, and whether the quote assumes you will move to the next major version or stay on the current one.

Staffing and the partner market decide most of the long-term number. Optimizely work usually depends on .NET developers and Optimizely-certified partners, while Drupal work depends on PHP developers and a deep pool of agencies and freelancers. Ask each bidder for the named roles, their hourly or retainer rates, the expected hours for the first year and the steady-state hours after launch, and whether support is covered by a fixed retainer or billed as needed. For Drupal, request a list of contributed modules the proposal depends on and who maintains each one, because an unmaintained module becomes your cost. Compare the bids on a three to five year total, including hosting, retainers and the upgrade budget, not on the first-year build alone.

What a move from Optimizely CMS to Drupal involves

The sequence takes a multi-site, multilingual Optimizely estate to a Drupal platform with a tested content model, migrated media and redirects, rebuilt access rules and a verified cutover. The exact order and effort depend on how many sites, languages and integrations the estate has.

Inventory sites, content and integrations
Document every site, its page and block types, languages, visitor groups, workflow states, scheduled publishing rules and the integrations that read from or write to the CMS, such as search, forms, analytics and identity providers. Your internal CMS owner and the Optimizely administrators usually provide this, and a developer validates it against the running code. The step is done when each site has a listed inventory with an owner and a decision recorded for every integration: move, replace or retire.
Design the Drupal content model and sites
Map Optimizely page types, blocks and shared content to Drupal content types, paragraphs or components, taxonomies and menus, and decide whether the estate runs as one Drupal codebase with several sites or as separate installations. Language handling, translation workflow and editorial roles are designed here, not later. Drupal CMS is a distribution built on Drupal core for marketers and content teams, and teams should evaluate whether its recipes fit their model. The output is a signed-off content model document and a site architecture diagram.
Extract content through APIs and export packages
Pull content, file metadata and translations from Optimizely using its APIs, and use export packages where they help with bulk content and file references. Export packages do not carry permissions, so extraction plans must treat access rules as a separate workstream. Developers write scripts that transform each content item into the Drupal content model, preserving language versions and internal links. The step is complete when a full extraction runs against a staging copy and a sample of items per content type matches the source.
Import into Drupal and migrate media
Load the extracted content into a Drupal staging environment using the core Migrate modules or custom migration plugins, then move files and images into Drupal's media system with their alt text and metadata. Migration scripts should be repeatable so that content changed in Optimizely during the project can be re-imported. Your team confirms that media references resolve and that large file sets complete without gaps. Done means a repeatable migration run with a reconciliation report of item and file counts per site and language.
Rebuild themes, personalization and workflow
Build new Drupal themes, since Optimizely templates are not portable, and rebuild personalization that relied on visitor groups using Drupal's segmentation options or a dedicated personalization tool your team selects. Recreate editorial workflow states, approvals and scheduled publishing in Drupal's content moderation. Authentication for editors and visitors is connected through an identity provider, for example with the contributed SAML Authentication or OpenID Connect modules, after the identity design is agreed. Done means editors can complete a full publish cycle in staging with the roles they need.
Rebuild access rules and map redirects
Because permissions do not survive an Optimizely export, recreate roles, page-level access and editorial rights in Drupal from the inventory, then have content owners review them. In parallel, build a redirect map from every live Optimizely URL to its Drupal destination, including language prefixes and retired pages. Security and content owners sign off on the access model before cutover. The step is done when the redirect map covers every indexed URL in the inventory and the access review is documented.
Test, cut over and run parallel checks
Run functional, accessibility, performance and security testing on the Drupal sites, then cut over in a planned window with rollback steps written down. After go-live, keep Optimizely available for a defined period so that content teams can compare key pages, translations and redirects against the new site. Confirm the PHP version, hosting configuration and backup routine before go-live, as they will be your responsibility. The step closes when parallel comparison reports show no open gaps in content, redirects or access.

Questions buyers ask before choosing Drupal or hiring help

How much effort does moving an Optimizely CMS estate to Drupal take?

Effort depends mainly on the number of sites, content types, languages, integrations and the amount of personalization that must be rebuilt, not on the Drupal version alone. Visitor-group personalization, custom .NET blocks and Optimizely-specific add-ons have no direct Drupal equivalent and must be redesigned as content types, views, contributed modules or custom code. Ask for a written inventory of page types, block types, sites, languages, media volume and integrations before accepting any effort figure. A scope that lists these items, with the content types mapped to Drupal entities, is the document that makes an estimate comparable between suppliers.

What does the internal team need to contribute to a Drupal migration?

The internal team supplies domain knowledge, content owners who decide what is kept, and someone who can approve information architecture and editorial workflows. Engineers who know the current .NET codebase are needed to explain custom logic, data sources and integrations, even if they do not write the new PHP code. Plan time for editors to review migrated content, because page layouts and blocks will not map one to one. Ask any supplier to name these roles in the written scope so the dependency on your staff is visible before work starts.

Can our .NET team build and run the Drupal site alone?

A .NET team can run a Drupal site alone only if it adds PHP skills and accepts the Drupal development conventions, which differ from ASP.NET and Optimizely's module model. Drupal 11 requires PHP 8.3 or later and Drupal 12 requires PHP 8.5 or later, so the team must also keep the runtime current. Many organizations pair internal editors and front-end staff with an external partner for the first release and then take over routine maintenance. Decide early which parts you will own, such as content and configuration, and which you will contract out, such as module upgrades and security hardening.

How should we handle Drupal major version upgrades after go-live?

Plan each major version upgrade as a project with its own testing, because major versions do not behave as in-place patches. The Drupal core release schedule says new major versions typically arrive every three years, and bugfix releases come on the first Wednesday of each month while security releases come on the third Wednesday. Drupal 10 reaches end of life on December 9, 2026, and Drupal 12 is scheduled for the week of December 7, 2026, so a site launched on Drupal 10 will need a planned upgrade. Ask the supplier how contributed modules will be checked against each target version and who owns that work after handover.

What drives the cost of a Drupal migration up or down?

The largest drivers are the number of distinct content models, the number of sites and languages, the volume and quality of existing content, the degree of custom functionality, and the integration count. Costs fall when content is consolidated, personalization is simplified, and editors agree on a content model before development starts. Costs rise when themes must be rebuilt from scratch, which the Drupal documentation confirms for Drupal 6 and 7 themes, and when the source data is inconsistent. Request a quote that separates discovery, content migration, theme and build, integration, testing, training and post-launch support, since these components are priced and staffed differently.

Is there a paid Drupal edition, and what do we pay for support?

Drupal itself has no paid edition. Drupal and contributed projects on Drupal.org are licensed under GPL-2.0-or-later, so the core software costs nothing to license, and what you pay for is hosting, development, maintenance and any support contract. Support options come from partners and hosting providers rather than from a licensor, so check each provider's scope and response commitments in writing. The Drupal Association also lists certified vendors in its Extended Security Support Provider Program for Drupal 7 sites that cannot migrate yet, which is one example of a paid support route to compare.

Does DeployOpen do the whole migration, or only parts of it?

DeployOpen plans, implements, customizes, integrates, hardens, backs up, upgrades, documents and supports self-hosted open-source platforms inside your own infrastructure. Most engagements are fixed-scope, with scope, deliverables and timelines agreed in writing before work starts, and ongoing support and upgrades are available as retainers. Discuss with us which parts of the Drupal migration you want us to cover and which your team will keep, then review the written scope before deciding. Quotes follow from that scope, and DeployOpen does not publish a price list.

How DeployOpen helps you evaluate, implement and migrate

DeployOpen plans, implements, customizes, integrates, hardens, backs up, upgrades, documents and supports self-hosted open-source platforms inside your own infrastructure. For Optimizely CMS vs Drupal, we start with the content architecture and editorial workflow your estate depends on, then decide with you whether Drupal fits your sites, languages and team.

How we scope

We inventory sites, languages, content types, editorial roles and integrations before any recommendation is made.
We map Optimizely features such as visitor groups, personalization and workflows to Drupal modules, recipes or custom code.
Engagements are fixed-scope, with scope, deliverables and timelines agreed in writing before work starts.

How we build

We install Drupal on your cloud accounts, data centers or air-gapped networks, using the database and web server your standards require.
We configure SAML or OpenID Connect sign-in against your identity provider, using contributed modules we test before rollout.
We build a proof of concept on one representative site, including multilingual content and editorial review, before scaling the design.

How we hand over

We document the content model, module inventory, hosting topology, backup and restore procedures and upgrade runbook.
We run migration rehearsals for content, media and URL redirects, and record which items need manual rebuilding.
We train your PHP and content teams on the editorial tooling, deployment process and the Drupal security release routine.

How we support

Ongoing support, upgrades and continuous testing are available as retainers, scoped in writing like the initial work.
We prepare systems, controls and evidence for compliance assessments, while independent auditors issue any audit reports.
Ask each quote to separate the one-time migration effort from recurring hosting, maintenance and retainer costs.

Optimizely CMS vs Drupal