Drupal CMS: A Complete Guide for Marketers

What Is Drupal CMS?

Drupal CMS is the official, marketer-ready distribution of Drupal, first released on 15 January 2025 at DrupalCon Singapore. Traditional Drupal is powerful but developer-centric. Drupal CMS ships with pre-installed modules, guided setup, and an interface designed for non-technical users.

It runs on Drupal core, with Drupal 11 underneath and version 11.3 required for the current release, and it is fully open source under the GPL license. Releases follow a predictable cadence: Drupal CMS 1.0 in January 2025, minor releases through 2025 adding AI tooling and expanded Recipe libraries, and Drupal CMS 2.0 on 28 January 2026.

In short: Drupal CMS is to Drupal what WordPress.com is to WordPress.org. The same engine, packaged for the people who actually create content.

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What's New in Drupal CMS 2.0?

Drupal CMS 2.0, released on 28 January 2026 and built on Drupal core 11.3, changed three things: page building, how a site starts, and how much AI is available to editors out of the box.

• Drupal Canvas is now the default page builder. Editors drag components onto a page, edit in place, and undo changes without jumping between forms and preview screens. Canvas reached 1.0 in December 2025 and was developed under the working name Experience Builder before being renamed.
• Site templates join Recipes. Instead of starting from a blank install, you start from a designed site built for a common use case and shape it from there.
• Expanded AI-assisted authoring. More drafting and refinement features are built into the editorial experience rather than added afterward.

One caveat for teams on an existing Drupal site: at release, migration paths from Layout Builder and Paragraphs to Canvas were planned but not yet available, and Recipes do not carry update paths. Applying individual Drupal CMS 2.0 Recipes to an established site will not reproduce the full 2.0 experience. Plan a Canvas adoption separately from a Recipe install.

Also read: What Drupal CMS 2.0 Means for Digital Experiences.

Why Does Drupal CMS Matter Now?

Drupal CMS matters because it removes the trade-off that kept Drupal out of marketing teams' hands. For two decades, Drupal has powered some of the world's most demanding digital experiences: government portals, university systems, and global media networks. The cost was complexity, because deploying Drupal required developers and editing it often required a ticket.

With one-click Recipes, site templates, AI-assisted content creation, and visual page building, marketers can launch a campaign site, publish a press release, or update a product page without filing a developer request.

That opens Drupal to a market it has historically left to WordPress and Webflow: in-house marketing teams and content-led organizations that need governance and scalability but cannot staff a Drupal team.

What Is Vardot's Role in Drupal CMS?

Vardot leads the content publishing track, which means we are the agency responsible for the workflows that move content from idea to live site. Drupal CMS is built by tracks: focused working groups, each owning a slice of the platform.

Our contributions, drawn from a decade of building Varbase, now ship as part of every Drupal CMS install:

• Drafting from published versions: edit live pages without taking them down
• Scheduled publishing: set go-live and unpublish times for campaigns
• Content moderation dashboards: a centralized inbox for reviews and approvals
• Collaborative workspaces: coordinate edits across multiple pages before launch
• Role-based editorial flows: match content gates to your team's structure

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"We've always aimed to help organizations deliver exceptional digital experiences that are both scalable and futureproof. Leading the content publishing track lets us continue pursuing that long-term vision and bring it to thousands of new teams."

Mohammed Razem, CEO, Vardot

In February 2025, Vardot was named a Drupal Diamond Certified Partner, the top tier of the Drupal Association's certification program, in recognition of this contribution.

What Are the Core Features of Drupal CMS?

1. Recipes and Site Templates (One-Click Site Setups)

Recipes are pre-packaged configurations that install a complete site type in a single command. Site templates, added in 2.0, go a step further and give you a designed starting site rather than a configured blank one. Available Recipes include:

• Marketing site: landing pages, blog, lead capture
• Events site: calendar, registration, speaker pages
• Multilingual site: language switcher, hreflang, translation workflow
• News publication: editorial workflow, author profiles, taxonomy
• eCommerce starter: product catalog, cart, checkout

Recipes are composable. You can apply more than one to a site, and you can publish your own.

2. AI Agents and AI-Assisted Authoring

Drupal CMS includes a native AI module suite that lets editors:

• Generate alt text from images automatically
• Suggest taxonomy terms and meta descriptions
• Translate content into multiple languages
• Surface related content while writing
• Run content quality checks before publish

AI providers are pluggable: connect OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, or run a local model. Because the provider sits behind an abstraction layer, switching later is a configuration change rather than a rebuild.

3. Drupal Canvas (Drag-and-Drop Page Building)

Drupal Canvas is Drupal's visual page builder and the default editing experience in Drupal CMS 2.0. Editors drag components, edit in place, and preview across breakpoints without leaving the canvas. It was developed under the working name Experience Builder, so older documentation may still use that term.

4. Content Publishing Workflows (Vardot's Track)

The publishing layer covers drafting from published versions, scheduled publishing, content moderation dashboards, collaborative workspaces, and role-based editorial flows. These ship enabled by default and are contributed by Vardot as lead of the content publishing track.

5. Project Browser

Project Browser installs modules from inside the admin UI, with curated recommendations and security flags. No SSH access to a server required.

Drupal CMS vs WordPress vs Webflow: Which Should You Choose?

Choose on governance needs, not features. All three will publish a page well. They differ on multilingual depth, editorial workflow, content modeling, and whether you own the platform.

The Bottom Line

• Choose Drupal CMS when you need governance, multilingual content, and structured publishing without giving up a marketer-friendly UI.
• Choose WordPress for the largest plugin ecosystem and the lowest learning curve.
• Choose Webflow for design fidelity on brand sites where the marketing team owns design.

Who Should Use Drupal CMS?

Drupal CMS fits best when at least two of these are true:

• You publish in multiple languages.
• You have a content review process covering legal, compliance, or brand.
• You manage structured content such as products, events, members, or courses.
• You need enterprise-grade security for government, healthcare, or finance.
• You want to own your platform: no SaaS lock-in, no per-seat pricing.

If none of those apply, WordPress is probably enough. If all of them apply, Drupal CMS is likely the strongest open-source option on the market.

How Do You Get Started with Drupal CMS?

Getting started takes about an afternoon for an evaluation install. The path runs from a browser sandbox to a configured site in six steps.

1. Try it in your browser. drupal.org/drupal-cms offers a free sandbox with no install required.
2. Install locally. DDEV and Lando recipes are available, and setup typically takes around ten minutes.
3. Pick a Recipe or site template. Choose the closest match to your use case during setup.
4. Add content types. Drupal CMS handles structured fields out of the box.
5. Configure publishing workflows. Vardot's content publishing track is enabled by default.
6. Connect AI providers (optional). Bring your own API keys.