An effective web site occupies a key place in any organization’s marketing strategy and web presence. Managers can't ignore the power of the Internet when it comes to communicating with constituents and attracting new prospects or donors. Having budgeted for the initial design, hosting, and launch of the web site, that same careful manager needs to consider longer term maintenance costs and how to defray them to keep the web site current and meaningful. Drupal can help reduce these costs going forward.
First, because it’s open source, Drupal involves no acquisition cost. Any organization of any type can adopt Drupal as its CMS for free. Further, Drupal can help control development costs. The Drupal user community is very large and growing every year, with more and more web design and consulting companies using Drupal to complete their clients’ web development jobs.
Even a casual online search will turn up multiple local web developers who can deliver projects using Drupal. The magnitude of the Drupal development community and the companies dedicated to supporting that community make it easy to find Drupal consultants.
This is especially true when compared with the cost of development in a proprietary CMS. Being proprietary, these other systems have fewer users, making developers harder to find. Retaining that expertise to maintain your web site will cost you more than good Drupal developers will.
Keep the total cost of your web site in mind as you choose your web development platform.
