Top 10 Benefits of using Drupal CMS

Drupal is an open source content management platform (CMS) which powers millions of websites and applications. There is no proprietary code, it's fully extensible and flexible and you have access to an active developer community worldwide. There's a huge market of Distributions, Themes and Modules available for Drupal which can help you quicky build and customise your next web project.

Here are the top 10 benefits of Drupal CMS:

1. Rapid and Agile Web 2.0 Development is at the heart of Drupal. Out of the box, you have clean mark-up code, page and blog publishing, content management, search, polls, forums, user login modules and more. Development time is reduced from weeks to days.
2. Thousands of free Modules (16,000+) are available in the community to help you quickly add specific features to your website. From CRM, Security, Social Media to SEO, Performance, Backup/Migrate and more. Think of modules as Lego Blocks -  quickly add them to build your online property.
3. A huge community of theme designers have created feature-rich templates to quickly help you realise your website's vision. Aesthetics, fonts, responsive layouts, stock graphics, adjustable colour schemes and layout editors make working with 3rd party themes a breeze. You can always find one to suit your brand identity. Or simply build your own.
4. Drupal CMS is massively scalable. You can start with 5 pages and grow to 5000 without ever needing to change anything. Performance and Security parameters can easily be managed from the Admin console. Some of the world's high traffic sites like Grammys, White House, Nascar all run on Drupal.
5. It's 100% free. As open source software, you're not locked down with licenses, recurring fees or anything proprietary. Just install the CMS files on your server and you're good to go.
6. Drupal CMS is known for its rock solid security, dependability and constant security patches and updates. Safeguarding you from any online code exploits.
7. Clean code, powerful modules and modern web publishing make Drupal a very SEO Friendly CMS. There are of course a wide range of 3rd party SEO modules you can plug in to Drupal to take your SEO initiatives to the next level. (I'll publish a separate post on some Drupal SEO modules you can deploy in your project)
8. Adding eCommerce modules and integrating payment gateways is a breeze with Drupal thanks to a lot of open APIs and Modules. There are also complete eCommerce ready drupal distributions available which have everything out of the box! From payment gateway, logistics handling, shopping carts to customer CRM, messaging and much more. 'Commerce Kickstart' is a good example.
9. Powerful content creation and collaboration is at the heart of Drupal. Easily create and publish content, set user roles and permissions, choose who can view/edit/share content and more. You're in total control.
10. Easily connect with the web's leading 3rd party services and APIs to extend your Drupal Website. Social networking integration is also widely supported to help you engage with a wider audience. Drupal also offers your site easy ways to interact with external media and file services.