Why government, education and complex organisations continue to choose Drupal.

One of the questions we're often asked by organisations considering Drupal is: who else is using it?

It's a reasonable question. Choosing a content management system is a significant decision, particularly when the platform needs to support large amounts of content, multiple teams, complex integrations or critical digital services for many years.

Drupal is used across government, education, enterprise and not-for-profit sectors. But the more useful question isn't just who uses Drupal. It's why organisations with complex digital requirements continue to choose it.

Why organisations choose Drupal

Drupal is an open-source content management system designed to support complex, content-rich digital experiences.

It is particularly strong when organisations need to manage large content libraries, structured and reusable content, multiple audiences or websites, sophisticated publishing workflows, integrations, multilingual content, accessibility and strong governance.

Rather than prescribing a particular type of website, Drupal provides a flexible foundation that can be configured and extended around an organisation's requirements.

Drupal in government

Drupal has a strong presence across Australian Government.

GovCMS is built on Drupal, providing government agencies with a managed platform designed around government requirements.

For organisations considering GovCMS, this provides a way to take advantage of Drupal within a standardised government environment.

But GovCMS isn't the only way government organisations can use Drupal. Depending on functional, integration, security and hosting requirements, Drupal can also be deployed in other managed environments.

The important thing is selecting the approach that best fits the organisation rather than allowing the platform to dictate the solution.

Drupal in practice

The flexibility of Drupal becomes clearer when you look at the very different digital experiences it can support.

Inner West Council

For Inner West Council, Digital Garden designed and developed a large-scale Drupal platform supporting extensive content and important council information and services.

The project involved user research, information architecture, accessibility, content migration and stronger content governance, supported by structured content, editorial workflows and a reusable component-based design system.

It demonstrates Drupal's ability to operate as more than a publishing platform, providing the foundation for a large and evolving government digital experience.

National Library of Australia

The National Library of Australia presented a different set of requirements.

GovCMS was initially considered, but discovery identified that the Library required greater flexibility to accommodate its complex digital environment. Digital Garden subsequently delivered the website on Drupal, supported by a scalable design system and integrations with key Library services including the Catalogue, Trove and NLA Bookshop.

The project demonstrates an important advantage of Drupal: the underlying CMS can provide a robust foundation while the architecture and hosting approach are adapted around more specialised requirements.

University of Sydney – Sydney Executive Plus

For the University of Sydney Business School's Sydney Executive Plus, Drupal provides the foundation for a sophisticated executive learning platform.

Rather than simply publishing website content, the platform supports corporate clients and learner cohorts, role-based permissions, SSO, user and progress management, and integrations with enterprise systems.

It's a very different application of Drupal and demonstrates how the platform can extend beyond a traditional content-managed website.

One platform, very different applications

These three projects have very different audiences and objectives.

Inner West Council is a large public-facing government platform. The National Library of Australia combines extensive content with specialist services and integrations. Sydney Executive Plus supports authenticated users and complex learning experiences.

Yet all three use Drupal.

That's really the point.

Drupal's strength isn't that every organisation uses it in the same way. It's that it can be shaped around different content, users, integrations and organisational requirements.

Structured content that can go further

One of Drupal's particular strengths is its approach to structured content.

Rather than treating everything as a generic webpage, content can be modelled according to what it represents — a service, publication, event, course, person, location or resource, for example.

This makes information easier to manage and reuse across different parts of a website or multiple digital channels.

It also provides a strong foundation for search, integrations and emerging AI-powered experiences, where clearly structured and machine-readable content is increasingly valuable.

Designed to connect

Modern digital platforms rarely operate independently.

They may need to exchange information with CRMs, identity providers, learning systems, search platforms, databases, marketing tools and other business systems.

Drupal's architecture makes it particularly well suited to these kinds of integrations, allowing it to become part of a broader digital ecosystem rather than another isolated system.

The examples above demonstrate just how varied those integrations and digital experiences can be.

Is Drupal right for your organisation?

A list of organisations using Drupal isn't, by itself, a reason to choose it.

For a relatively simple website, Drupal may offer more capability than is required. Other platforms may provide a simpler solution.

Drupal becomes particularly compelling as requirements become more complex — when an organisation needs sophisticated content management, integrations, multiple audiences, publishing governance, accessibility, security or a platform capable of evolving over time.

That's why we continue to use Drupal across such a broad range of projects.

The organisations may be very different. The common factor is the need for a digital platform flexible enough to accommodate complexity without limiting what comes next.