Using Open Source Drupal And Paying For It?

Written by webchicklet on August 27, 2008 – 1:04 pm -

Image via Wikipedia Acquia just announced that they will be offering Drupal, the extremely popular free open source CMS, as a subscription-based service. In other words, for a price. What??? Now wait, this isn’t a scam, and it’s a respected way of doing things. RedHat has been offering its version of Linux for a fee for years. What this really means, is that you will get SERVICE and SUPPORT for a price, and that’s never a bad thing - especially with something as complex as Drupal.

And Drupal IS complex. In fact, it’s why I don’t recommend it very often, especially to non-techies. It’s great. But it can be difficult to learn and manage.

However, if you can pay someone to hold your hand, then maybe it’s worth a go. Acquia hasn’t determine pricing yet, as far as I can tell, so I don’t know if the cost will justify the amount of hand-holding you’d get, but it’s at least something to consider if you think you MIGHT want to have a go at using Drupal, but are a bit worried about your skill level.

It appears that Acquia is still in the beta stage, and haven’t decided upon price points, support levels, or even every service that will be available, but you can see that they’ve got a lot of things planned that might be really useful. Essentially, they’ll be bundling Drupal with a selection of hand-picked modules that they believe will be best for everyone, and then providing support for them. Head on over to their site to read more. You do have to actually register to get all the details, but don’t expect to get pricing details yet - because there aren’t any.

So although this isn’t quite ready for prime time, you may want to keep your eye on it, if you were considering using Drupal as your CMS of choice.