Hiring the Right Drupal Development Company: How To Get It Right

Enterprises have embraced Drupal since the early 21st century in order to host their platforms and other digital endeavors. Written entirely in PHP, Drupal has now emerged as a renowned open-source content management system, replacing the conventional CMSs like WordPress and Joomla.

Giving enterprises an alternate option, Drupal not only offers flexibility in operations and design, but along with it a thriving community including contributors, business analysts, developers, and other IT professionals.  It also adds to the support mechanism of Drupal, thus powering its growth, along with the growth of over 100,000 Drupal contributors, making it critical to make the right choice when it comes to hiring a Drupal development company.

Why Do Enterprises Prefer Drupal Even Though It Is Open Source

Starting out as a community of few Drupal associates, it has now evolved into a giant community where interactions are fueled by knowledge and ‘drupalisms’. Early on, Drupal was used to curate small platforms, but with its major upgrade, last year in the form of Drupal 9, code-re usability and other ideal practices for open-source projects are now encouraged.

As an enterprise, there are no constraints in hosting their website through Drupal, irrespective of the website’s magnitude. It is this flexibility that has made it earn some prominent clients, one of them being the President of the United States of America.

Evening excluding the White House website which is hosted via Drupal, the CMS surpasses its competitors with ease. With Drupal scoring seven times higher than its two closest contemporaries combined, Drupal has grown in favor with enterprises for the extensive library it offers, and the freedom to inculcate third-party plugins and libraries, thus increasing the need for expert Drupal developers across the realm of IT Projects.

Drupal’s acquisition by Acquia has added to its security and support, thus confirming the fact that countless enterprises trust it for their platforms.

Why Selecting the Right Drupal Development Company Is Critical

An enterprise’s website is the first point of contact with potential clients. While client retention is all about the services an enterprise offering, client acquisition largely depends on how an enterprise can promote itself through its website. Alongside, enterprises are now focusing on personalizing the digital experience through their specialized platforms for better user retention.

With globalization in play, and geography no longer a constraint for clients or companies, there is a necessity for an enterprise to make an impeccable first impression, and therefore the choice of the right Drupal development agency is critical.

Typically when looking to host a website, a business will seek an organization known for website hosting. These organizations offer numerous packages that focus on size, hosting capabilities, server requirements, and are usually customized to suit the needs of an enterprise in the initial stages.

A business with little experience in the realm of technology may be faced with confusion and apprehension when it comes to choosing the right agency for hosting their website, and that is where Drupal becomes important.

As an enterprise, you must be clear with what you want to achieve through your website or other digital platforms. Even though Drupal has a lot to offer in terms of elasticity and magnitude, some Drupal development companies will meet your needs better than others.

The business’s respective industry, the potential audience, the site functionality, and a range of other factors, will be important to consider when it comes to choosing the right Drupal development company, and eventually, will determine the fate of the platform being developed.

Why Determining Your Drupal Requirements Before Examining Vendors’ Capabilities Is Important

It is important to establish your expectations and requirements for the platform to be developed. These key points will be integral in your communication with the potential Drupal development company or agency. As developers determine the scale and complexity of your platform, it will help them understand if they carry the necessary bandwidth to help you build it.

While choosing a Drupal development company, it is important to understand that not all agencies are the same, they may differ in experience and expertise, making it important to have the platform requirements stated clearly initially.

Given Drupal is an open-source platform; an agency’s technical expertise is critical to the completion of a project. If a platform requirement matches with the expertise offered by a vendor, then select that agency to work with. This synchronization will largely depend on the front and back-end developers hired by the vendor, technical & solution architects, as well as any other relevant resources an agency has to offer.

Evaluating a Drupal Development Company Key Development Practices

There are several things that must be taken into careful consideration when it comes to choosing a Drupal agency.  It is essential to ensure that requirements for all levels of execution are met. Here are a few factors that require evaluation before you make the final choice of a Drupal agency:

Solution Architecture/ Technical Architecture: How are they planning to develop your platform? What are the stages of evaluation? What is your platform outline, and how is it going to be executed?

Development and Execution: How is the agency looking to start with the execution process? What are the processes involved? What all tools shall be required at different stages of the platform development cycle?

Code Auditing: How frequent will the code auditing be? Who will be responsible for the mid-project code auditing? How can the agency improvise in the case of any unprecedented delays or disruptions? Who holds the ownership for complete code auditing?

Performance Evaluation and Security: Once the platform has been developed, who’s responsible for its performance? How can your agency help with further upgrades? How efficient are the security measures in place by the vendor?

There is no limit to what you might ask your Drupal development company, but these should help you out to start.

Your Vendor’s Past Experience With Drupal

Expertise cannot make up for experience; in order to develop an ideal platform in Drupal, past experience is indispensable.

You can ask for a demo of relevant projects in order to ascertain the capacity and capability of the Drupal vendor. The agency’s past work will give you a clear idea of their level of expertise. The more experience an agency has can help them with problem-solving and will ensure that your project isn’t plagued by any delays.

Communication and Digital Infrastructure

In this overly competitive world, time is money. With multiple players in the business fray, enterprises are required to make last-minute changes; they must improvise according to the needs and expectations of their clientele, and be on the cutting edge to outwit their contemporaries.

In the development, execution, and support phases of building your digital platform, you will be required to interact with your Drupal developer multiple times. For those hiring an overseas developer, it is necessary to evaluate the accessibility of the agency. Do they have a strong digital infrastructure in place for emergency communication, or can they accommodate your needs without delays?

With businesses placing a high value on the time taken for a platform to be launched, the digital infrastructure of a Drupal development company can be the thin line between success and failure.

Conclusion

Choosing your Drupal agency involves ensuring consistent communication to facilitate the web development of your platform. Given the current competitive atmosphere among businesses, last-minute changes to a platform must be managed effectively, so your selected agency must be able to go above and beyond their stated expertise.

Choosing an agency or web developer isn’t a tedious exercise as some might think; for the ones who have a clear idea of what they want and how they want it done, finding the right Drupal development company is just a small part of a bigger puzzle.