By ProRatings on

We are thinking of a website redesign for our municipality website. We are currently using a commercial CMS. We are budgeting approximately $70,000 for the redesign and migration to Drupal. What kind of costs for ongoing outsourced maintenance, upgrades, support, etc? Is there a percentage we can use as a basic guide?

We have limited internal IT support and no programming abilities as well as no track record of CMS expertise with OSS.

We want to cover all aspects of module and core upgrades, installation, required backups, etc as well as other day-to-day - week-to-week - month-to-month things which might typically be required.

Thanks for any pointers you can provide.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

couturier’s picture

couturier commented

You have asked a great question, and I think you would be pleased with reasonable initial and ongoing maintenance costs in a decision to switch to Drupal. The following is a list of ways that you will save money with Drupal over a commercial CMS right away:

  • Drupal core and modules for a wide range of functions are free and will continue to be so! You will save thousands of dollars by not paying for a proprietary CMS with costly upgrades. Drupal founder Dries Buytaert decided to release Drupal with open source licensing and encourages module contributors to do the same.
  • Drupal security is strong. You will save money by avoiding security breaches to your website. With thousands of developers contributing to Drupal code daily, vulnerabilities are detected and resolved more quickly than they are with many commercial CMS. Charts by your current CMS provider listing the number of resolved security issues compared to Drupal may be misleading because they may not report -- or even discover -- a large number of security vulnerabilities such as are monitored by the large Drupal community and dedicated Drupal security team.
  • Free support is offered in Drupal forums and around the web in other places like Stack Exchange and IRC channels. Local Drupal user group meetings and Drupal conferences in the United States and around the world offer you access to volunteer help from experienced developers. The Drupal community becomes like family the longer you are involved. I have no programming background, yet I was able to learn the basics of installing and maintaining my own Drupal website with the help of online resources and advice from my local experts at our monthly meetings.

These are immediate cost-saving advantages of Drupal. Now, to address your other questions about hiring Drupal workers, here are a few things you might like to know:

  • Drupal developers who manage a large number of sites deploy software updates automatically to all sites at once using platforms that enable them to maintain core software quickly.
  • Your initial website would be developed in our current Drupal 7 version. Drupal 8 is expected to be released in about 2 years. At that time, you would probably pay an extra cost to have your website migrated to Drupal 8 unless you wanted to do it yourself. Drupal core software is always free, but transitioning from one version to another is a little more time-consuming than just applying an update to an existing version. Depending on what functionality you needed, upgrading could take no more than an hour to do, or it could take longer if you wanted to make changes or improvements to your site at the same time you upgraded. Upgrades from version to version are made easy by free modules like Migrate. You can expect a new Drupal core version to be released about every 3 years. Upgrading is always recommended.
  • You asked about week-to-week and month-to-month maintenance. I am a clothing designer by trade but completely maintain my own website, including software updates. The time it takes to do this is less than an hour per month. Most of my time spent on my website is writing new content or creating new features. I am always looking for ways to make my site better, and the Drupal community is a constant source for new ideas. Maintaining a Drupal site is a skill that can be learned by someone who has no previous website experience. Many Drupal website developers also offer training to help their clients maintain their own websites.

If you have other questions, please let us know. Your profile does not list your specific location, but if you are interested in recommendations for a good Drupal developer in your area, feel free to ask. I personally host my website with The Worx Company who has on staff expert developers who are involved with contributing to Drupal core. Worx provides development and maintenance for some of the largest and oldest websites on the Internet. Another option for you might be one of the programmers who attends our local user group meeting and is available for extra work right now. He is dcam on Drupal.org, and he maintains one of the U.S. government websites out of Washington, D.C., though he is based in Oklahoma, and he mentioned at our last meeting that he has a few hours available to take on an extra client. Many other outstanding Drupal developers are located around the United States, and the list is growing.

I hope you will seriously consider a switch to Drupal. The software is exceptional, and the community is a constant source of encouragement.

ProRatings’s picture

ProRatings commented

Thanks for the comprehensive reply. Many of the points that you have made also have counterpoints considering some of the research we've done. I'll go through the main concerns from your response; perhaps our research is wrong or misleading.

Although Drupal is free the customization/support/maintenance required is not and the upgrades do not always go smoothly. This simple fact has been explained to us by many developers as well as other users of Drupal. While automated updates are possible they can and do introduce unforeseen problems that are most easily addressed by a knowledgeable Drupal professionals. At $100 an hour for these services the TCO starts to increase rapidly after launch. Since we have no technical abilities in house and have no intention in hiring anyone on staff to address this all services would need to be outsourced. We have talked to many Drupal shops close to us and the range they have come up with based on our intended project is 5-10 hours per month. At the $100 figure that equates to $6,000 - $12,000 per year. Our existing Kentico CMS costs us $2,500 and includes all support and maintenance costs aside from any required programming and that has averaged less than 3 hrs per quarter over the past few years.

Your point about security seems perhaps a bit marketing related. By our own research we see that there are many government analysts and third party services that list security concerns for Drupal and its core. These security bulletins are searchable through several public websites and we have confirmed that they number several times above the enterprise CSM solutions such as Kentico, SiteCore and Ektron. Those platforms seem to have limited warnings, if any and cover the complete platforms including all functionality.

Drupal's module database includes thousands of existing bugs for each module, many of which may not be large or important but even searching across 'critical' listed bugs is in the thousands. While we may not use all modules, even taking numbers from the Top 20 modules seems to indicate that constant attention needs to be addressed to this issue.

Not sure about other commercial platforms but Kentico has a program where every bug is eliminated in under 7 days. This again equates to less need for outsourced professional services and aligns with the estimates we have been provided so far.

The 'free' support you mention seems sketchy at best through most resources we've looked into. There are so many ways to accomplish something and so many dependencies, managing this process would see most chaotic and again require a thorough understanding of the underlying platform. This costs money and again aligns with the support/maintenance estimates we've received and prompted the original post.

This question as an example received only 1 response (yours) and it would seem that your project requirements are not at all in alignment with ours. It seems like you are an independent designer with limited needs. Our site will have 10,000 pages, a very diverse audience with various levels of feature/functional requirements and integration with multiple business and marketing systems. Not trying to belittle your experience but it is simply parroting the marketing mantra that the Drupal community does but does not seem to showcase when we scratch the surface.

A few of the posts we have made here and on other sites have been returned with dubious advice and more than a few offers for 'professional' services which of course have a cost attached. Developer to developer community may be more forgiving but 'fresh meat' in the water seems to only attract sharks looking to make money. Don't blame these developers they have to eat too.

From our research upgrading Drupal is hell. More than one prominent developer has written about the problems and several posts go out of there way to advise users to simply build another site from scratch rather than attempt any upgrade at all unless the site is as basic as can be imagined. Drupal 8 is supposed to be released in 2 years? Dries gave am indication in June of 2011 that it should come around December of 2013. If you are correct about 2 years until release that would seem like a problem. How do you plan around this type of vague roadmap?

We do thank you for your response but the stuff you indicated seems to simply be regurgitated marketing points even vaguely including references to US Gov Drupal projects. So tired of seeing and hearing that - it has virtually no bearing on any small to medium sized projects.

Thanks - we will continue our research and evaluation. At this point nobody has given any solid answers to our willingness to switch platforms. Our Council brought this topic up as a mandate since a consultant suggested we switch platforms and bulleted almost identical points but provided no concrete evidence that there were actually solid business reasons to justify the switch.

Onward and upward in our quest to find the answers.

Thanks.

couturier’s picture

couturier commented

Thanks for your reply. It sounds as if you have already decided against Drupal, in which case my response may not assist you. However, I do wish to address at least a few points in question.

  • Achieving an accurate quote for a project as complex as yours is difficult. I attend monthly educational meetings with Drupal developers who work with some of the largest sites on the web with hundreds of thousands of pages, and they quite simply refuse to give hard quotes. They work fast, and they get the job done.
  • If you plan to outsource all your site maintenance, forum responses will be irrelevant. Experienced developers know how to find the answers they need.
  • Correct, the upgrade from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 was not smooth for some sites. Upgrade paths are a high priority for Drupal 8, and advanced upgrade options are being developed through the Migrate module. If you hire out your maintenance to a qualified programmer, upgrading to Drupal 8 should be seamless for you. Data can always be transferred directly from databases if needed.
  • Once a complex site has been built, many professional maintainers choose to avoid upgrades to modules unless for security reasons or for new functionality. This eliminates risk of instability and is a completely acceptable practice.
  • Kentico, SiteCore and Ektron may not be reporting all of their bugs or security breaches to the public. You are seeing "many times more" for Drupal because Drupal is a more popular and widely-used platform than the ones you mentioned! Also, the number of Drupal modules is exponentially higher than proprietary systems offer. Remember, Drupal competes on a world stage at the top of all CMS internationally. Proprietary CMS companies have a reputation for concealing problems to improve their marketing image. Drupal, being open source, cannot hide a thing. In fact, the open source nature fosters progress. Many of the reported "bugs" in Drupal core and modules are minor and have no effect on the majority of sites. Rest assured that proprietary software has issues that go conveniently unreported.
  • Kinetco may be offering to resolve your specific problem within 7 days. However, professional Drupal response queues such as offered by Acquia respond within hours, as would a qualified private maintainer. Please don't be deceived by marketing tactics. Bugs are an everyday part of all software, and Kinetco's bugs are probably on a triage list with the ones that are actively reported being fixed ahead of the others. Kinetco can take its time on bugs that are invisible to the end users.
  • The timetable for Drupal 8 release has been extended in order to allow some important new technologies to be fully incorporated. The actual release date will be earlier than 2 years away, but modules that rely on the new new version will come along post release, so that is why I indicated 2 years until a recommended upgrade would be scheduled.

After your response, I am still left wondering about the quality of the local Drupal shops you consulted. If you want truly reliable answers, I again urge you to inquire with The Worx Company. Ask to talk to Kurt Vanderwater. He may be able to point you in the right direction to someone reputable in your state, and initial consultation is free. It would be sad for you to miss out on making the best decision for your project only because of hearing half of the picture. Comments you find online may be referring to previous versions of Drupal, so be careful. Six months is light years in developer time. Best wishes to you.

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

Couple of comments on some of your points:

These security bulletins are searchable through several public websites and we have confirmed that they number several times above...

I see this faulty logic a lot. Correlation != causation. The lack of reported security vulnerabilities does not mean something is more secure, it just means there are less reported occurrences. Nothing more, nothing less. Any inferences from that fact, are just that-- inferences. Personally, I prefer having a vibrant community with a propensity to report bugs and security issues as they are discovered. Commercial vendors can have nondisclosure agreements that actually prohibit such reporting (as they are well aware of the mistaken logic that less reported security issues = the impression of a more secure system).

Drupal's module database includes thousands of existing bugs for each module, many of which may not be large or important but even searching across 'critical' listed bugs is in the thousands.

Also an invalid conclusion from the facts. The issue queues are rife with newbies who have no clue how to use them and 2 of the most frequent usage mistakes are miscategorizing user errors and feature requests as 'bugs' and misusing the 'critical' category (usually used to indicate the criticality to the user rather than the module). Using this data for any type of evaluation is pure folly.

Not sure about other commercial platforms but Kentico has a program where every bug is eliminated in under 7 days.

Not strictly drupal related. If this is the type of response time you're looking for, then save yourself a lot of time and wasted effort-- open source is not for your project (unless you plan on also having a contract with a commercial service provider that supports the open source you wish to use). Response time like that is pretty much limited to commercial arrangements where you pay for it.

Comparing a commercial product to an open source alternative without including the cost of a contract to guarantee a similar response time is apples to oranges.

This question as an example received only 1 response...

I wouldn't judge a product or make a business decision based on forum response rate, lol. Again-- you need to be careful to compare apples to apples.

Our site will have 10,000 pages, a very diverse audience with various levels of feature/functional requirements and integration with multiple business and marketing systems.

I don't mean to be belittling either, but 10k is nothing. My own little app (it's an app not a site), is already at 10k with only several hundred users. But there are huge sites on drupal... whitehouse.gov, examiner.com, data.gov, grammy.com, investor.gov, infoworld.com, popsci, louvre.fr, not to mention many of the sony artist sites... spring to mind. I'm sure there are others. Plenty of big complex sites use it.

...'fresh meat' in the water...

charlatans exist everywhere. I don't see commercial or open source having a better or worse track record here. One thing I do see happen frequently though, is with open source people are much more likely to engage that $20/hour 'drupal' developer (even though warning signs were there-- like 0 drupal.org participation), where they wouldn't have considered anything less than a $$$ developer for a commercial package, and then wonder why they got ripped off.

From our research upgrading Drupal is hell.

Absolutely true, but then so was the last major sharepoint upgrade I was forced to endure. I've found that simply rebuilding and migrating is much much better and easier... and also gives me the opportunity to implement all the change requests that have piled up. But it is a fair critique that I do hope will be addressed with d8.

Open source doesn't cost nothing-- it just costs different. Users assuming the former will generally be disappointed. For me, having lived in both worlds (previously being tied to the MS/Sharepoint/ASP.net world)-- I'd never go back. No amount of money makes up for access to the source code. Any time I don't understand something or need to troubleshoot a bug it's a simple matter of perusing the source. Oh, and if I find and figure a fix for the bug, I can submit it upstream and be fairly confident (assuming it's a real 'bug'), that it will be fixed within my lifetime. Ever try to submit a bug report to M$? More often then not, if you do get a response, it's "that's a feature". Oh, and if you want to figure out how to interact with this or that API-- just $$,$$$ more money will get you a "Certified Provider" or a contract to be able to access support you should have been given when you purchased the product. I'd much rather limit my expenditures to $$$ or even $$$$ and to when I've completely exhausted my own capabilities rather an being forced to pay even when I might be capable if given the opportunity or access to the info I need to be able to help myself.

Commercial CMS? Nope, no thanks.

iandickson’s picture

iandickson commented

or three, and talk to them.

The short answer is that provided you want them to focus on the tech side, and that your people will handle the editorial, you should find that you can make dramatic savings.

gregaltuna’s picture

gregaltuna commented

Well done on the replies on this one.

Let me explain something to you. Um, I am not "Mr. Altuna". You're Mr. Altuna. I'm the Greg. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Gregness, or uh, Greggie, or El Gregerino if you're not into the whole brevity thing.