Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Drupal VS Neocities

Compare Drupal VS Neocities and see what are their differences

Drupal logo Drupal

Drupal - the leading open-source CMS for ambitious digital experiences that reach your audience across multiple channels. Because we all have different needs, Drupal allows you to create a unique space in a world of cookie-cutter solutions.

Neocities logo Neocities

Create your own free website. Unlimited creativity, zero ads.
  • Drupal Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-18
  • Neocities Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-15

Drupal features and specs

  • Flexibility
    Drupal is highly customizable and can be tailored to meet the unique needs of almost any web project. Its modular architecture allows developers to add functionalities and change behaviors without modifying the core system.
  • Scalability
    Drupal can handle large volumes of content and high traffic levels, making it suitable for both small websites and large, complex applications.
  • Security
    Drupal is known for its strong security features and has a dedicated security team that continuously works on identifying and fixing vulnerabilities.
  • Community Support
    Drupal has a large, active community of developers, designers, and users who contribute modules, themes, and support, facilitating problem-solving and innovation.
  • Multilingual Capabilities
    Drupal offers excellent support for multilingual websites, providing built-in translation modules and interfaces for managing content in multiple languages.

Possible disadvantages of Drupal

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Drupal's flexibility and power come at the cost of complexity, which can be daunting for new users and developers.
  • Performance Optimization
    While Drupal can handle high traffic, it requires careful performance tuning and caching strategies to perform optimally, which can add to development and maintenance overhead.
  • Development Time
    Building a site with Drupal can take more time compared to other content management systems due to its complexity, especially if custom features are required.
  • Resource Intensive
    Running a fully-featured Drupal site can be resource-intensive, often requiring more server resources compared to simpler CMS solutions.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing dependencies and updates for the numerous modules that make up a Drupal site can be complex and requires careful attention to compatibility and security.

Neocities features and specs

  • Free Hosting
    Neocities offers free hosting of small websites, making it accessible for users to create and share content without incurring costs.
  • Community Support
    Neocities has an active and supportive community that can assist users with troubleshooting, ideas, and collaboration.
  • Learning Platform
    It provides a hands-on environment for learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which is valuable for beginners who want to develop web design skills.
  • Ad-Free Experience
    Neocities doesn't run ads on user websites, ensuring a clean and professional look for personal and hobby projects.
  • Nostalgic Design
    The platform evokes a nostalgic feel of early web creation days, which can be appealing to users who appreciate web history.

Possible disadvantages of Neocities

  • Limited Features
    Free accounts have limited storage and bandwidth, which can be restrictive for larger or media-heavy websites.
  • No Backend Support
    Neocities only supports static websites, lacking capabilities for server-side scripting and dynamic content generation.
  • Basic Interface
    The user interface is relatively basic compared to modern web hosting services, which may feel less intuitive for some users.
  • Potential Downtime
    As a free service, Neocities may experience more frequent downtime or slower services compared to premium hosting providers.
  • Limited Usage for Businesses
    While great for personal or hobby projects, Neocities might not meet the needs of businesses requiring extensive features, scalability, and professional support.

Analysis of Drupal

Overall verdict

  • Drupal is a good choice for those seeking a flexible, scalable, and security-focused CMS suitable for complex and high-traffic websites. It may not be as beginner-friendly as some other CMSs, but it offers immense capabilities for advanced users and developers.

Why this product is good

  • Drupal is a powerful content management system (CMS) known for its flexibility and scalability. It offers robust tools for content authoring, reliable performance, and excellent security measures. Drupal is highly customizable and can handle complex sites with heavy traffic and specific requirements. It supports a wide range of add-ons and integrations, allowing developers to create feature-rich sites. Furthermore, the active open-source community continually contributes to enhancing its ecosystem with modules and themes.

Recommended for

  • Large enterprises and organizations
  • Complex and custom web applications
  • High-traffic websites
  • Websites requiring advanced content management and workflows
  • Non-profit and government websites

Analysis of Neocities

Overall verdict

  • Neocities is an excellent choice for individuals interested in creating and hosting simple, personal websites or learning web development basics. It's particularly well-regarded for its supportive community and focus on open web principles.

Why this product is good

  • Neocities is considered a good platform for several reasons. It is free to use and allows users to create and host their own websites easily. It has a simple and user-friendly interface, making it accessible for beginners. The community-driven aspect encourages collaboration and sharing among users. Additionally, Neocities promotes web creativity and learning by providing an ad-free experience and supporting custom HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Recommended for

  • Beginners interested in learning web design and development.
  • Hobbyists looking to create personal websites.
  • Educators and students for educational projects.
  • Artists and creatives wanting to showcase their work online.
  • Anyone who prefers a minimalist, straightforward approach to website hosting.

Drupal videos

Drupal Vs WordPress - Which Is The Best CMS?

More videos:

  • Review - Drupal 8: Comments, Reviews and Content Moderation Workflows
  • Review - Drupal Product Management Review: Out-of-the-Box

Neocities videos

Neocities - Open source review

More videos:

  • Review - Neocities - The Free Open Source Web Hosting Tool That Rocks!

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Drupal and Neocities)
CMS
79 79%
21% 21
Website Builder
43 43%
57% 57
Blogging Platform
100 100%
0% 0
Blogging
87 87%
13% 13

User comments

Share your experience with using Drupal and Neocities. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Drupal and Neocities

Drupal Reviews

Comparing 9 WordPress alternatives & competitors in 2024
Drupal isn’t for beginners, as it lacks in-product tutorials, and you will need to find a separate hosting service to publish sites online. But if you’re an experienced developer looking for a tool that gives you complete design control, Drupal might be the right choice.
Source: webflow.com
19 Best WordPress Alternatives in 2025
Drupal is a content management system known for its flexibility, scalability, and security. It's popular for complex websites, including news outlets, e-commerce platforms, and government portals. While Drupal is free and open-source, customization and development require technical expertise.
Source: www.pixpa.com
Top 10 Web Content Management Systems
Keeping up with the trend of introducing great open-source CMS systems, Drupal is our next entry on the list. Drupal is one of the oldest and most reputable customizable CMS options out there, with its original release dating back to 2001, making it older than WordPress. As a web CMS, Drupal’s principal focus is on security. It is known to have one of the best security...
Source: cloudzy.com
8 Great Drupal Alternatives to Try for your Website (Nov 2021)
Whether you're creating a new website from scratch or looking for a way to upgrade your existing one, you'll need the right content management system. A content management system (CMS), is a tool that helps you to modify and optimize your website however, you choose, without the need for any complex API or PHP work. While some CMS solutions allow you to have some control...
WordPress alternatives: Which CMS platform is the best?
With Drupal, the startup costs are higher than WordPress, since developing with Drupal requires more technical expertise. It’s more complex than WordPress, and you will likely need to pay for a developer. Besides that, you’ll have to invest in the basics like – domain registration, hosting, added security, and so on.
Source: factory.dev

Neocities Reviews

If You Want to Leave Twitter Because of Elon Musk, These Are Your Options
Do you miss the old internet, from before Twitter? Enter Neocities, modeled after Geocities, the place where many people still online made their first homes for themselves. Neocities allows every user to create and host their own website, coded in HTML. There’s a kind of passive social aspect to the web host as well. Each site on Neocities is added to a browseable gallery of...
Source: www.vice.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Neocities should be more popular than Drupal. It has been mentiond 174 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Drupal mentions (28)

  • Is there and easy way of porting a site from d7 to d9?
    I would be interested in some good migration tools, paid ones are also ok. I found a post about this on drupal.org, but it didn't seem like an easy process. It is a multilanguage site with many content types, and a totally custom theme. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Is there any nice group, where I can ask questions, when I get stuck and recieve some guidance instead of crytics?
    You got already good advice, but wanted to point the guide of drupal.org where you can see some tools listed with instructions and channels https://www.drupal.org/community/contributor-guide/reference-information/talk/tools. Source: over 2 years ago
  • MAMP issue after Pro trial ended
    There is a service call GitPod that provides a temporary container Drupal environment. If you are familiar with what is going on around the future of how Drupal modules will eventually be offered up, you will likely have seen the "Project Browser" module as a contrib demo of the approach. It is used for people to give feedback to the developers. So they set up the typical 'SimplyTestMe' but also a GitPod... Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Best Modules for Product and Recipe?
    For reviews, it depends entirely on what you mean by "review". I believe core has a simple comment module, although it may have been deprecated for D9? There are likely many review-style modules on drupal.org that might work, or if you just want to link out to third-party reviews then it could just be a repeating-value link field on the Product content type. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Leadership?
    They should also use standards tools like Github. The drupal.org platform was certainly impressive 10 years ago, today it's a pain to use it. They ducktape it with gitlab, but really it sucks to have to read documentation to simply do a pull request. Source: almost 3 years ago
View more

Neocities mentions (174)

  • My website is ugly because I made it
    Within minutes you could start at https://neocities.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 22 days ago
  • WEIRD – a way to be on the web
    Neocities is more like Geocities than this is https://neocities.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • Search My Site – open-source search engine for personal and independent websites
    Other sites: - https://nownownow.com/ - https://omg.lol/ - https://indieweb.org/ - https://ooh.directory/ - https://neocities.org/ - https://aboutideasnow.com/ - https://indieblog.page/ - https://wiby.me/ Generally I crawl the internet to find pages. The result is in https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database. Personal pages are tagged with "personal" tag. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • GeoCities in 1995: Building a Home Page on the Internet
    If you miss the quirky, personal touch of early web pages, NeoCities (https://neocities.org) might just bring back those memories, with a similar DIY ethos and vintage design. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • GeoCities in 1995: Building a Home Page on the Internet
    Https://neocities.org/ Geocities inspired site available today. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Drupal and Neocities, you can also consider the following products

WordPress - WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

GitHub Pages - A free, static web host for open-source projects on GitHub

Joomla - Joomla! is the mobile-ready and user-friendly way to build your website. Choose from thousands of features and designs. Joomla! is free and open source.

SquareSpace - Squarespace is the easiest way for anyone to create an exceptional website. Pages, galleries, blogs, e-commerce, domains, hosting, analytics, 24/7 support - all included.

Ghost - Ghost is a fully open source, adaptable platform for building and running a modern online publication. We power blogs, magazines and journalists from Zappos to Sky News.

surge.sh - Static website hosting for front-end developers.