The headline above, ‘Which Drupal Development Company Should You Choose,’ is intentionally misleading. That is to provoke you to pore through a text which should have been titled ‘What Drupal Development Company Should You Choose?’ This is also a widespread method various companies apply in an ever-going battle for customers, which often undermines the efforts of reputable software vendors to release affordable software applications.
That said, those software developing companies whose business activities include design and development of Drupal applications and extensions should be researched by customer in the very same manner applied when you select another service provider. Namely, a product backed by huge advertising budget is not always the best available Drupal application in the market, not to mention that finding the best fit is simply another story.
In other words, the market for Drupal applications is big and growing, thus numerous software developing companies try hard to grab a share in this lucrative niche, sometimes releasing products that are not properly designed and tested. Another essential aspect of the market for Drupal applications and custom-made Drupal solutions are related to the very nature of the content management system (CMS): a leading free and open-source CMS, which enjoys great popularity among the software developers worldwide. Additionally, Drupal is very easy to customize and is able to handle numerous third-party add-ons and extensions simultaneously, which makes it hard to design and develop a custom-made solution that is not burdened by excessive third-party files.
Therefore, you have to carefully assess whether the software developer is experienced in Drupal customizations and design of applications and themes for Drupal-based public and private websites. Evaluating the professional expertise of a software vendor can be challenging, though, for numerous companies cite untraceable software developing projects on their official websites. Therefore, you’d better look for a company whose track record is proven and which has participated in Drupal projects that can be seen and tested online.
Of course, you can try myriads of free add-ons and extensions available through Drupal’s website; nevertheless, an experienced software developer can help you in customizing those readily-available solutions for better performance, for example. Which in turn means that you have to look for a Drupal development company that is also experienced in dealing with other platforms and systems, possessing the required knowledge to design and implement a solution that will combine various approaches, resulting in appealing design and proper functionality.
Lots of paper has been wasted writing on the subject of selecting a reliable business partner, and there is really no obvious reason for selecting a Drupal development company for your project in an innovative manner but not result-oriented. Explore the company’s background, look at its current projects under development, take advantage of info available online or through past customers, in other words, make a proper market research.
An experienced IT expert would be of help in this respect and most of them would tell you that there is no single market player to dominate the market for Drupal software development. Obviously, it is a good news for all those who plan to adopt or already have adopted Drupal as their website content management system because monopolized markets bear some advantages like higher level of standardization of solutions available, but disadvantages are exceeding benefits for the market environment is extremely fast-paced.
To conclude, there is no single reason to consider the market for Drupal applications is different from any other market, and that adopting a free and open-source CMS means you can deal with the complexity of a large or sophisticated website without assistance by a reliable Drupal development company, all of which, of course, are not working pro bono.
Caroline is a free lancer writer and content builder for many technical site and magazines. He writes many articles on CMS Technology, Drupal, Drupal Development, Future for Drupal developer etc.