Award-winning performance out of the box

There will always be a variety of arguments about which CMS gets the highest Core Web Vitals score on average, or which platform has the fastest TTFB.

The reality is that Drupal can host amazing digital experiences and deliver them at blistering speed, and companies big and small are choosing it as their ideal platform.

There are agencies and organisations all around the globe building award-winning digital experiences every day.

Look for yourself!

• See hundreds of award winning sites at https://www.awwwards.com/websites/drupal
• And hundreds of Case Studies at https://www.drupal.org/case-studies

Fast on the outside

Keep up with the latest web technologies

You can’t compete with the best without supporting the latest technologies. Drupal’s large Open Source community helps it keep up with the latest developments in web technologies, including HTTP/2, Server Side Rendering and AI.

Built in caching layers support super fast page loads

Drupal has several layers of data caching, including full page caching for anonymous users, that support fast page load times whilst ensuring the latest fresh data and changes get through to the screen.

Automatic image resizing and compression

Built in to Drupal for several years now, the Image Styles system can resize and recompress images to provide image files at the right size for display, with no loss in visual quality. That means page loads can be smaller and faster over mobile data. Setting up images to load only when visible (lazy loading) further boosts page performance and reduces the bandwidth to your servers.

CDN integrations

There are community-contributed modules available for most major CDN providers, allowing rapid CDN setup and super-fast content delivery worldwide.

Asset aggregation and compression

Enabled as standard are CSS and Javascript aggregation and minification, which ensure that pages load only the necessary assets, and they go down the wire as quickly as possible. Every kilobyte of every asset matters - and this important process has been an out-of-the-box feature since Drupal 7.

Fast on the inside

Optimised Codebase

Both Drupal Core code and Contributed module code are regularly seen and reviewed by a large community of users, and follow best practices for security and performance. Developers have been creating fast, secure Drupal sites

Database Optimisation

Drupal supports various database optimisation techniques, including query caching and efficient data structures, ensuring faster data retrieval.

Fast for all

Mature support for translations

Fully-featured multilingual content creation has been a major selling point for Drupal for over a decade. With multiple multilingual setups possible out of the box, and further customisation possible, it’s no surprise that international sellers and organisations have been choosing Drupal to create and serve their content to their users around the world.

Clean and performant admin theme

Customer service awards aside, it’s important that editorial teams also get a good experience. Drupal’s default admin pages are clean, fast and easy to use.