Acquia
Enterprise Drupal cloud platform trusted by governments and global brands.
The verdict
Acquia is an enterprise cloud platform built around Drupal, offering managed hosting, Site Factory multi-site management, and Content Hub tools for large organizations with strict compliance and scale requirements. It is a common choice for government agencies, universities and global enterprises.
The full picture
Acquia was founded in 2007 by Dries Buytaert, the creator of Drupal, and Jay Batson, explicitly to be the enterprise company behind the open-source project. That origin defines it: Acquia is where large organisations run Drupal when the site is a governed enterprise system with compliance obligations, integration requirements and a procurement process.
The platform is Acquia Cloud Platform, built on AWS, with a full enterprise toolkit around it: Cloud IDE, continuous delivery pipelines, Acquia Site Factory for running hundreds of Drupal sites from one codebase, Content Hub for syndicating content across properties, a customer data platform, personalisation, and a marketing automation suite. Support includes named technical account managers and formal SLAs.
Pricing starts in the hundreds per month and typically runs into five and six figures annually for the enterprise tiers, which tells you who it is for. Governments, universities, global brands and media groups use it. An individual Drupal site does not need it and should not buy it.
What you get
- Drupal Cloud hosting
- Site Factory for multi-site management
- Enterprise-grade security & compliance
- Content Hub for omnichannel content
- Built-in CDN and caching
- 24/7 enterprise support
Every hosting type it sells
| Product | From | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Acquia Cloud Platform | $235/mo | Managed Drupal hosting on AWS with enterprise tooling. |
| Site Factory | Custom | Hundreds or thousands of Drupal sites from one codebase. |
| Acquia CDP | Custom | Customer data platform for unified profiles and segmentation. |
| Campaign Studio | Custom | Marketing automation integrated with the content platform. |
Plans & pricing
- 1 Application
- Basic support
- Standard SLA
- Multiple applications
- Dedicated infrastructure
- Premium SLA & support
What the price actually costs you
- Entry pricing is in the hundreds per month; enterprise contracts run far higher.
- Pricing is quoted rather than published and negotiated at contract level.
- Professional services and migrations are typically part of the engagement.
- This is enterprise procurement, not self-service signup.
Technical specification
| Platform | Drupal-focused, built on AWS infrastructure |
|---|---|
| Environments | Development, staging and production with continuous delivery pipelines |
| Cloud IDE | Browser-based development environment for Drupal teams |
| Site Factory | Centralised management of large multi-site Drupal estates |
| Compliance | FedRAMP authorised, SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS and GDPR |
| CDN | Integrated CDN with edge caching and WAF |
| Support | Enterprise support with named technical account managers and formal SLAs |
| Migration | Professional services led migrations included in enterprise engagements |
| Monitoring | Acquia Insight code and performance analysis for Drupal best practice |
| Uptime SLA | 99.95% to 99.99% depending on contract tier |
Performance in practice
Engineered for enterprise Drupal at scale, with edge caching, Varnish, Memcached and horizontally scalable infrastructure on AWS. Performance is a contractual matter rather than a benchmark question: Acquia sizes the environment to the traffic profile and commits to it in the SLA. For very large content estates with authenticated users and complex integrations, this is what the platform is designed around.
Infrastructure & support
Support channels
- 24/7 enterprise support
- Dedicated technical account manager
- Documentation & training
Data centers
- United States
- Europe
- Asia-Pacific
Security & compliance
- FedRAMP authorisation, which very few web platforms hold
- SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS and GDPR compliance programmes
- Integrated web application firewall and DDoS mitigation
- Drupal security update management with coordinated patching
- Single sign-on, role-based access control and audit logging
- Named security contacts and formal incident response processes
Moving a site in
Migrations are professional-services led, with Acquia architects planning and executing the move as part of the engagement. For the estates this platform serves, migration is a project with a timeline rather than a plugin.
The trade-off
In its favour
- Best-in-class Drupal expertise and support
- Strong compliance certifications (FedRAMP, HIPAA)
- Powerful multi-site management tools
Worth knowing
- Very expensive for small businesses
- Overkill for simple websites
- Requires Drupal expertise to get full value
Who should look elsewhere
- WordPress, which is not the focus
- Individual sites and small organisations — the cost is prohibitive
- Teams wanting self-service signup and month-to-month billing
- Anyone not running Drupal
The company behind it
| Ownership | Vista Equity Partners, majority investment since 2019 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Boston, Massachusetts, United States |
| Founded | 2007 by Dries Buytaert and Jay Batson |
| Scale | Enterprise customers including governments, universities and global brands |
| Notable | Founded by the creator of Drupal |
How it got here
- 2007 Founded by Drupal creator Dries Buytaert as the enterprise Drupal company.
- 2013 Launches Acquia Cloud Site Factory for multi-site Drupal management.
- 2019 Vista Equity Partners takes a majority stake at a $1 billion valuation.
- 2021 Expands the digital experience platform with a customer data platform and personalisation.
- 2023 Adds Acquia Cloud Next, a Kubernetes-based platform generation.
Common questions
Is Acquia only for Drupal?
Acquia is primarily built for Drupal, though its Content Hub and DAM tools support broader marketing stacks.
Does Acquia offer a free trial?
Acquia offers demos and proof-of-concept engagements rather than a self-serve free trial.
The bottom line
The enterprise Drupal platform, founded by Drupal's creator, holding compliance certifications that almost no competitor has. Correct for a government agency, university or global brand with a large Drupal estate. Wildly excessive for anything smaller.