18 Feb 2026

feedDrupal.org aggregator

A Drupal Couple: The Blueprint for Affordable Drupal Projects

The Blueprint for Affordable Drupal Projects

Image
Development team collaborating around a workshop table with laptops, sticky notes, wireframe sketches, and coffee during an evening work session
Article body

For years we have been talking about how Drupal got too expensive for the markets we used to serve. Regional clients, small and medium businesses in Latin America, Africa, Asia, anywhere where $100,000 websites are simply not a reality. We watched them go to WordPress. We watched them go to Wix. Not because Drupal was worse, but because the economics stopped working.

That conversation is changing.

Drupal CMS 2.0 landed in January 2026. And with it came a set of tools that, combined intelligently, make something possible that was not realistic before: an affordable, professional Drupal site delivered for $2,000, with margin, for markets that could not afford us before.

I want to show you the math. Not to sell you a fantasy, but because I did the exercise and the numbers work. And I am being conservative.

What changed

The real budget killer was always theming. Getting a site to look right, behave right, be maintainable, took serious senior hours. That is where budgets went.

Recipes pre-package common configurations so you are not starting from zero. Canvas lets clients and site builders assemble and manage pages visually once a developer sets up the component library.

Dripyard brings professional Drupal themes built specifically for Canvas (although works with Layout Builder, Paragraphs, etc), with excellent quality and accessibility, at around $500. While that seems expensive, the code quality, designs, and accessibility are top notch and will save at least 20 hours (and usually much more), which would easily eat up a small budget.

Three tools. One problem solved.

We proved the concept about a month ago with laollita.es, built in three days using Umami as a starting point. Umami as a version 0.5 of what a proper template should be. Drupal AI for translations, AI-assisted development for CSS and small components. Without formal templates. With proper ones, it gets faster.

The $2,000 blueprint

Scope first. Most small business sites are simple: services, about us, blog, team, contact. The moment you add custom modules or complex requirements, the budget goes up. This blueprint is for projects that accept that constraint.

Start with Drupal CMS and a Dripyard theme. Recipes handle the configuration. Add AI assistance, a paid plan with a capable model, Claude runs between $15 and $50 depending on usage. Let it help you move faster, but supervise everything. The moment you stop reviewing AI decisions is the moment quality starts leaking.

For hosting, go with a Drupal CMS-specific provider like Drupito, Drupal Forge, or Flexsite, around $20 to $50 per month. Six months included for your client is $300. Those same $300 could go toward a site template from the marketplace launching at DrupalCon Chicago in March 2026, compressing your development time further.

With a constrained scope, the right tools, and AI under supervision, ten hours of net work is realistic. At LATAM-viable rates, $30 per hour on the high side, that is $300 in labor.

The cost breakdown: $500 theme, $300 hosting or template, $300 labor, $50 AI tools. Total: $1,150. Add a $300 buffer and you are at $1,450. Charge $2,000. Your profit is $550, a 27.5% margin.

And I am being conservative. As you build experience with the theme, develop your own component library, and refine your tooling, the numbers improve. The first project teaches you. The third one pays better.

The $1,000 path

Smaller budget, smaller scope. Start with Byte or Haven, two Drupal CMS site templates on Drupal.org, or generate an HTML template with AI for around $50. A site template from the upcoming marketplace will run around $300.

The math: $300 starting point, $150 for three months of hosting, $200 incidentals. Cost: $450. Charge $1,000. Margin: 35%.

A $1,000 project is a few pages, clear scope, no special requirements. Both you and the client have to be honest about that upfront.

The real value for your client

When a client chooses Wix or WordPress to save money, they are choosing a ceiling. The day they need more, they are either rebuilding from scratch or paying for plugins and extras that someone still has to configure, maintain, and update every time the platform breaks something.

A client on Drupal CMS is on a platform that grows with them. The five-page site today can become a complex application tomorrow, on the same platform, without migrating. That is the conversation worth having. Not just what they get today, but what they will never have to undo.

The tools are there

The market in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and similar regions was always there. We just did not have the tools to serve it profitably. Now we do.

Drupal CMS, Canvas, Recipes, Dripyard, Drupal CMS-specific hosting, AI assistance with human oversight. The toolkit exists. Get back on trail.

Author
Carlos Ospina
Abstract
Drupal CMS 2.0, Canvas, Recipes, and Dripyard have changed the economics of Drupal for regional markets. This is the blueprint for building professional Drupal sites at $1,000 to $2,000 with real margin, for LATAM, Africa, Asia, and similar markets that Drupal could not serve before.
Tags
Drupal
Drupal Planet
drupal-cms
canvas
recipes
dripyard
affordable-development
small-business
latam
africa
asia
blueprint
Rating
No votes yet

Add new comment

18 Feb 2026 11:23pm GMT

DDEV Blog: DDEV February 2026: v1.25.0 Ships, 72% Market Share, and New Training Posts

Nancy Lewis: The Beauty of Buford

DDEV v1.25.0 is here, and the community response has been strong. This month also brought three new training blog posts and a survey result that speaks for itself.

What's New

CraftQuest Survey: DDEV at 72%

The 2026 CraftQuest Community Survey↗ collected responses from 253 Craft CMS developers and found DDEV at 72% market share for local development environments. The report notes: "This near-standardization simplifies onboarding for newcomers, reduces support burden for plugin developers, and means the ecosystem can optimize tooling around a single local dev workflow."

Conference Time!

I'll be at Florida Drupalcamp this week, and will speak on how to use git worktree to run multiple versions of the same site. I'd love to see you and sit down and hear your experience with DDEV and ways you think it could be better.

Then in March I'll be at DrupalCon Chicago and as usual will do lots of Birds-of-a-Feather sessions about DDEV and related topics. Catch me in the hall, or let's sit down and have a coffee.

Community Highlights

Community Tutorials from Around the World

What People Are Saying

"I was today years old when I found out that DDEV exists. Now I am busy migrating all projects to Docker containers." - @themuellerman.bsky.social↗

"ddev is the reason I don't throw my laptop out of the window during local setup wars. one command to run the stack and forget the rest. simple as that." - @OMascatinho on X↗

v1.25.0 Upgrade Notes and Known Issues

Every major release brings some friction, and v1.25.0 is no exception. These will generally be solved in v1.25.1, which will be out soon. Here's what to watch for:

As always, please open an issue↗ if you run into trouble - it helps us fix things faster. You're the reason DDEV works so well!

DDEV Training Continues

Join us for upcoming training sessions for contributors and users.

Zoom Info: Link: Join Zoom Meeting Passcode: 12345

Sponsorship Update

After the community rallied in January, sponsorship has held steady and ticked up slightly. Thank you!

Previous status (January 2026): ~$8,208/month (68% of goal)

February 2026: ~$8,422/month (70% of goal)

If DDEV has helped your team, now is the time to give back. Whether you're an individual developer, an agency, or an organization - your contribution makes a difference. → Become a sponsor↗

Contact us to discuss sponsorship options that work for your organization.

Stay in the Loop-Follow Us and Join the Conversation

Compiled and edited with assistance from Claude Code.

18 Feb 2026 7:49pm GMT

The Drop Times: Drupal Core AGENTS.md Proposal Triggers Broader Debate on AI Guardrails

A proposal to add an AGENTS.md file to Drupal core has been closed as "works as designed," but not before prompting a wider debate about AI-assisted contributions, disclosure policies, and reviewer fatigue. While some contributors see structured agent guidelines as necessary guardrails, others warn that tooling alone cannot resolve deeper process and governance challenges.

18 Feb 2026 1:00pm GMT