The story of Dropsolid Experience Cloud
Dropsolid Experience Cloud (DEC) spun out of Dropsolid Agency, one of the leading Drupal service providers in Europe with a team of almost one hundred experts. DEC is a platform that understands both the needs of an agency serving enterprise customers with and without in-house developers and marketers.
Dropsolid Digital Agency acts as an agency for several customers delivering strategy, design, integration and support services around digital experiences for Belgium-based enterprises. It also staffs in-house teams and delivers consulting services and training to its customers. Next to being one of Europe's leading Drupal experts, teaching customers how to fish instead of just giving them fish is one of the strong points why customers choose Dropsolid Digital Agency.
Needless to say we know what an agency needs to deliver a Drupal-based digital experience and we also know what customer teams need to do with a DXP.
The gap in the DXP market
We looked for an enterprise-class, open DXP for customers already on Drupal where they could grow their digital experiences with, while increasing their digital maturity. We couldn't find anything on the market that was open enough and allowed a low entry barrier.
Dropsolid already built its Drupal web ops cloud platform, hosting thousands of Drupal instances for agencies and enterprises. The step to extend this web ops platform to a full DXP-ops platform was logical. The move to integrate an open marketing automation platform like Mautic and an open customer data platform engine like Unomi was the right one.
Some web ops platforms were very useful but unfortunately not Drupal focussed. We didn't find any Drupal focussed web ops platforms with a low entry barrier that also had the DXP component. DXP is much more than just hosting and web ops. Not being able to have all components of the DXP integrated out of the box makes it difficult for customers to enter the platform. Gluing together different products requires expert knowledge and increases the barrier to entry.
Dropsolid makes it easier to go from CMS to DXP.
Open DXP
We also needed our DXP to be extra open as we were getting a lot of European customers who require a high degree of data sovereignty. Some web ops platforms allowed this but they lacked the Drupal-specific capabilities and the DXP component. Our hybrid approach where we can deploy both on-prem and in the cloud allows our customers this extra degree of freedom. This openness of the platform allows us to deliver both the DXP and web ops (or rather DXP-ops) capabilities to customers like governments that require a high degree of data sovereignty.
Not finding the perfect match made us double down on this open DXP vision with a low entry barrier. So it's not a surprise this open DXP is born out of a digital experience agency with a service offering for enterprises that need this. First hand, we know agency needs and enterprise needs so we've built the perfect fit.
Drupal + Mautic = the perfect combi for an open DXP
Job functions shift all the time. And what we see nowadays is that many site builders are also marketers. They build webpages with Drupal, but they also build experiences and customer journeys. And next to that, they work with marketing automation tooling like Mautic. So site builders turn into marketers and vice versa. We see that with a lot of customers, but we also see this internally with our own marketing team. They’re using Drupal and Mautic to do their job every day. And they need good tools to be able to work quickly and to focus on their content and campaigns.
And once you have Mautic and Drupal, you almost have a DXP. If you add, for example, Apache Unomi, the open customer data platform, you basically have an open DXP. And now you’re entering the sweet spot. It can be a really killer product, especially because it’s open and it can still be delivered at a fair price, all while the marketers and the developers are still in control of the solution.
We also decided to stay true to our vision and contribute most of our work. Stay tuned for the DXP project on Drupal.org. Here we’ll bring together the glue to build an open source Drupal and Mautic-based DXP. And, of course, you can run a trial on our website and get professional support to help you build your best digital experience for yourself or your customers.
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Building the best digital experience for end-users step by step together
To make End-users of digital experiences happy and increase engagement these teams need to work together on the DXP:
Marketers
Marketers need to build and measure campaigns using a 360 view of the customer. They needed both CMS, marketing automation and customer data platforms to be integrated in order to build highly personalized campaigns.
Content editors
Content editors need an easy-to-use content experience editor to put out personalized content to multiple audiences.
Data scientists
Data scientists need to connect multiple data sources to the customer data platform to make the 360 customer view available for the marketers. They also need to be able to analyze data from campaigns in order to find the best segments using AI.
Working together on multi site & multi channel digital experiences
Typically all of these teams need to manage multiple digital properties with multiple channels. Multiple marketing automation instances and lots of data streams that can be collected in the CDP and made actionable for marketers and content editors to create the customer journeys that delight customers and increase engagement and conversion.
We, at Dropsolid Experience Cloud, believe that small to large enterprises need an open way to interact with customers without being locked in. We also believe that a low barrier to entry is crucial to a successful digital transformation on the digital experience level.
Featuring the most open DXP
A modern CMS needs to be agile and composable. Building blocks like Drupal are open, mature (Drupal is a shark) and composable, Drupal has been able to adapt to every big change in web development, and has the right foundation to build on top of it. But it doesn't come like that out of the box.
That’s why, at Dropsolid, we took the Drupal CMS and enhanced it with all of our experience building cutting-edge digital experiences.
We did the same with Mautic on the marketing automation level and with Unomi as an engine for personalization and customer data. Combine this with our DevOps (or rather DXP-ops) platform you get a powerful composable digital experience platform where enterprises can built their digital future on.
The Dropsolid Experience Cloud product and vision
Dropsolid CMS is a SaaS-based Drupal CMS with additional capabilities like:
- No-code content editor experience with enhanced Layout Builder.
- Headless front-end out of the box (Next.js based) that works with the sitebuilding experience: save developer time while preserving content editor freedom.
- Built-in SEO optimizations and best practices.
- Enhanced security, performance and scalability managed service for Drupal by leading Drupal experts in Europe.
Dropsolid Marketing Automation is a SaaS-based Mautic with additional capabilities like:
- Support for high-volume email sending.
- Multi Mautic (deploy new Mautic installations from the interface and have an overview of your all your Mautic installations)
- Enhanced email editor experience with out of the box responsive email templates using GrapesJS
- Advanced analytics & dashboards.
- Mautic config manager (copy templates and configuration from one Mautic to another)
Dropsolid Customer Data Platform is a SaaS-based Unomi and N8N with additional capabilities like:
- Adding data from any source or channel with N8N
- 360° customer profiles with data from any source or channel.
- Visual segment builder to build actionable audiences that are available for reporting and personalization.
- AI-powered pattern recognition to discover high-value audiences.
- Personalization across all digital channels and out of the box via CMS and Marketing Automation.
- Advanced analytics & dashboards.
Dropsolid Drupal & Mautic Development Cloud powered by Gitlab is a SaaS-based WebOps platform with capabilities like:
- Maximized developer productivity with collaboration features and tools to increase the speed of your project pipeline.
- No-ops development tooling optimized for Drupal: no more need for infra intervention.
- Hybrid cloud capabilities with K8s: Deploy Drupal, Mautic and Unomi on perm or in the cloud to guarantee data compliance, security & sovereignty.
- Website portfolio management tools: multi drupal, multi Mautic,…
- Headless-ops (node.js)
- Mautic - DevOps.
Going to DXP-ops is like going from cms to dxp. One platform for all your DXP components.
This forms the open Dropsolid Experience Cloud that enables organizations to build customer-centric experiences and drive home results. Build faster, increase Traffic, increase Conversion, increase Customer Satisfaction, increase Customer Lifetime Value, decrease Customer Acquisition Costs and Reduce costs.
Conclusion
We can say we are the most open Drupal-based DXP on the market because:
- Our Dropsolid CMS is fully open
- We open source our contributions on the Dropsolid CMS, Marketing automation & CDP to the Drupal, Mautic and Unomi community
- Our platform allows both on prem and in the cloud deployment as it fits your organization's business needs and data sovereignty needs
We are a DXP with a low entry barrier because:
- Out of the box integrated hybrid/headless CMS + Drupal Development cloud, marketing automation and CDP
- Composable: ability to build step by step
- Start small, Dream big, start and scale with a transparent pricing model
- We value customer intimacy, we are close to you with our support teams and partner network of agencies
Dropsolid Experience Cloud is a DXP that has a low entry barrier for enterprise small to large and enables teams to build engaging digital experiences for their end-users.
