Why We Choose Drupal for CMS and Laravel for Custom Logic in Large Systems

At Arudhra IT Techs, we build powerful digital platforms using both Drupal and Laravel. These are not competitors in our stack — they’re partners. Drupal handles the complex content management, while Laravel powers the custom business logic, APIs, and workflows that make each system unique.

🔍 First: What Each Tool Does Best

Drupal is a world-class CMS known for its granular content structure, access control, multilingual support, and editorial workflow. It's perfect when your platform needs:

• 📄 Complex page layouts and media handling
• 🛡️ Granular roles and permissions
• 🌍 Multilingual content support
• ✅ SEO-optimized routing and tagging

On the other hand, Laravel is a modern PHP framework that’s great for:

• ⚙️ Custom dashboards, business workflows, and portals
• 🔌 REST APIs and GraphQL endpoints
• 💳 Billing, transactions, dynamic logic
• 📬 Queues, webhooks, background processing

🧠 Why Not Just Use One?

Most devs ask — “Why not build it all in Drupal or all in Laravel?” Our answer: because real-world systems have different types of problems.

Content-heavy parts like blogs, knowledge bases, policy updates, or landing pages? Drupal is unbeatable. Custom logic like invoicing, workflows, or 3rd-party integrations? Laravel crushes it.

🛠️ How We Architect a Hybrid Drupal + Laravel System

Here’s our typical workflow:

1. Drupal handles the frontend CMS – Menus, content, user roles, multilingual blocks
2. Laravel runs on a subdomain or API layer – Handles APIs, dynamic forms, logic
3. Single Sign-On (SSO) bridges the user between both systems
4. REST or GraphQL APIs connect data between them

Users can log in once and access content from Drupal and business tools in Laravel — without noticing they’ve crossed systems.

📱 Real Use Case: Enterprise Vendor Portal

One of our clients needed a platform for 100+ vendors:

• Drupal: Powered the knowledge base, support content, guides, documentation
• Laravel: Managed vendor onboarding, KYC uploads, approval workflows, and admin dashboards

The systems were integrated via JWT-secured API tokens. Admins had a single control panel, and vendors didn’t even realize the system was hybrid.

🔐 Security: Keeping Things Separated But Connected

We use:

• OAuth2 or Laravel Passport for shared login sessions
• HTTPS-only communication between systems
• Scoped API keys for precise access
• CSRF and CORS protections for API sync

📡 Communication Between Drupal and Laravel

We use either of these methods:

• 📬 Laravel provides API endpoints → Drupal consumes them via REST/JSON
• 📤 Drupal Webhooks trigger Laravel jobs on events (e.g. user registered)
• 🧪 Both can connect to shared Redis queues or message brokers

⚙️ Dev Workflow & Deployment

• 🧪 Separate Git repos – Laravel in one, Drupal in another
• 📦 Docker-based containers for isolated services
• 🎯 Laravel runs at api.domain.com, Drupal on www.domain.com
• 🔁 Shared MySQL or API communication depending on use case