I have a Drupal driven site, but I admit that the code is a little difficult for me to customize. I can do better with Wordpress, but Drupal is far more powerful and can run entire communities. Wordpress can't handle all that traffic and is not well suited for portals. My understanding of the Drupal code is a work in progress but certainly something I will accomplish.

Our company site http://www.carnevaledesign.com was created using Drupal. We have also used Drupal for several other sites and even a kiosk machine. If you can dream it, Drupal can do it.

My daughter's PTA site was ugly, so even though I was appointed as a treasurer this year, I took initiative and created Drupal based website for the PTA (http://www.fallsmeadpta.org). I am glad I chose Drupal (not that I am very experienced with CMS, but I did look around). Being a programmer helped with the set up (PHP is easy). I already had an account on 1and1, so hosting was easy too.

I used ubercart for online payment and integrated with Paypal.

If you would like to set up a school website or a site for non-profit, I will be glad to answer your questions - webmaster@fallsmeadpta.org.

Drupal is quite possibly the best WCMS (web content management system) platform for delivering flexible, easily extensible, and powerful websites and online communities.

Alfresco, however, is an enterprise-class platform that targets a much broader set of needs surrounding the management of granular and aggregate digital content assets. While it does have very powerful WCMS capabilities, it's likely not a wise choice for the kind of solutions where Drupal is best. You're simply not going to whip up a rich and complex online e-commerce website with Alfresco as you would with Drupal. You're also not going to whip up a global knowledge-base for a Fortune 500 on Drupal alone. That is a job more appropriate for Alfresco.

They are both excellent at what they do and this is really an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Just my $.02

David

Don't worry about evaluating any other CMS options. Drupal is, in my experience, the most comprehensive solution out there and the sheer speed at which the community is contributing new modules guarantees that you'll always have cutting edge functionality and support for a LONG time to come.

Also, venture capital investment in Acquia is only going to increase the benefits of using Drupal.