Acquia Source: The Managed Platform for Content Velocity Brands Have Been Missing

By Ashish Goyal, Portfolio Lead, Technology at Material

In my over two decades working at the intersection of enterprise data platforms, content management and digital customer experience, I’ve seen plenty of CMS rebrands, repositionings and ‘next-gen’ launches. Many overpromise and underwhelm — weighed down by legacy architecture, bloated features or a complete disregard for audience needs, marketers’ priorities, editors’ concerns or developers’ wants.

Acquia Source, powered by Drupal CMS, is that rare platform that bucks the trend and delivers on its promise and potential. While it’s still early days — the platform has not yet been released publicly – as a top global Acquia partner, the Material team was invited to test the platform, build a sample site and review the product roadmap.

What’s clear is Acquia Source is not just another “hosted” CMS (or a managed SaaS offering). It’s a thoughtfully engineered platform — built on Drupal’s open-source foundation — that finally addresses two critical, unmet needs:

1. Limited Resources: Resource-constrained mid-market marketing teams – lacking adequate developer support – are tired of using proprietary, expensive point solutions that don’t integrate well with other tools.

2. Lack of Agility: Enterprise marketers avoid Drupal for lightweight workloads like landing pages or event microsites because… let’s be honest, traditional Drupal setups just weren’t built for speed and agility.

With Acquia Source, both enterprise and mid-market teams now have a visual-first, AI-powered, fully managed platform that empowers non-technical marketers to spin up branded, governed, optimized experiences — fast.

Why Developers (and Their CTOs) Should Care

Enterprise teams have long known that Drupal offers power, flexibility and security — but not always speed. Traditional setups often mean lengthy deployment cycles, heavy dev lift and burdensome CMS maintenance routines. That’s where Acquia Source flips the script.

For IT leaders and dev teams, this isn’t just “Drupal in the cloud.” It’s a fundamentally different operating model that accelerates time-to-value and shifts high-friction workflows into the hands of business users, without sacrificing control or governance.

With Acquia Source, any JavaScript/frontend developer can create custom components without knowing Drupal backend engineering requirements. Acquia manages all backend updates, hosting, security, scaling and performance, freeing up the CTO/ CIO organization from tedious operational tasks and complexities and lengthy backlogs of marketing team tickets for small on-page fixes.

CMS Consolidation Isn’t a Nice-to-Have

Over the past year, we have worked with dozens of enterprise digital leaders — CMOs, CTOs and Heads of Digital — all facing a similar reality: their digital experience portfolios have become a patchwork of legacy platforms, marketing-led point solutions and acquisition-induced sprawl.

And that fragmentation comes at a high cost!

Acquia Source makes it easy for businesses to manage all their websites –across multiple brands –from one central platform. Marketing teams can launch new sites in minutes using built-in templates and tools, without the need for development support. For large global enterprises, Acquia Source gives local teams the freedom to create and publish independently while ensuring brand guidelines and security remain in place. And, with AI features built in, teams can create and optimize content faster than ever.

Empowering Marketers, Without Compromising IT

If there’s one universal truth I’ve learned over decades of working with enterprise marketing teams and IT organizations, it’s this: marketers want independence (for speed to market), and IT wants control (for data security and brand integrity). The challenge is enabling both — without creating chaos.

Acquia Source is designed to empower non-developers — especially semi-technical marketers — with tools they can use to build and publish digital experiences on their own. These include:

• Visual, low-code experience builder

• Templates that scale

• AI content acceleration

• Inline editing & WYSIWYG confidence

• Centralized content & asset control

• Campaign self-sufficiency

• Governance without friction

Beyond CMS: A Strategic Lever for Growth

If I were advising a CMO, CIO or digital transformation leader evaluating Acquia Source today, my guidance would be simple: Don’t think of this as a landing page builder. Think of it as a platform investment, one that accelerates your digital velocity, reduces your reliance on IT and unlocks measurable business impact by reducing TCO and decreasing time-to-value. Most importantly, Acquia Source provides governed agility that scales with an organization’s audience needs.

Developers are free to innovate, marketers are empowered to own the experience and your brand can move as quickly as your market demands – all while reducing cost, complexity and risk. We’ve waited a long time for a platform like this.  Acquia Source doesn’t just modernize Drupal. It modernizes how we think about delivering digital experiences in today’s AI-driven, omni-channel speed-obsessed world.

Curious about what it could mean for your business? Get in touch with Material today for an expert consultation.