Drupal Experience Builder and Acquia Site Studio Q&A

April 11, 2025
7 minute read

With the upcoming release of the new Drupal Experience Builder (XB) module many of our customers and partners have been asking about how it compares to Acquia's existing low-code site building application, Site Studio and what our future plans are for supporting and developing them both, especially given the overlap of some features between them.

We have already engaged with many of our customers and partners on this topic and the following Q&A answers the most common questions that were raised. If you have questions beyond what is included here, please reach out to your account team today.

Why are Acquia building XB when we already have Site Studio and Layout builder?

XB is not being built solely for Acquia, it is very much a Drupal community, open source project. It’s about creating a best in class site building tool for Drupal, evolving the work done on Layout Builder previously. A successful Drupal ecosystem is critical to everyone that wants to use Drupal and have the tools and capabilities that other platforms offer.

Site Studio will continue to be developed and supported as it has features and capabilities not available today in XB. Going forward its focus will be on delivering features that XB will not support, such as design system management and brand governance.

What is Experience Builder (XB)?

Experience builder (XB) is the new open source site builder for Drupal. Anyone will be able to use XB, not just Acquia customers. While Acquia is leading the development of XB it is an open source product which the wider Drupal community will continue to evolve and extend.

Experience Builder will enable site builders without Drupal experience to easily theme and build their entire website using only their browser, without the need to write code beyond basic HTML, CSS, and templating markup (e.g., Twig) AND it will enable content creators to and compose content on any part of the page without relying on developers.

Unlike competing tools, it will be better for content re-use across channels and managing content at a large scale because it will leverage Drupal’s strengths (like structured data and fine-grained access controls) to achieve data and design consistency.

With Drupal, content creators will be able to use a single CMS to manage content across headless and coupled contexts, and site builders will be able to make large scale design changes like rebranding, and perform large scale content operations like imports, exports, and migrations. Experience Builder 1.0 is planned for release around October 2025.

What's the relationship between XB and Acquia’s new SaaS CMS

Acquia are going to leverage XB in our new SaaS CMS, A SaaS CMS (Software-as-a-Service) is a cloud based platform for creating and managing digital experiences and content. Unlike a PaaS based CMS, customers do not have to own and update the CMS software leading to reduced maintenance costs and allowing our customers to focus on the things they do best -- creating great digital experiences and content for their brands.

Advantages of a SaaS CMS include:

Low maintenance - No need to manage infrastructure or install updates
Fast time to value - Ready-to-use out of the box, allowing a focus on content creation
Less CMS developer expertise needed - No experts to run and maintain the software

Will XB and Site Studio be compatible with each other?

Yes. The aim is to have a single application for site building and content creation for all Drupal websites. These capabilities are table stakes for all websites so we needed to have one industry leading, open source solution for all Drupal users. Our goal is that future versions of Site Studio will use XB for building and editing pages and that the building blocks for creating websites, such as components and templates, will work across both platforms. Site Studio can then focus on new enterprise features which can be layered on top of XB such as design system creation and management.

Is the roadmap for Site Studio being impacted?

Yes, in that it will focus on delivering capabilities and features that are not in scope for XB. However Site Studio will continue to evolve and have an active feature roadmap. The focus will be on building new enterprise capabilities that are proprietary to Acquia rather than features that we think should be freely available to all Drupal users.

How long will Acquia continue to support Site Studio?

There are no plans or timelines to stop supporting Site Studio. With around 400 active customers running 1000s of sites so we have an obligation to our customers to continue to support and improve the product. Eventually there will be a some convergence of the XB and Site Studio products but the features and capabilities of Site Studio will continue to be available to our customers.

Should we wait for XB to be ready before I do any more work or redesign their website?

No. XB is not available for General Availability until later this year. After that date customers will be able to choose the most appropriate solution for their use case. Initially XB will not be suitable for every project and Site Studio offers a number of features not available in XB today. Your account team will be able to help support you if you are unsure which is best for your team and your projects.