Drawbacks of Drupal Gardens

Drupal Garden 

Drupal Gardens, originally labeled Acquia Gardens, has been one of the hot issues at this year's European DrupalCon in Paris. Gardens is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) version of the highly popular Drupal web content management system.

We sat down with Tom Erickson, Acquia's CEO, to discuss the Gardens project, the Drupal Theme Builder, Drupal 7 and Acquia's pathways to profitability. 

Here are some Cons of Drupal Gardens

• The biggest drawback may be the inability to add any of the thousoands of contributed modules to your site. 
• Sooner or later, You will probably outgrow your Drupal Gardens
• DG offers a unique themebuilder.  Its not awfull, but it does not begin to offer the power and flexibility of full Druapl themeing.
• Drupal normally allows you to create or modify your own modules.  Your php skills won't help you much in the garden.
• Since it uses Drupal administrative interface, its not much easier to use than raw Drupal . Normally, ease of use is the trade offered for reduced power.
• You can't learn all the ins and outs of Installing  and maintaining  Drupal sites with Druapl Gardens.  Its a built-in consequence of software as a service.
• DG's performance seems erratic.  sometimes its quite snappy.  there have been periods when its been glacial.
• More imposing default user interface.
•  Less ready made drop-in plugins. You're going to  have to get your hands dirty almost every time.
• Fewer developers.
• More expensive developers.
• Drupal Gardens is a little more developer-focused rather than end-user focused, so there will be some confusing descriptions and instructions at times
• Even with Drupal Gardens doing all the work up front, Drupal is laid out in a way that’s different than the CMSes you’re
• Drupal’s page framework is usually pretty static–a three-column layout with a banner at the top–and if you want anything different, there aren’t always a lot of easy ways to customize it if you’re not a developer.