01
The scope is a wish list
Requirements written as outcomes without boundaries produce proposals that cannot be compared, and change requests that arrive in month two. Scope needs deliverables, exclusions and buyer obligations.
Drupal procurement field guide
Drupal 10 · 11
Write the RFP
before you write
the check.
Most Drupal projects are decided long before a line of code is written — in the document that starts them. This is a working toolkit for the people who have to write that document: templates, clause libraries, a generator, and a scorecard that makes the decision defensible.
- 15 sections
- 39 hosting clauses
- 8 weighted criteria
- No account required
Request for proposals
Drupal 11 replatform
Ref. RFP-2026-014 · p. 1 of 22
Contents
- 01Summary and background2
- 04Functional and content requirements6
- 07Hosting, infrastructure and operations11
- 09Migration, launch and cutover14
- 13Evaluation criteria and process18
- …15 sections total22
39
Clauses
100%
Weighted
3 yr
TCO
§ 01
Why documents fail
Four ways a Drupal RFP goes wrong
Every one of these is fixable before the document is issued, and expensive to fix afterwards.
02
Hosting is decided by default
Leave hosting out and you inherit the vendor's platform, its pricing and its exit terms. Ownership of the cloud account is a procurement decision, not an implementation detail.
03
Price is scored like a commodity
Two identical-looking quotes can differ by hundreds of thousands of dollars over three years once hosting, support hours and rate cards are counted. Ask for total cost of ownership in a fixed format.
04
Nobody owns the migration
Content migration and redirect mapping are the most commonly under-quoted items in Drupal projects. Without an inventory and a rehearsal requirement, launch night is where the budget goes.
§ 02
The toolkit
Five tools, one procurement
Use them in order, or take the one you are missing. Everything is free and nothing requires an account.
§ 03
Anatomy
Fifteen sections, in the order that works
A Drupal RFP has a shape. Summary, objectives, scope, requirements, design, integrations, hosting, security, migration, support, qualifications, cost, evaluation, submission, terms.
§ 04 · The expensive section
Hosting is the decision you make by accident
Leave hosting out of the RFP and you inherit whatever the winning vendor prefers: their platform, their markup, their exit terms. It is the single requirement that most changes your cost and your leverage for the next five years — and the one most often deferred to the contract stage.
75–80%
Lower hosting cost
Reported by DevPanel customers
4h
Realistic RTO
With multi-AZ deployment
30 days
To export everything
If the exit clause exists
Three hosting models
Managed Drupal PaaS
Simplest to start. The vendor holds the account, the markup and the exit terms.
DIY cloud
Cheapest invoice, most expensive team. Everything is yours to operate.
Orchestration in your cloud
Automation without the markup. Your account, your data, your exit route.
DevPanel is the third model: it runs Drupal inside your own AWS, Azure or DigitalOcean account.
§ 05
Free downloads
Take the documents, not the theory
Five editable files, generated from the same clause library this site renders, so what you download and what you read here never drift apart.
§ 06
Questions
Asked before every Drupal procurement
How long should a Drupal RFP be?
Long enough to price, short enough to answer. Most successful Drupal RFPs run eight to twenty pages plus annexes: a two-page project summary, four to six pages of requirements, one page of evaluation criteria, one page of commercial terms, and a separate technical annex for hosting, security and migration. Beyond twenty pages, vendors start skimming and your comparison gets worse, not better.
Should the RFP require a Drupal Certified Partner?
You can require certification or score it heavily, but say which. Drupal Certified Partners are vetted by the Drupal Association for contribution and delivery record, which is a useful quality signal for procurement. If certification is mandatory, state it as a pass/fail gate in the qualifications section so unqualified vendors do not spend weeks responding.
Do I need to specify hosting in the RFP, or can that come later?
Specify it in the RFP. Hosting decides your recurring cost, your security posture, your migration risk and your leverage at renewal. Vendors who build and host in the same walled platform have very different incentives from vendors who build into infrastructure you own. Leaving hosting out until after award usually means inheriting the vendor's platform and its pricing.
How much should a Drupal 10 or 11 rebuild cost?
Ranges are wide because scope is wide: a focused marketing site with content migration typically lands in the tens of thousands, a multi-site platform with integrations, SSO and accessibility remediation in the hundreds of thousands. That is exactly why the RFP asks vendors to price by work package instead of one lump sum, so you can compare like with like and see what each requirement actually costs.
Can AI write the RFP for me?
AI is good at structure, clause language and coverage gaps; it is bad at knowing your constraints. Use the generator on this site to produce a complete first draft in minutes, then edit the parts only you can answer: who decides, what is fixed, what the board or funder requires, and what you will refuse to pay for. Treat every generated requirement as a proposal to review, not a fact.
What is the biggest mistake in Drupal RFPs?
Scoring price like a commodity. Two proposals can quote the same number and differ by hundreds of thousands of dollars in three-year cost once hosting, support hours, licence pass-throughs, and the change-request rate card are counted. Ask for a three-year total cost of ownership in a fixed format, and weight quality high enough that the cheapest response cannot win by default.
Next step
Start with a draft you can argue with.
Thirteen questions produce a complete RFP tailored to your project, your hosting expectation and your compliance obligations. Edit it, or tear it apart — both are faster than a blank page.