As a company grows, its digital operation becomes more complex. Sites multiply, integrations accumulate, and maintenance begins to slow innovation. Marketing loses agility, IT becomes overloaded, and the user experience no longer keeps pace with the business.

This is where platforms like Acquia enter as a solid foundation to unify content, data, and channels in a single ecosystem without sacrificing flexibility.

With more than 4,500 customers worldwide, Acquia supports portals, intranets, ecommerce platforms, and corporate systems across multiple industries. More than a DXP, it is a technology-based platform that enables companies to grow with freedom, security, and scalability.

Companies such as Warner Music Group, Nestlé, Bayer, and Stanford University already trust Acquia to keep their digital products running with excellence. In this article, we explore how Acquia works and what makes it unique in the market.

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What is Acquia?

Acquia, founded in 2007 by Dries Buytaert (creator of Drupal) and Jay Batson, is an American software company with a clear mission: bring the power of open source to large enterprises by delivering secure, fast, and efficient infrastructure for brands that want to stand out in the digital landscape.

At the center of Acquia is Drupal, an open, robust, and flexible CMS that serves as the foundation for customized and integrated solutions backed by a global, innovative community.

Over time, Acquia evolved into a complete Digital Experience Platform (DXP) that unifies content, data, and personalization in one place. This enables companies to deliver agile, secure, and connected digital experiences across multiple channels without depending on fragmented tools.

Inside Acquia’s core solutions

The true strength of Acquia lies in how its solutions communicate with one another and integrate with the broader digital ecosystem. The platform was designed to work seamlessly with CRMs, ERPs, automation platforms, and analytics tools, avoiding the technology lock-in common in proprietary solutions.

This foundation is organized into three complementary pillars: content, optimization, and activation. Together, they create a continuous cycle of digital creation, measurement, and evolution.

1. Content

The first layer of Acquia focuses on creating and maintaining websites and applications. The Acquia Cloud Platform provides the infrastructure that supports it all: a managed, scalable, and secure environment optimized for Drupal.

From there, companies gain access to tools that enhance operational efficiency:

• Acquia Site Factory: centralizes the management of dozens or hundreds of sites in a single interface while maintaining visual and technical consistency on a global scale.
• Acquia Site Studio: a low-code interface that reduces IT dependency and allows marketing teams to create and update pages independently.
• Acquia DAM: a digital asset management system that organizes images, videos, and documents in a central repository to ensure consistency across brands and campaigns.
• Acquia PIM: centralizes product information and catalogs for e-commerce and marketplaces, ensuring data accuracy across channels.

The result is a content ecosystem with real governance, where marketing gains agility and technology retains control.

2. Optimization

A digital presence cannot rely on good websites alone. It must remain efficient, accessible, and continuously evolving. Acquia’s second layer was created for exactly that.

With Acquia Web Governance, companies monitor the technical health of their sites in real time, identifying:

• Accessibility issues
• Performance problems
• Brand inconsistencies
• Critical errors across large website portfolios.

Acquia Content Optimization applies SEO and editorial quality metrics to recommend improvements to content and publishing workflows. These tools foster a culture of continuous improvement, essential for brands managing multiple sites and diverse audiences in various languages.

3. Activation

The third pillar closes the cycle by connecting data and experience. The Acquia CDP (Customer Data Platform) integrates information from CRMs, campaigns, ecommerce, and analytics systems to form a unified customer view.

With this foundation, Acquia Campaign Studio and Acquia Personalization orchestrate omnichannel journeys, adapting messages and experiences to each user’s profile.

This layer brings the DXP concept to life: using real data to personalize the user journey and measure results in real time, while maintaining strict control over security and privacy.

Acquia also offers a modular portfolio that covers the entire digital experience lifecycle. Key additional solutions include:

• Acquia Cloud IDE and Code Studio, cloud-based DevOps environments with GitLab integration, native CI/CD, and automated testing and deployment.
• Acquia Edge, a CDN and Web Application Firewall (WAF) that ensures availability, low latency, and DDoS protection.
• Acquia Search, an Apache Solr–based search solution with advanced indexing, faceting, and personalized results.
• Acquia Lift (part of Acquia Personalization), offering machine learning–driven personalization and behavioral segmentation integrated with Acquia CDP.
• Acquia Cohesion (now Site Studio), a low-code tool for building responsive layouts and Drupal components.
• Acquia CLI and management APIs, enabling automated deployments, updates, and monitoring through command-line tools and REST integrations.

What makes Acquia competitive and a strong choice for enterprises?

Acquia stands out in the digital experience landscape by balancing three rare pillars: technological freedom, enterprise-grade security, and proven scalability, making it a compelling choice for organizations with complex digital operations.

Technological freedom through open source

Unlike closed platforms, Acquia is built on Drupal, one of the largest open-source communities in the world. This ensures transparency, auditability, and no vendor lock-in, allowing each organization to choose its integrations, frameworks, and providers. The open architecture also simplifies interoperability with existing systems such as CRMs, ERPs, analytics, and marketing automation platforms.

Managed and secure infrastructure

The platform offers a cloud environment with continuous monitoring, redundancy, and specialized support. With certifications such as GDPR, HIPAA, CCPA, ISO, and SOC 2, Acquia serves regulated sectors including finance, healthcare, and education. Additional features like Acquia Edge and Cloud Platform Enterprise ensure global performance and protection.

Scalability and governance across multiple sites

For organizations with multiple brands, regions, or units, Acquia provides tools like Site Factory and Site Studio to standardize components and workflows while maintaining visual and technical consistency across hundreds of sites. This minimizes rework and gives marketing teams more autonomy without compromising security or compliance.

Personalization and integrated data

With Acquia CDP, Campaign Studio, and Personalization, brands develop a continuous cycle of learning and optimization. They understand user behavior in real time and automatically adjust messages and experiences, combining data intelligence with governance to enable scalable, measurable personalization.

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Which types of companies typically adopt Acquia, and when does it make sense?

Acquia is best suited for mid-sized and large enterprises that need to manage multiple sites, brands, languages, or business units within a unified digital ecosystem.

It appeals strongly to organizations seeking marketing autonomy, technical control, and enterprise-level security without giving up the flexibility of open source.

The sectors that most often adopt Acquia include:

• Education and public institutions, which require accessibility, performance, and multi-portal governance (such as universities and government agencies).
• Financial services and healthcare, due to strict security and data protection requirements.
• Global retail and manufacturing, that operate multiple brands and must maintain visual and technical consistency across regional sites.
• Nonprofits and global initiatives, which value open source and scalable, predictable costs.

Acquia becomes even more strategic in contexts of continuous digital transformation, where the environment must evolve without disruption. Its modular architecture supports incremental improvements, reduces vendor dependency, and maintains technical governance as new tools are incorporated into the stack.

Acquia’s global partner ecosystem

Through a global partner program, Acquia works with more than 700 specialized companies in design, development, digital marketing, and technology transformation.

This ecosystem expands the platform’s delivery capacity by combining technical knowledge, market expertise, and local support to accelerate projects across multiple industries. The Acquia Partner Program ensures certified specialists at several levels — Registered, Qualified, Advanced, and Practice Certified Partner.

Partners are continuously evaluated through the Partner Aggregate Readiness (PAR) Score, which measures maturity, quality, and engagement, ensuring standardization and safety for brands.

Program benefits include:

• Direct technical and commercial support for complex projects.
• Early access to training, roadmaps, and certifications.
• Co-selling opportunities and visibility through the Acquia Partner Finder directory.
• Participation in innovation and marketing initiatives, such as the Acquia Engage Awards.

This collaborative network drives innovation and ensures technical consistency in large-scale implementations. In Latin America, Dexa is a Solution Partner supporting companies in digital transformation with Acquia technologies.

Why choose Dexa?

Dexa brings together expertise in technology and design to connect marketing, engineering, and systems architecture in a unified, integrated process. We work from planning to delivery and long-term support of complex digital platforms, ensuring performance, governance, and scalable growth.

Within the Acquia ecosystem, this combination of technical maturity and business vision is essential.

Dexa’s differentiators

• Expertise in Drupal and Acquia Cloud: with experience in multisite environments, migrations, and complex integrations;
• Agile processes with a results-driven approach: supported by teams that work closely with clients;
• Integrated UX and design system capabilities: enabling consistency and efficiency at scale;
• International experience: with projects in Brazil, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom;
• Commitment to security and compliance: applying safe practices and continuous observability.

Projects such as Unicef 1MIO and Labatt demonstrate Dexa’s ability to deliver scalable, high-performance Acquia implementations. More than an implementer, Dexa is a strategic partner for evolving digital ecosystems. Want to apply this expertise to your project? Talk to our specialists.