Is Drupal the right tool for the job?

Drupal is a powerful and flexible framework for building virtually any kind of website. Below are some circumstances in which Drupal is a particularly compelling choice.

• You need a site that is flexible enough to evolve in any direction. For example, you might start with a blog but want the option of adding other features like a wiki, electronic commerce, forums etc.
• You need a site that can easily be configured to interact with other sites or with other technologies.
• You need a site that can easily handle complex forms and workflows.
• You need the ability to create your own content types. For example, you need to add a custom field to a page.
• You need the ability to quickly organize and display lists of information.
• One or more of the many contributed Drupal modules addresses your needs.
• You need to quickly develop custom functionality.
• You need create web applications and mashups using third party API's.

On the other hand, for certain limited uses, Drupal may not be the best choice:

• If your only requirement is to write a personal blog, you may also want to evaluate one of the more specialized blogging platforms like WordPress or a hosted blogging solution like Blogger. Although Drupal can serve as a blogging platform out-of-the-box, blog-specific software may have a simpler administration interface.
• Similarly, if your only requirement is to create a wiki, you should probably consider using dedicated wiki software like MediaWiki or a hosted wiki solution. You can certainly configure Drupal so that anyone can edit content (and even enable advanced wiki features with the help of several contributed modules like wikitools and Diff), but it may be simpler for you to use a more specialized solution.
• If your only requirement is to host discussion forums, you will want to consider a system such as SimpleMachines or phpBB with a mature set of Forum features, or Vanilla which has many plug-ins. If you need a custom forum, however, Drupal's forum module with forum enhancement modules like Advanced Forum may be better suited to extension.

With every release, Drupal is becoming easier to use; but like most powerful tools, it will always have a learning curve. If you or your organization are not prepared to spend some time learning how Drupal works (or if you are not able to hire Drupal expertise), it may not be your best option.

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Source: http://drupal.org/node/346217