In the Dropsolid diaries series, I talk in-depth about the journey of Dropsolid. It contains company insights, personal experiences, DXP and CMS market insights, and many other learnings I learned as the founder of Dropsolid.

This long read is part of the Dropsolid Diaries series. The previous chapters can be found below:

• Part 1 covers our startup days, which taught us about running a business, funding, hiring & training talent, sales, and marketing.
• Part 2 is all about the first scale-up stage. It discusses how we improved our overall product development, growth, vision, mission, values, corporate structure, procedures, and business units.
• Part 3, is about becoming profitable and laying the foundation of the digital experience company.
• Part 4, is about the transition of Dropsolid toward two business units: The Dropsolid experience cloud and the Digital experience agency that delivers products and services to help customers achieve the best digital experience in all freedom.
• Part 5 is about merging Dropsolid back together into the Dropsolid digital experience company and the internationalisation of the the Open DXP based on the Dropsolid experience platform.

This is Part 6, we'll cover:

• 2024 as a year where we made our first steps on the international terrain and where we truly started operating as a global player with our unique open DXP vision.
• Looking forward at 2025 as a year we are at what I believe to be the start of the final frontier of open web development. The crossroads, where it feels a bit like this:

Standing on the biggest vert ramp in Europe here in Ericeira 4.5m contemplating wether to drop in.

Why is it such a drop?

Because what I think is about to happen will probably be the biggest shift ever and will bring open web development to its conclusion. The final frontier, the end game of webdevelopment. Everything we did in the last 20 years we will need to let go of in order to move forward. And then, once you let go and fall in the unknown, you drop in, with commitment, then you'll be able to ride away safely. Standing still is not an option as the days of the classic business models in web development are numbered.

But first:

1. A Recap of 2024

This past year has been one of steady momentum. After we created the holding company, we saw strong engagement in the Mautic community, the Drupal ecosystem, and open-source initiatives — all while sharpening our focus on a truly open DXP. We did become a global digital experience company, we established ourselves on the international playing field with US customers and expansion in the EU, we established ourselves as a hosting/devops platform company among known competitors and our digital experience platform for building open DXPs attracted more customers as they are looking for more freedom.

Below is a reflection on 2024’s main highlights, plus a glimpse of what we’re planning next.

Security and Agentic AI:

Early in the year, a key security event led us to reflect on emerging AI-driven threats. This shaped our perspective on data sovereignty and reinforced the need for robust infrastructure.

India Mauticon 

We doubled down on Mautic development and sponsorship (Diamond level + partner of the year), becoming the nr 1 contributor. It was inspiring to see how quickly Mautic is catching on globally and how much potential is still there, only 1% of a 5B$ market is looking at open source. We have customers retrying Mautic since 2019 and after re-evaluation select Mautic as a worthy candidate against Hubspot and Salesforce.

The biggest driver?

Improved UX and stable releases (thanks to Mattias & Anderson who gave a lot of themselves). These 2 key contributions Dropsolid were strongly sponsored by Dropsolid because we knew they would impact adoption. In contrast to other contributors, Dropsolid does not offer a proprietary solution on Mautic but instead focusses on making Mautic as good as possible for adoption. Then we figured, if we are the nr1 contributor, companies that really need entperise help with Mautic will come to Dropsolid and use the Dropsolid experience platform to ensure enterprise grade quality around Mautic optimised to use it in an open DXP context. A simple but effective business model that ensures maximum adoption, does not compete with proprietary roadmaps and does not inhibit customers to achieve maximum freedom.

Mauticon India 2025

Mountaincamp Switserland

Delivered first presentation of the year on the state of Mautic. I also learned about the concept of the Universal CMS, more later.

DrupalCon US – Starshot and Beyond

A new initiative is aiming to give Drupal additional momentum. We pledged support with Dropsolid right away. Though the Drupal market has its challenges, this renewed energy could help spark new growth or at least slow down the decline in Drupal installations.

While I like the initiative, I'm still hungry for a more game changing approach. I understand we need to move step by step to practically achieve something with the available resource. However maybe a less incremental approach is needed? Drupal is perhaps the best candidate to enter the final age of open web development. Why are we trying to play by the rules of an old market and stay inside our box? Why don't we go outside of the box and play by our own rules? Contemplate this: Is drupal built for humans or for machines? Why are we trying to compete on the human interface level, why not go all in on making Drupal a structured data engine?

I know we work for regulated industries and humans need to use the interfaces. But what if we let the machines help the humans to do what needs to be done?

Is revolution possible instead of evolution?

Drupalcon Portland Driesnote announcement of Starshot aka Drupal CMS.

Dropsolid is part of the Drupal CMS track leads:

Source: https://dri.es

I also visited our New York office for the first time:

Looking down on NY city from the empire state building contemplating the potential the US holds.

Drupaljam & Mautic 5.1

We showcased major UX updates at Drupaljam, highlighting how marketing automation and open source can bolster one another. I also gave a presentation: Update on Mautic.

Drupaljam opening session

Open Social customer event 

Where I talked about using the DXP idea in community building. To do so the use of personal data in highly regulated industries needs to allowed. It still seems a hot potato where many don't want to burn themselves on.

I predict regulated industries will face enormous pressure to start using personal data to enhance experiences and to improve operational efficiencies. 

Open social closing session.

Dropsolid got ISO27001 certified 

Big win for the team. Dropsolid is working for regulated industries with industries like government, multinationals, healthcare, membership organisations, finance, ... with customers like EASA, German government, Flemish government, UZA (biggest Belgian hospital), Beobank ... and being certified is key especially when handling lots of data.

Sovereign AI 

We also earned backing for evolving “sovereign AI” implementations. We believe regulation will be key in using AI. 

Read more about Sovereign AI in this blogpost: https://dropsolid.com/en/knowledge-hub/sovereign-ai

Dropsolid became Drupal Platinum certified! 

A dream come true. Hopefully in 2025 we get to the Diamond stage.

We also became one of 3 security providers for Drupal 7 (https://dropsolid.com/en/drupal-7-extended-support). The only one that is offering both high end Drupal services and high level security that is ISO27001 certified with a bug bounty program. Our patches are the best around, so we aim at company who value security.

Dropsolid got recognition of the best banking website in BENELUXFR region, yes, its a Drupal site :)

Eurostars & Hybrid DXP 

Our open DXP engine proposal for the Eurostars grant didn’t take off, but new hybrid DXP clients, showed us what practical, no-lock-in solutions can achieve.

More on the proposal: https://dropsolid.io/knowledge-hub/dropsolid-experience-platform-optimised-platform-open-dxp

DrupalCon Barcelona – Hosting Sessions 

We hosted talks on meeting enterprise-level hosting and DevOps standards, confirming our approach aligns with top-tier expectations.

I did run for the Drupal elections but didn't make it. My friend Alex Moreno got the top spot. I wish him all the best and thanks everyone for voting for me. I might try again next year if my other commitments allow me to do so.

The Sagrada familia.

Drupalcamp Spain and Portugal

Then the spaincamp and Portugal camp were great events on the Iberian peninsula to connect with the community here.

And on the Portugal camp, we laid the foundation for a collboration that will further support our strategy in 2025. More on that later this year.

Source Spain camp website

Spain camp 2024

Source Drupalcamp website

Drupalday Portugal 2024

Mauticon Lisbon & Web Summit 

Lisbon events underlined the vast potential for open-source marketing automation and revealed how swiftly AI might transform entire industries. It also highlighted the strength of the Lisbon tech ecosystem. Since I'm living only 45min away from Lisbon now this matters for the further growth of Dropsolid. We also became partner of the year at Mauticon as we are the most impactful contributor.

Source: Mautic website

Connection Day & Management Offsite 

We went offsite with the entire team at the Belgian coast to build the team and sharpen the vision for 2025. We also celebrated a decade milestone for a valued team member Laurence.

And we returned from Portugal with a renewed vision for 2025 as management team on our offsite in December. Even amid global uncertainties, we see stable demand for open-source solutions.

The management team and the team did great this year. A very special thanks to Steven again for allowing me to travel the world and learn so much while keeping the house.

And a special thanks to the Droptimes this year for covering so much of what we are trying to spread, you guys are really prolific (23 stories!). Thank you so much for covering. 

What are the events next up?

• An event with our patner in AI/ML Sigli where we talk about operational efficiencies and AI in the open DXP context
• Drupalcon Atlanta where we will sponsor again
• Drupal devday in our country of origin Belgium where we are main sponsor
• Drupalcon Vienna of course where we will be Diamond sponsor
• Drupalday Portugal

I personally will be visiting less camps because my focus will go to bigger priorities in 2025 but we will send attendees to multiple camps and keep giving support to the Drupal and Mautic ecosystem.

2. The Ongoing Vision: A Truly Open DXP

Many organizations oscillate between full vendor lock-in and unwieldy “DIY DXP” stacks. Our approach remains a balanced, composable open DXP—practical, integrated, and free from single-platform constraints. It’s a strategy that guided us throughout 2024 and continues to shape our roadmap.

We split up our offering in hosting & devops platform for DXP and open DXP. This seemed to be a good move. Now we are clearly communicating that our platform not only has enterprise grade devops and hosting capabilities harbouring 1000s of environments, proven and battled tested through many years and providing modern standards (containers, artifact based deployment and ISO27001) but also has been optimised to build open DXPs with Drupal, Mautic and Unomi. With key contributions in the ecosystem and new features on the data management we truly compete with known established players both in the hosting/devops and DXP space. It proves our strategy of investing profits consistently over +10 years in a single vision, the truly open DXP is starting to pay off.

Another concept I found very interesting that I discovered at the camp in Switserland. The whole headless/not headless story kind of ended here in my eyes. It doesn't seem to be a relevant discussion anymore since the market is converging on the concept of the Universal CMS. I would also say that Experience Builder in Drupal CMS is the final nail in the MACH alliance coffin. 

Source https://Preston.so

What is next?

I recently posted a couple of posts where I think contribution and Drupal and open source is going to go next:

• Dreaming about Drupal its long term potential
• Agentic contribution: Why a golden age in open source is on the horizon
• Drupal seems more built for the machines than for humans

This gives way a bit where we think it is going. I believe we have entered the final stage of open web development and that the age of humans clicking buttons is coming to an end. But is this a bad thing?

Do you really like clicking buttons?

I don't.

I believe we are entering the final frontier for the open DXP as well. A totally different way of looking at the world and how people use applications. And sure some organisations and some people will cling to their good old interfaces, but face it, will these organisations and people thrive? You will see them mention compliance after "Yes but ...". And indeed I want to recognise compliance is important. But what is the real intention behind mentioning compliance? Reflect on it.

To open or not to open

On the question of open source or not open source I have been thinking a lot lately. For open source to be sustainable we need to protect it during its growth phase. Therefore from now on we will make our contribution open in stages. First through inner source type of contract with partners in beta stage. Then we will have community licences where I did some thinking on makers only licences (I'll share more in the next year) and then finally I believe in the end everything will be open sourced through AGPL and finally GPL for maximum freedom.

I am convinced to protect an open source project and maximize adoption a way has to be found to keep it sustainable. To balance interests of investors investing in open source an ROI needs to be generated, at the same time to maximise adoption, contribution and freedom, openness needs to be maximised. In the past it was possible to just release something and see it grow like Drupal, Wordpress, ... but those days are gone. You see drama's unfold, like for example in the Wordpress community where in the end investors and founders feel ripped off and start to do things that give open source a bad name. Why not make it more sustainable from the start? Why not balance investors and community, capatalism and collectivism, indivualism and collaboration? The middle way.

Our open DXP layer which we announced at Drupalcon Barcelona will follow this route. We didn't got the Eurostars grant so we will do it in another way. The Dropsolid way. A bit more pragmatic. While we won't have the perfect architecture maybe what we are going to do is good enough? If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck maybe it is a duck? Our mesh layer on top of Drupal, Mautic and Unomi will be building on top of the existing platforms instead of rebuilding them. Maybe we will revisit our vision to rebuild Mautic & Unomi on Drupal but for now we will keep things pragmatic.

In any case, it will be an inner source project for partners and then over the years move through the cycle to become full open source. We will also make our layer so that it can be hosted in a sovereign way on you premise. More at Drupalcon Atlanta where we will hope to show a prototype.

3. Planting a Few Seeds

While our public focus stays on open DXP, we’re quietly exploring how emerging technologies—especially AI— might interface with marketing automation and digital platforms. No major announcements yet. Just a couple of reflections:

• How will agencies evolve?
• How will service industries evolve?
• How will hosting and devops platforms evolve?
• How will DXPs evolve?
• How will Drupal and Mautic evolve?
• How will open source communities evolve?

Could it be an other approach is needed? Something radically different? Something that looks to the world through another lens? Something that demands for radical change instead of incremental change? Can we let go of the old and embrace the new? Can we allow a part of ourselves to die so we can renew?

4. Partnerships, Team Growth, and Subtle Expansion

This past year also brought new clients and hires across the US and EU. We have employees on 4 continents now. Remote collaboration continues to prove effective, allowing us to tap into tech ecosystems that are thriving in both regions. Our structure remains founder-led, but additional funding conversations could help amplify our Open DXP vision if bigger opportunities arise. But we intend to stay true to our core values. We want to balance investors interests with our open source values. We don't want to be forced into decisions that we believe don't reflect our values.

5. A Personal Note: Traveling and Gratitude

On a personal level, I traveled extensively in 2024—visiting India, the US, and several countries in Europe. Each region brought fresh perspectives on innovation. I’m especially thankful for the sense of hospitality I’ve encountered and for having built genuine connections with local communities and fellow expats. An absolute highlight was the Pilgrimage to the Buddhist holy sites in India. This was a once in a lifetime experience.

6. No Need to Mention Numbers

The market has been challenging. We know some organizations in the Drupal universe have faced stagnation or staff reductions. While we’ve quietly continued on a positive trajectory, we’ll skip sharing specifics. Let’s just say we remain focused on sustainable growth and are mindful that not everyone has had it so easy.

7. Concluding Thoughts

As 2024 wraps up, we’re reminded how relevant open-source and flexible DXP strategies remain—perhaps more than ever, with AI entering the conversation. We’ll keep fine-tuning our platform and partnerships.

Thank you to everyone—clients, communities, competitors—who keeps us on our toes and pushes us to do better.

***

Remember the photo in the beginning on the 4.5m ramp, ready to drop in?

If you go half hearted, you fall; if you commit, you move forward and ride aways safely.

That’s how I feel about the next phase.

We see significant shifts coming for those ready to embrace new models of delivering digital platforms. The tables have turned. Those who dare will ride the wave, does who don't will stay behind. We have the intention to make some bold moves in 2025. Can't say too much yet but here is a taste of how it could be:

Dropping into the 4.5m ramp

So, let us dare to make some radical moves in 2025 :)

I'm sure we will, it is in our nature.

At least let's try. Even if we fail, we tried and we can always try again. Also, don't try this at home :), I've had a skateboard since I was 6, I'm almost 44 now, so you know, you need some training too. But I think we have. Drupal is 25 years old almost, Mautic is 10 years old, Dropsolid is 12 years old in 2025, we've been in this industry for almost 20 years. At least we'll try.

I'll leave you with this question: "Can we offer Drupal, Mautic and open DXP to everyone everywhere?" Stay tuned for more details in the next months. 

All the best in the months ahead and bless you all.
Dominique