Dries Buytaert Reflects on Drupal Gardens and the Rise of Acquia Source

Staff Reporter

Dries Buytaert says Acquia is returning to an idea it once walked away from. In a new post titled The product we should not have killed, Dries explains that Acquia is developing a new Drupal-based SaaS platform called Acquia Source, a move shaped by what he describes as one of the company's biggest early mistakes: shutting down Drupal Gardens ten years ago.

Drupal Gardens, launched in 2009, made Drupal accessible to non-developers through a SaaS experience. By its peak, over 100,000 sites used the platform, but Acquia ultimately shut it down to focus on enterprise customers via Acquia Cloud Site Factory. While successful, that shift left simpler use cases underserved.

In his post, Dries argues that the need for low-complexity Drupal hosting never disappeared. Many organizations today still juggle multiple CMS platforms, a situation Acquia Source aims to fix. Built over the past 18 months, Acquia Source enters limited availability as a new SaaS that supports quick launches while allowing full export of code, configuration, and content.

Key components like Drupal Canvas are being developed in the open, reinforcing Acquia's commitment to open-source principles. Acquia Source is designed to sit alongside Acquia’s existing Cloud offerings, sharing Drupal as a common foundation across products.

Reference: The product we should not have killed by Dries Buytaert (17 November 2025)

Dries Buytaert

SaaS

Open Source

CMS

Drupal

Acquia

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