will drupal suit my small business site?

1. no problem.

2. Drupal has an inbuilt user management system, you can assign roles to each user and with extra modules (e.g. taxonomy access) you can restrict the permissions of each role even better. You could also decide that only the admin can perform user registrations.

So, it really depends on what do you need for your customers, other than them just being able to login to your site. To Do what?

Really, Drupal is as flexible as you can get it, it might be slightly overkill for what you actually need.

Have a look through Downloads > Modules and see for yourself what is available.

And a big issue many small business owners have is "will my site look and feel like a Drupal site?" With a good design, nothing has to look like a drupal site.

What you're looking to do is definitely do-able, but drupal is a very powerful CMS. Tell us a bit more about the client login and hopefully we can help.

I actually use Drupal for all of my small business clients. The trick is to make sure you have the basic modules and setup. With the user registration system, CCK and Views, you can create relatively simple web apps that offer alot of functionality.

Its also easy to set up multiple ways to keep in contact with customers - from notifactions to Simplenews or Aweber integration. Unless you have a very specific setup that you KNOW won't ever change, I would always go with Drupal... the ability to adapt, adjust and change your site as needed is powerful.

regards,
Ron Northcutt
Freelance Developer

Custom Drupal Websites
Small Business Website

Peace, Compassion, Prosperity