We can help you plan your path forward.
Drupal 7 reached end of life on 5 January 2025 and is no longer community supported on Drupal.org. That means no further community security releases for Drupal 7 core, and no ongoing official community support for Drupal 7 sites. If your organisation is still running Drupal 7, the question is no longer whether you need to act, but which route makes most sense for you. In practice, there are three main options: migrate to Drupal 11, move to another platform, or buy more time through commercial extended support. Drupal 11 has been production-ready since August 2024, and Drupal 10 remains supported until 9 December 2026.
Migrate to Drupal 11
Depending on the complexity of your site, this can range from really simple to highly complex. We’ve already migrated about 150 sites from D7 to D8/9/10/11, not to mention one instance of a Drupal 6 that turned up not that long ago. Some of those instances have been really simple - basically a few pages of content acting as the front end for a CiviCRM database. In those cases, the migration can take a matter of hours, CiviCRM is unaffected and your team will barely notice.
More complex sites need more care. If you have dozens of content types, many user roles, custom integrations, bespoke modules or extensive custom code, this becomes a proper migration project rather than a routine upgrade. The more tailored your site is, the more likely it is that parts of it will need to be rebuilt, refactored or replaced. Custom code in particular will need to be reviewed carefully. In some cases, a feature that needed custom development years ago may now be handled by a contributed module or a different approach in modern Drupal.
It is usually reasonable to expect your core content structure and users to migrate well. However, the more modules and permissions you have, the more likely it is that some parts will need testing, refinement and tidying up afterwards. That is especially true where workflows have grown organically over time.
Two areas that often need particular attention are Views and Webforms. A simple contact form or a basic list of recent news is unlikely to be a problem. But more advanced setups, especially those tied closely to CiviCRM or used as part of service delivery workflows, often need to be rebuilt rather than simply migrated. The good news is that much of the hard work is usually in the original thinking. Once the process is understood, the rebuild is often faster and cleaner than the first implementation.
For most organisations still on Drupal 7, Drupal 11 should now be the destination version. It is the current major release, and Drupal 10 has a defined end of life in December 2026, so planning towards Drupal 11 gives you a longer runway and avoids building around a version that is already on its way through its support window.
Move to another platform
Basically a bit similar to migrating to Drupal except that it will be more work as there aren’t reliable migration modules or even equivalent entities at the other end so it’s essentially a complete rebuild in new technology. If you’re considering a significant redesign and overhaul of the site, you might choose this option but you will also need to learn a new system once it’s done which can be disruptive.
We can help with moves to platforms such as WordPress, but we would approach that as a new build project rather than a straightforward migration.
Buy more time with commercial extended support
If you’re not ready for the move for whatever reason, it is now possible to stay updated on Drupal 7 if you sign up to the service from HeroDevs who provide similar services with post End Of Life support for other products to people like Google, Santander and the NHS. They have the scale to take on something like this as a commercial service and guarantee to provide updates to the core Drupal 7 codebase and 13,000 currently maintained modules.
There is a significant cost for the first site with them and a low cost per subsequent site for agencies like us so if you sign up to our hosting and maintenance we can provide you with the security updates in the same way as we already do for our existing Drupal clients. This works out at just £85/month. Depending on the size and complexity of your site, it will start at £200 pounds a month for hosting, nightly backups, applying all security patches and proactive monitoring.
That said, staying on Drupal 7 indefinitely is not a long-term strategy we would recommend. In the world of software, everything keeps moving along. In the way your phone gets constant updates, the PHP and database versions get updated, the underlying OS moves on to new versions and you will get to a point where you can’t run that old software except on a really out of date server with a stack where other elements will become insecure. But you can definitely buy some valuable time with this approach and we’d be happy to help you.
We can help you decide what comes next
Every Drupal 7 site is different. Some can move quickly. Some need careful discovery, phased delivery and a realistic plan. Whether you want to migrate to Drupal 11, move to another platform, or put commercial extended support in place while you prepare, we can help you assess the options and choose the route that makes sense for your organisation.
If you are considering your next step for a Drupal 7 site, please get in touch. We would be happy to help you plan the right path forward.
