Drupal 7 End of Support: Remaining options and the escalating costs of delaying migration

Even after the end of support was announced, many websites did not stop operating, and as of September 2024, Drupal 7 was still running on 291,386 sites, accounting for approximately 40% of all Drupal websites.

As of January 5, 2025, official support has ended, leaving hundreds of thousands of websites worldwide running without future updates, prompting a need for companies to analyze the costs and risks of their remaining options.

In this article, we will outline the options available to companies still running Drupal 7, examining both the costs and risks involved.

Sources: webtechsurvey / Drupal.org usage(September 2024), Drupal 7 EOL PSA-2025-01-06

What changed after Drupal 7 ended support?

When people hear the term End of Life (EOL), they often assume their website will stop working immediately. In reality, it does not. And that is precisely what makes the situation challenging.

Only one thing has fundamentally changed: when new vulnerabilities are discovered, official security patches are no longer provided.

In the web ecosystem, vulnerability details are typically made public. As a result, an unpatched Drupal 7 site becomes the equivalent of a building with known security weaknesses, where the location of every vulnerability is publicly documented and no repairs will ever be made. For attackers, the task is straightforward: identify exposed Drupal 7 websites and exploit known weaknesses.

For organizations operating in highly regulated industries such as healthcare, financial services, and government, there is an additional concern. Continuing to run unsupported software may create compliance challenges with regulatory frameworks and security standards such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, and FedRAMP.

Three Options

We are not suggesting that every organization should immediately rebuild its website. The right decision depends on your business objectives, budget, and operational requirements.

① Migrate to Drupal 11: This option is best suited for organizations with large websites, multilingual content, membership features, complex permission structures, or ongoing plans for feature expansion.

However, a Drupal 7 to Drupal 11 migration is not a version upgrade, it is a rebuild. This is because Drupal’s core architecture underwent a fundamental transformation around 2015. On the other hand, content such as articles and images can be migrated automatically using the Migrate API. In practice, this means “rebuilding the design and functionality while preserving the content.”

② Move to a different CMS: For websites with a limited number of pages, infrequent content updates, and few custom features, migrating to a different CMS may be a more cost-effective option.

Drupal’s strength lies in managing complex content structures and business workflows. If your organization does not rely on those capabilities, a lightweight CMS may offer lower maintenance and operating costs. After all, the goal is not to continue using Drupal, but to choose the platform that best supports your business needs.

③ Stay on Drupal 7 Temporarily with a Defined Deadline: If budget constraints or timing make does not align, a temporary extension strategy may be a practical short-term option.

However, you must set a strict deadline. A “provisional” status without a timeline will easily turn into three years of stagnation.

Key risks to consider

There are several common pitfalls when evaluating a Drupal 7 migration strategy.

• One of the most costly assumptions is: “The site is still running, so there’s no urgency.” Delaying the decision often increases the overall cost of migration. Experienced Drupal specialists have already moved on to newer versions and modern platforms, reducing the pool of available expertise. As demand grows and available resources become more limited, migration costs tend to rise over time. Simply postponing the project until next year may result in a significantly higher estimate when that time comes.
• Migration estimates can also vary significantly from one vendor to another. In many cases, this is because estimates are based on high-level assumptions rather than a detailed assessment of the current environment. The majority of migration costs are typically tied to “custom-built functionality”. Any estimate that does not fully account for these components is likely to increase once the project begins.
• Organizations should also avoid viewing a “stay and extend” strategy as a long-term solution. Extended support services can buy additional time, but they do not make the underlying vulnerabilities disappear.

Market trends in Japan

The migration away from Drupal 7 is not unique to Japan. It is a global transition taking place across organizations of all sizes.

• As of September 2024, Drupal 7 was still powering approximately 291,000 websites, representing nearly 40% of all Drupal sites worldwide.
• Due to budget constraints, limited resources, and the complexity of “custom-built functionality,” many organizations around the world have yet to complete their migration, even after Drupal 7 reached its end of life.
• On the other hand, Drupal continues to power 8.5% of high-traffic top-tier websites. For larger organizations, choosing to “migrate to the latest Drupal version” is a more realistic decision than attempting to “escape to another CMS.”

Source：webtechsurvey, themeisle CMS Market Share 2025

TTV’s Drupal migration support

At TTV, a dedicated Drupal team supports organizations throughout their migration journey, including upgrades to the latest Drupal 11 platform.

Making it more than just a “technical migration”. What we value most in Drupal migration projects is not simply completing the migration itself, but using the opportunity to optimize the platform architecture for the future. Our approach typically includes the following steps:

①Evaluate Migration Feasibility at the Module Level: Evaluate Migration Feasibility for Each Module – For every active Contrib module, we assess its migration path individually, including the availability of a compatible version for the target Drupal release, the availability of alternative modules, and whether “custom implementation” is required.

②Identify features that require redevelopment and review them with the client: We work closely with clients to distinguish between “features that should be carried forward” and “features that should be redesigned.” This allows us to recommend the most effective approach for the new platform. Migrating outdated functionality that no longer serves current business needs often adds unnecessary development effort and long-term maintenance costs, making it more efficient to optimize the system during the migration process

③Migrate to an Optimized Architecture: Rather than treating the project as a purely “technical migration,” we first optimize the platform architecture with the next five years in mind, then migrate to Drupal 11.

This approach ensures a more maintainable, scalable, and future-ready platform that can better support evolving business requirements.

Four key areas to assess during a current-state assessment

• Content types/fields actively in use: Migrating unused definitions is a complete waste of man-hours.
• Drupal 10/11 compatibility of active Contrib modules – If they are incompatible, you must either search for alternatives or build a custom implementation.
• The scale of custom code – This accounts for most of the migration effort.
• External system integrations – We determine the necessity of redesigning core business systems, MA, and payment gateways.

In addition, our Drupal specialists have contributed 20 Contrib modules to the Drupal community based on real-world project requirements (drupal.org/u/zipme_hkt). As a result, when we encounter “modules with no compatible version available” during a migration project, we have the in-house expertise to develop custom replacements and extensions ourselves.

Summary

The theme of this article is “the cost of delay.”

• Drupal 7 officially reached end of life (EOL) on January 5, 2025. Nearly 40% of Drupal sites were still running on Drupal 7 at that time.
• There are three options: A) migrate to Drupal 11, B) switch to another CMS, or C) stay on Drupal 7 temporarily with a defined deadline.
• The longer you wait, the higher the cost becomes (because the number of specialists capable of handling the migration continues to decrease).
• Start with a current-state assessment. Even reviewing these four key areas can significantly improve the accuracy of migration estimates.
• We support migrations to Drupal 11, evaluating migration feasibility on a module-by-module basis and providing recommendations that include architecture optimization.

Even if your only question is “Which of these options best fits our situation?”, we are happy to help. We also offer standalone current-state assessments, and if our conclusion is that migration is not the right choice, we will tell you so honestly.

If you are considering migrating from Drupal 7, please feel free to contact us.

Source

• Drupal 7 Support end Announcement
• Drupal Usage Statistics
• 2025 CMS Market Share（themeisle）
• Drupal.org user profile