The verdict in three sentences
Since 5 January 2025, Drupal 7 no longer receives community security fixes, and every month spent on it raises the risk for a public website that runs forms, publishes regulatory news and hosts technical documents. For a public body with 300 to 800 pages and around 2,000 documents, budgets seen on the UK market range from £20,000 to £75,000, against £1,700 to £5,000 a year for extended support that only postpones the deadline. The approach that keeps cost under control is to sort before you migrate, build the new site to WCAG 2.2 AA from the design stage and hold a 4 to 6 month timeline.
Stay, extend or migrate: the real options
Many public bodies, levy boards and local authorities stayed on Drupal 7 because the site worked and moving to Drupal 8 and later means a rebuild, not an upgrade. Standing still still has a hidden cost: unmaintained modules, an old PHP version at the host, and known vulnerabilities published and exploited by bots.
| Option | Observed cost (2026 order of magnitude) | Timeline | Residual risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stay on Drupal 7 without support | £0 direct | None | High: published flaws left unpatched |
| Paid extended support (specialist vendors) | £1,700 to £5,000 a year | Immediate | Medium: core patches, partial module coverage |
| Migrate to Drupal 10 or 11 | £30,000 to £75,000 | 5 to 6 months | Low, but Drupal skills are scarce |
| Migrate to WordPress with a bespoke theme | £20,000 to £50,000 | 4 to 5 months | Low if plugins are kept few |
| Headless architecture (decoupled CMS + modern front end) | £38,000 to £75,000 | 5 to 6 months | Low, more editorial flexibility |
| Full rebuild with a reduced scope | £20,000 to £42,000 | 4 months | Low, provided content is cut hard |
Extended support makes sense to buy 12 to 18 months while a procurement is prepared. Beyond that, you are paying part of the migration cost every year without building anything.
The method that brings the quote down
The first cost driver is not development, it is volume. A public body accumulates ten years of guidance notes, board minutes, expired vacancies and past event pages.
- Inventory and analytics: match the page list against 24 months of traffic. On the public sites we see, 35 to 50% of pages had no visits in two years.
- Document triage: the 2,000 PDFs must be accessible or offered in an accessible alternative. Archiving offline those nobody reads shrinks this line considerably.
- Content model: define 8 to 12 content types (news, guidance note, training, event, vacancy, service page) instead of carrying over 30 accumulated ones.
- Automated migration of structured content, manual rework of key editorial pages.
- Page-by-page 301 redirect plan to keep search visibility.
- Accessibility audit before launch and publication of the accessibility statement.
| Phase | Duration | Deliverable |
|---|---|---|
| Scoping, inventory, analytics | 3 to 4 weeks | List of content to keep, archive, delete |
| Design and accessible mock-ups | 4 to 5 weeks | Content model, approved templates |
| Development and integration | 6 to 8 weeks | Staging site |
| Content and document migration | 3 to 4 weeks, in parallel | Content migrated and proofread |
| Accessibility audit and fixes | 2 to 3 weeks | Accessibility statement |
| Cutover, redirects, editor training | 1 to 2 weeks | Site live, team self-sufficient |
Kolonell handles this scope as an institutional website project, on quote, once the inventory is done. Pricing depends on the number of pages actually kept, the forms to rebuild and any links to internal tools (event bookings, staff directory).
What accessibility law requires of a public body
Under the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018, a UK public body must meet WCAG 2.2 AA and publish an accessibility statement, and the Central Digital and Data Office monitors compliance. The new site should target compliance from the mock-ups, because fixing afterwards costs two to three times more. The most common issues on public body audits: low contrast in brand colours, data tables without headers, scanned PDFs with no text layer, booking forms without labels.
Mini case study
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Mark, head of communications at a regional public body, starts from a Drupal 7 site with 600 pages and 2,000 documents. Analytics show 40% of pages had no visits in 24 months. He deletes or archives 240 and migrates only 360 pages.
On the market, reworking an editorial page with proofreading and accessibility fixes costs about £75. Sorting therefore avoids 240 x £75 = £18,000 of rework. For documents, only 600 PDFs were opened over the period: making 600 accessible instead of 2,000, at about £20 each, saves 1,400 x £20 = £28,000. Scoping, billed for a few days, cut the final budget far more than it cost.
FAQ
Is a Drupal 7 site really dangerous in 2026?
Yes, because flaws found since January 2025 are no longer patched by the community. A public site that accepts form submissions is a frequent target for bots exploiting published vulnerabilities.
Do we have to run a formal procurement?
It depends on value and your internal rules. Budgets of £20,000 to £75,000 often cross the thresholds that require advertised competition or a framework call-off, which adds 6 to 10 weeks to the timeline.
Can we keep our current page addresses?
Not always identically, but a page-by-page 301 redirect plan keeps most of your search visibility. On a 600-page site, the plan takes 2 to 3 days of work.
How long will the site be down during cutover?
Less than an hour if the migration has been rehearsed on staging. Cutover is scheduled outside peak periods, such as major grant or levy deadlines.
Will our team be able to publish on its own?
Yes, 1 to 2 days of editor training are built into the timeline. A model limited to 8 to 12 content types is quicker to learn than the old site.
Let's scope your project. An inventory of your Drupal 7 site followed by a prioritised migration plan can be scoped in one call, with a typical 4 to 6 month timeline to go-live. Detailed quote within 48 h. WhatsApp +221 77 596 93 33.
Mohamed Bah
Fondateur, Kolonell
Passionate about digital and entrepreneurship in Africa, Mohamed has been helping Sénégalese businesses with their digital transformation since 2020. Founder of Kolonell, he believes every SME deserves a professional and accessible online présence.
