The verdict in three sentences
Drupal 7 has been out of community support since 5 January 2025: every month spent on it exposes your trade association to unpatched vulnerabilities. Migrating a 300 to 1,500 page site to Next.js with a headless CMS costs between £16,000 and £40,000 excluding VAT in 2026 (roughly €18,000 to €45,000), over 10 to 14 weeks. With an exhaustive 301 redirect plan and rigorous SEO testing, traffic loss stays below 10% and usually recovers within 6 to 10 weeks.
Drupal 10 or headless Next.js: the real comparison
An IT director has two serious options. Moving to Drupal 10 or 11 keeps a familiar ecosystem, but it is not an upgrade: modules, theme and content must be rebuilt. Going headless (Next.js + Sanity, Strapi or Directus) decouples content from presentation and sharply reduces maintenance.
| Criterion | Drupal 10/11 | Headless Next.js + CMS |
|---|---|---|
| Migration cost 300 to 1,500 pages (excl. VAT) | £14,000 to £35,000 | £16,000 to £40,000 |
| Timeline | 10 to 14 weeks | 10 to 14 weeks |
| Mobile load time | 1.8 to 3 s | 0.7 to 1.5 s |
| Security updates | Monthly (core + modules) | Rare, static front end |
| Members area | Native, proven | Via dedicated authentication (NextAuth, Auth0) |
| Skills available in London | Shrinking, day rates £500 to £700 | Growing fast, day rates £450 to £650 |
| Monthly maintenance (excl. VAT) | £600 to £1,400 | £450 to £1,150 |
For an association whose site mainly publishes news, policy positions, research and a member directory, headless is usually more cost-effective over five years. If your site embeds heavy business logic in Drupal (registrations, payments, complex workflows), Drupal 10 can still make sense.
Budget by site volume
Cost depends less on page count than on the number of content types (news, press release, report, member profile, event) and the quality of existing data. A ten-year-old Drupal 7 often holds inconsistent fields and orphaned media that must be cleaned.
| Line item | 300 pages | 800 pages | 1,500 pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| URL audit and mapping | £1,300 | £2,200 | £3,500 |
| Design and front-end build | £5,300 | £7,500 | £9,700 |
| Content migration script | £3,100 | £5,300 | £8,400 |
| 301 redirect plan | £900 | £1,800 | £3,100 |
| Members area and directory | £3,500 | £5,300 | £7,900 |
| SEO testing and 90-day monitoring | £1,800 | £2,600 | £4,000 |
| Indicative total (excl. VAT) | £15,900 | £24,700 | £36,600 |
These are 2026 orders of magnitude for London. The main SEO risks are well known: changed URLs without redirects, lost title tags, moved PDF files and broken internal links. A full crawl before and after go-live, compared line by line, neutralises them.
Mini case study
Helen, IT director of a London trade association with 2,300 members, runs a 900-page Drupal 7 site with 38,000 monthly visits. Her supplier bills £950 a month for fixes, with no security guarantee. She chooses a headless migration at £27,000 excluding VAT over 12 weeks, with £570 a month of maintenance.
The maths: maintenance savings are £380 a month, or £4,560 a year. The avoided risk matters more: a member directory breach would require notifying the ICO, crisis communications estimated at £13,000 to £26,000 and a loss of trust. After go-live, traffic dips 6% for five weeks, then exceeds the original level by 12% in month four, thanks to pages that load twice as fast.
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FAQ
How much does a Drupal 7 to Next.js migration cost in London in 2026?
Between £16,000 and £40,000 excluding VAT for 300 to 1,500 pages, depending on content types and whether there is a members area. An 800-page site sits around £25,000.
Can we stay on Drupal 7 a little longer?
Paid extended support offers exist, usually several thousand pounds a year. They postpone the problem without modernising the site and do not cover every module.
How much traffic might we lose?
With a complete 301 redirect plan and SEO testing, the dip stays below 10% and lasts 6 to 10 weeks. Without a plan, losses of 30 to 50% are common.
Are old PDFs and documents migrated?
Yes, they are inventoried, de-duplicated and redirected to their new URL. On a ten-year-old Drupal, 20 to 30% of files are often obsolete and can be archived.
What timeline should we plan?
From 10 to 14 weeks: 2 weeks of audit, 4 to 6 of design and build, 2 to 3 of migration and testing, then go-live and 90 days of monitoring.
Let's scope your project. Send us your Drupal 7 URL, page volume and constraints (members area, directory, integrations), and we will return a scope, indicative budget and cut-over plan. 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.
