Don't throw away your Drupal site

Statements like these are often used as reasons to throw away a Drupal site and move to a new platform:

I want this feature that comes with this other CMS!
This Drupal site is costing too much money!
Our Drupal site is old / slow / naff!

But what if it were better and cheaper to stick with what you’ve got?

Here's our take on a few key issues that come up, each with recommendations and some perspective challenges.

In 2024, and especially with the Drupal CMS release, Drupal comes with a lot of functionality out of the box. If you or your development team are not aware of Drupal’s capabilities, it’s easy to miss out on affordable (or even free) functionality.

Hosting costs can be a key concern. Having saved our clients thousands of pounds annually by optimising their hosting plans and configurations, we are confident that we could do the same for others.

Development teams that don’t specialise in Drupal can struggle to provide fast, effective maintenance, support and development. ComputerMinds are active participants in the Drupal community, and that gives us a wealth of experience alongside exposure to the latest and greatest developments and opportunities.

Ultimately, moving to a new platform could be more expensive

Recommendations

Move to a dedicated Drupal agency (like ComputerMinds!) - whilst we don’t only do Drupal, we have done a lot of Drupal and your site could significantly benefit from our expertise.

Ask us for a Site Audit - we can review your setup, hosting, costs and performance with you, and give specific recommendations to address your concerns.

Read our article on reducing costs When your Drupal site is costing too much

Modern Drupal can be highly performant when configured correctly by people that know what they’re doing

Poor admin experiences are a product of your development team, and do not necessarily reflect Drupal. Drupal can provide for excellent and intuitive administrative interfaces and processes.

Poor site maintenance is a product of your budget. If you always push for the fastest route forward, you neglect the capacity to build nice solutions.

New platforms are always fast at the start, but may be just as slow in a few years' time. Quality maintenance should be more cost effective than multiple platform moves over the long term.

Recommendations

Ask us for a Site Audit - with a view to addressing your concerns with performance / UX / security

Read our article on reducing costs - When your Drupal site is costing too much

The biggest challenge when you don't like a platform anymore is understanding the cost of moving. Understanding what you actually have can be its own challenge, both in knowing the true state of your site and the being aware of what it should be capable of.

Rebuilding your site on a new platform can be an enormous undertaking, even without the other visual redesign and content rebuild opportunities that tend to present themselves alongside. You may have to spend a lot of time, effort and budget to leave Drupal and rebuild, but still may not get what you want long term.

ComputerMinds are valued digital partners, and we retain a large number of long-running client relationships. Our pragmatism on using the right tools and our ability to deliver mean that clients continue to choose to work with us year after year.

Recommendations

Understand Drupal’s capabilities - You may be surprised by how much it can do. Go through our page Why choose Drupal?

Ask us for a Site Audit - We can review your setup and functionality, and give specific recommendations on how to make your site both performant for the customer and an enjoyable experience for your editorial team.