From Drupal to Payload

We are the Drupal to Payload migration experts

Challenges with Drupal

Key pain points

Here's the uncomfortable truth about Drupal: it's powerful, but it demands a level of investment that most teams underestimate. The learning curve is brutal. We're not talking about a weekend of tutorials; we're talking about months before a developer is truly productive. Drupal 8 and beyond adopted Symfony patterns, which is great for architecture but means you now need a PHP developer who also understands dependency injection, service containers, and YAML configuration files that seem to multiply overnight. Finding and retaining Drupal talent is genuinely difficult, and the developer survey data confirms it: fewer than 10% of the community is under 30, and almost nobody is joining fresh.

The upgrade story has been a recurring nightmare. The jump from Drupal 7 to 8 was essentially a full rebuild, and the ongoing churn from PHP and Symfony upstream changes means your team spends a meaningful chunk of time just keeping the lights on. Module compatibility breaks, themes need reworking, and the update process still isn't fully automated. If you're on a lean team, that maintenance burden is going to eat into your feature development time.

And then there's the content editor experience. Drupal was built by engineers for engineers, and it shows. The admin interface is functional but far from intuitive, and content teams coming from friendlier platforms consistently struggle with it. You can improve things with contributed modules and custom configuration, but that's more time and money. At the end of the day, if you don't have the budget for a dedicated Drupal team or a long-term agency partnership, you're going to have a bad time.

Punishing learning curve

Getting productive in Drupal takes months, not days. The combination of Symfony patterns, YAML configuration, and Drupal-specific conventions means onboarding new developers is slow and expensive.

Shrinking talent pool

The developer community is aging out. Fewer than 10% of Drupal developers are under 30, and new developers aren't joining at a rate that replaces those leaving. Finding affordable Drupal expertise is a real challenge.

Painful upgrade cycles

Between PHP version bumps, Symfony updates, and Drupal core changes, your team will spend significant time on maintenance that has nothing to do with shipping features. The Drupal 7 to 8 migration was so brutal they delayed end-of-life for years.

Poor content editor experience

The admin interface was designed by developers, and it shows. Content teams coming from WordPress, Sanity, or any modern CMS will find the editing experience clunky and unintuitive without significant customization.

Resource-hungry infrastructure

Drupal is not light. It demands proper server resources, caching layers, and database optimization to perform well. Cheap shared hosting won't cut it, and infrastructure costs add up quickly.

High total cost of ownership

It's open source, but don't let that fool you. Between specialized developers, hosting requirements, ongoing maintenance, and the sheer time investment to configure everything, Drupal projects consistently cost more than teams expect.

Benefits of Payload

Key advantages

Payload is genuinely strong tech. It’s fast, open-source, developer-first, and perfect if you want full control over your content model. The Next.js integration is smooth, the admin UI is clean, and it’s one of the more flexible modern CMS options if your team prefers to build things exactly the way you want them.

Just know that if you want actual features like visual editing, Vercel Blob storage, image handling, etc, you’ll be paying extra for the privilege. If you’re considering Payload or thinking about migrating into (or out of) it, reach out to us. We can help you figure out whether it’s the right stack or guide you toward a cleaner, saner (Sanity) setup.

Integration with Next.js applications

Payload works natively with Next.js, giving you clean data fetching and a smooth development flow. It removes the usual CMS friction so you can build fast, modern frontends without hacks.

Fully customizable

Everything is configured in code, which means you can tailor the CMS to your exact use case. You define the logic, workflows, and behaviour.

Supports custom data models

You can design any content structure your project needs, from simple documents to complex relational models. This gives you full control over how content is organised and delivered.

Intuitive admin UI

Payload’s admin panel is simple, clean, and fast. Editors can create, update, and manage content without training or digging through confusing menus.

Custom plugins and APIs

You can extend Payload however you like. Build custom fields, integrate external services, or add your own API routes. Perfect for teams that need deeper project-specific functionality.

Built-in authentication

Payload comes with user auth, roles, and access control baked in. No external auth service needed, and you can customise permissions to match your editorial workflow.