Case Study
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Migrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform
From Magnolia to Drupal
We are the Magnolia to Drupal migration experts
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Challenges with Magnolia
Key pain points
Magnolia is the definition of “enterprise for the sake of enterprise.” The setup is heavy, the learning curve is brutal, and unless you have a Java team lying around, good luck getting anything done without burning through budget. The proprietary modules lock you in fast, integrations feel like a maze, and the admin interface slows to a crawl once you start dealing with real content volume. The pricing is expensive, opaque, and somehow still manages to feel bad value. If you're not a Fortune 500 with a tolerance for pain, it’s a project risk.
And honestly, who even uses Java anymore?
Steep Java learning curve
Magnolia expects your team to be fluent in Java and its ecosystem, which slows onboarding and makes even simple tasks feel heavier than they should.
Resource-intensive setup
It demands serious infrastructure and long setup cycles, which immediately rules it out for teams that expect fast iteration or modern DevOps workflows.
Vendor lock-in concerns
Once you're in, you're in. Magnolia’s proprietary modules make moving away painful, expensive, and often not worth the engineering time.
Complex third-party integration
Connecting Magnolia with modern tools and APIs isn’t straightforward, usually requiring custom Java work instead of simple plug-and-play integrations.
Native subscription support
Licensing is firmly enterprise-tier, with opaque pricing and steep annual fees that can balloon quickly, a bad fit unless you're Fortune 500.
Proprietary module reliance
Key features live behind Magnolia’s own tightly controlled modules, limiting flexibility and forcing teams to work the “Magnolia way” instead of choosing best-in-class tools.
Benefits of Drupal
Key advantages
We'll give credit where it's due: Drupal is a serious CMS for serious projects. If you're building a government portal, a university website, or a massive multilingual platform that needs to serve content in 24 languages, Drupal is genuinely hard to beat. Its content modeling is incredibly deep, its permissions system is enterprise-grade, and its multilingual capabilities are arguably the best in the open-source CMS world. The European Commission runs on it for a reason.
Where Drupal really shines is in complex, structured content architectures. You can model relationships between content types, build granular taxonomies, and set up editorial workflows that would make other CMS platforms weep. If your content team has 50 editors across multiple departments with different access levels, Drupal handles that without breaking a sweat. It's also one of the few traditional CMS platforms that has genuinely embraced decoupled architecture, so you can use it as a headless backend with a modern frontend framework if you want.
The community is smaller than WordPress but significantly more technical. Drupal developers tend to be proper engineers, and the ecosystem reflects that. Module quality is generally higher, security patches are taken seriously, and the project has strong governance. If you're in an enterprise or government context where compliance, accessibility, and security auditing matter, Drupal is a well-trodden path.
That said, we'd only recommend Drupal for projects that genuinely need its power. If you're building a marketing site or a blog, you're using a sledgehammer to hang a picture frame. Talk to us first, and we'll figure out if Drupal is actually the right fit or if you've been sold on it by someone who bills by the hour.
Exceptional content modeling
Drupal's entity and field system lets you build deeply structured, relational content architectures that most CMS platforms can only dream of. Complex taxonomies, references, and custom types are all first-class citizens.
Best-in-class multilingual support
With over 90 languages available out of the box and proper translation workflows baked in, Drupal is the gold standard for multilingual sites. No plugins, no hacks, just native support that actually works.
Granular permissions and workflows
The access control system is absurdly detailed. You can lock down roles, content types, fields, and editorial workflows with a precision that enterprise clients genuinely need and other platforms struggle to match.
Viable headless architecture
Drupal's JSON:API and GraphQL modules make it a legitimate headless CMS option, letting you pair a robust content backend with a modern frontend framework like Next.js or Nuxt.
Strong security track record
The Drupal security team is proactive and well-organized. Security advisories are clear, patches are timely, and the community takes vulnerabilities seriously, which matters a lot in government and enterprise contexts.
Open source with no vendor lock-in
You own your data, your code, and your hosting. There's no monthly SaaS bill that scales with your content volume, and you can move between hosting providers without rewriting anything.
Common questions
Magnolia to Drupal migration FAQs
Answers to the most common questions about Magnolia to Drupal migration
How long does it take to migrate away from Magnolia CMS?
Magnolia migrations are among the most involved we handle. The Java-based architecture, proprietary modules, and tightly coupled workflows mean there's no quick extract-and-import path. Content needs to be exported from Magnolia's JCR (Java Content Repository), transformed, and loaded into your target platform. For a mid-sized enterprise site with 1,000 to 5,000 pages, expect 8 to 16 weeks. The timeline depends heavily on how many proprietary modules your team has adopted and how complex your multi-site setup is.
Why do companies leave Magnolia?
Cost and agility are the two main drivers. Magnolia's enterprise licensing is opaque and expensive, with annual fees that balloon as you add modules and environments. Teams also get frustrated by the Java dependency. Finding and retaining Java CMS developers is harder and more expensive every year, especially when modern headless platforms let teams build with JavaScript and TypeScript instead. The vendor lock-in from proprietary modules makes the decision feel overdue by the time teams finally commit to migrating.
Can we migrate from Magnolia to a headless CMS without losing our multi-site setup?
Yes, but the approach changes. Magnolia handles multi-site through its own orchestration layer, while headless platforms like Sanity use workspace configurations or project-level separation. We rebuild multi-site architectures using the target CMS's native multi-tenancy features. The content migration itself is the simpler part. The harder work is re-implementing your personalisation rules, approval workflows, and permission structures outside of Magnolia's proprietary ecosystem.
How do I migrate a website from Drupal?
We export your content, taxonomy, user data, and media from Drupal's database, then restructure everything for the target platform. Most Drupal migrations we handle move to Sanity or a headless setup with Next.js. The timeline depends on how many content types, custom modules, and Views you're running. A typical mid-size site takes 4-8 weeks. The hardest part is usually untangling custom module logic and rebuilding it in a modern stack.
What are the best Drupal alternatives?
For enterprise projects that need structured content and granular permissions, Sanity is our top recommendation. It matches Drupal's content modelling depth without the PHP overhead or the shrinking talent pool. For simpler sites that were on Drupal because someone chose it 10 years ago, WordPress or even Webflow might be enough. The right alternative depends on whether you actually need Drupal's power or just inherited it.
How do I migrate from Drupal 7 to a modern CMS?
Drupal 7 reached end-of-life, so this is urgent for many teams. Rather than migrating to Drupal 10 (which is essentially a rebuild anyway), most of our clients choose to move to a headless CMS instead. We extract your Drupal 7 content using Drush and custom migration scripts, then map it to the new platform's schema. The frontend gets rebuilt in Next.js or a similar framework. It's a bigger project than a version upgrade, but you end up with a system that's actually maintainable long-term.
How much does a Drupal migration cost?
It varies wildly based on content volume, custom modules, and frontend complexity. A small Drupal site with 500 pages might cost $15,000-$30,000 to migrate. Enterprise Drupal sites with thousands of pages, custom workflows, and multilingual content can run $50,000-$150,000+. The honest truth is that Drupal migrations are expensive because the platform is complex. But the ongoing savings from reduced hosting costs, easier maintenance, and cheaper developer rates usually justify the investment within 12-18 months.
Is Drupal still worth using in 2026?
Only if your project genuinely needs what Drupal offers, meaning deep content modelling, granular permissions, and multilingual support at scale. For government and large institutional sites, it still makes sense. For everything else, the shrinking developer pool, high maintenance costs, and painful upgrade cycles make it hard to justify. We've moved many teams off Drupal who were paying $200+/hour for specialized developers when a modern headless setup would have served them better at a fraction of the ongoing cost.
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