Drupal Migration Services: 11 Agencies for Moving from Drupal to a Headless CMS (2026)

The safest Drupal migration services are the ones that have already moved a large Drupal site to a headless CMS without losing traffic. That means proven content-model mapping, a URL and redirect plan written before any code, and production experience on the target stack, usually Next.js with Sanity, Storyblok, Contentful or Payload.

This round-up compares 11 Drupal migration agencies against one public framework. Some are Drupal specialists that upgrade sites from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10 or 11. Others take teams off Drupal entirely. Pick the first group if Drupal still fits your editors; pick the second if you are replatforming.

Who Got Used Drupal and Why Teams Start to Move Off?

Drupal was super popular 10 years ago, and many companies relied on Drupal as the foundation of their websites and digital platforms for year. It supported multiple websites, handle different user roles, and scale as businesses grew, and more. For organisations with large editorial teams and demanding content structures, Drupal was a reliable choice.

But over time, business needs and technology expectations changed. Some teams began to find Drupal increasingly difficult and expensive to maintain, especially when updates required developer involvement, custom modules created technical debt, or even small content changes depended on technical support.

Others wanted more freedom to build something modern and sleek, improve website performance, or give marketing teams greater control over publishing. This is why many organisations started looking beyond traditional Drupal setups and considering headless CMS platforms. The move is not necessarily about Drupal being a bad platform; it's about finding an architecture that better fits your everyday needs and tasks.

Key takeaways

• Drupal 7 lost community security support on 5 January 2025, so every Drupal 7 site now needs one of three moves: upgrade to Drupal 10/11, decouple Drupal behind a Next.js frontend, or migrate from Drupal to a headless CMS (Drupal.org).
• The biggest risk in any Drupal migration is SEO. Rankings drop when URL aliases, metatags and redirects are lost, so a URL and 301 map must exist before the build starts.
• Drupal content does not map one-to-one to a headless CMS. Paragraphs, Views, blocks and taxonomy have to be remodelled, not copied, so content-model mapping is the skill to test first.
• A Drupal migration company should show a named case with the Drupal source version, the target stack and a measured post-launch traffic figure. Portfolio screenshots are not evidence.
• Upgrade specialists and off-Drupal specialists are different vendors. Decide the path before you shortlist, or the agency will pick it for you.

How we evaluated these Drupal migration services

I've rated each Drupal migration agency on seven criteria that predict a no-risk migration. A no-risk migration means three things: no lost content, no lost rankings, and no editorial team stuck waiting for developers after launch.

Conflict of interest. FocusReactive publishes this guide and appears on the list. We applied the same criteria to our own entry and included its limitations. No agency paid for placement. All facts come from each agency's own site or third-party coverage, linked in each entry and verified as of November 2026.

Who the eleven are. FocusReactive, 9thCO and Roboto Studio move teams off Drupal to a headless CMS. Chapter Three, Lullabot, Amazee Labs and BRAINSUM keep Drupal and decouple it. Promet Source, OHO, DOOR3 and Specbee are the Drupal upgrade and Drupal 7 to 11 migration specialists.

Drupal end of life migration: upgrade, decouple or leave Drupal?

Drupal 7 reached end of life on 5 January 2025 and no longer receives security or compatibility updates (Drupal.org). Paid extended security support from certified vendors such as HeroDevs and Tag1 buys time, but it does not modernise the site (Drupal.org FAQ).

That leaves three migration paths. Each needs a different kind of agency.

A Drupal 7 to 11 migration is not a simple upgrade. Drupal 8 introduced a Symfony-based architecture, so a Drupal 7 site is effectively rebuilt either way. That is why many teams price a headless replatform against the upgrade before committing.

11 Drupal migration agencies, compared

FocusReactive (1), 9thCO (2) and Roboto Studio (9) migrate from Drupal to a headless CMS. Agencies 3–6 run headless Drupal on Next.js, and 7, 8, 10 and 11 specialise in Drupal upgrades and Drupal 7 to 11 migration. Each entry follows the framework above.

1. FocusReactive: best overall for migrating from Drupal to a headless CMS

FocusReactive is an engineering-led, platform-agnostic Next.js agency with offices in Amsterdam, London, Warsaw and New York. It is an official partner of Sanity, Storyblok, Payload and Contentful, and the only agency on this list with a dedicated migration path from Drupal to four headless CMSs: Payload, Storyblok, Sanity and Contentful.

Why it ranks first. FocusReactive is the only agency here with public evidence against every criterion in the framework:

Notable work. For EasyPark, FocusReactive consolidated 20+ domains into one Storyblok platform with 6,998 stories in 35 languages across 14 countries. EasyPark's Web Product Owner, Igor Oudekerk, says the work doubled SEO traffic in the first week. After Firsty's move to a headless CMS, page publishing got 60% faster, campaigns launched 3× faster, and marketing now manages 100% of content with no developer time for daily updates. EmailOctopus moved its blog to Payload CMS.

Pricing signal. €20k–€150k per project, with a proposal within 2–3 days of an intro call. Scope effort first with the CMS Migration Estimator.

What to watch. FocusReactive does not do Drupal-to-Drupal upgrades. If your editors must stay on Drupal, choose a decoupled or upgrade specialist below.

Best for: SaaS, fintech and enterprise marketing teams leaving Drupal that want the CMS chosen for their content, not for the agency's habit.
Rating: 5/5 from 30 Clutch reviews (TFC).

2. 9thCO: best documented Drupal 8 to Storyblok case

9thCO is a headless CMS agency building on Contentful, Prismic, Sanity, Storyblok and Strapi with Next.js frontends.

Why it's on the list. It publishes one of the few full Drupal-exit case studies with numbers. A B2B client on Drupal 8 faced the Drupal 9 upgrade and moved to Storyblok, Next.js and Tailwind instead. Content population took under three days, with no downtime and no loss of rankings.

Notable work. That same project reports a 45.28% increase in organic traffic after launch.

Pricing signal. Not published; ask during scoping.

What to watch. The case client is unnamed and the site was mid-sized. For enterprise scale or multilingual Drupal, ask for a larger reference.

Best for: Mid-market B2B sites leaving Drupal 8 or 9 where organic traffic is the main asset.

3. Chapter Three: best for headless Drupal with Next.js

Chapter Three is a San Francisco Drupal agency, now part of Kanopi Studios. It built Next-Drupal, the open-source Next.js integration for decoupled Drupal.

Why it's on the list. If you want headless Drupal rather than a new CMS, Chapter Three wrote the tooling. The agency reports 7,000+ contributions to Drupal core and wrote the Acquia CMS Next.js starter kit. It is also a Vercel solution partner.

Notable work. For the National Association of Realtors, it migrated ten years of Drupal 7 content into Drupal 11 and rebuilt the frontend in Next.js on Vercel. That single project combines a Drupal 7 to 11 migration with a headless frontend.

Pricing signal. Not published.

What to watch. You keep Drupal, so you keep Drupal's upgrade cycle and PHP hosting. After the Kanopi acquisition, confirm which team will staff your project.

Best for: Government, association and enterprise teams that must stay on Drupal but want a Next.js frontend.

4. Lullabot: best for enterprise Drupal strategy and decoupled builds

Lullabot is a Providence, Rhode Island Drupal agency and one of the earliest in the Drupal community. It is a Pantheon Strategic Partner that lists decoupled implementations, performance and accessibility among its services.

Why it's on the list. Lullabot brings strategy-level Drupal depth to media, healthcare, government and financial services clients. It ran its own site as decoupled Drupal with a React frontend years before headless Drupal was common (Lullabot).

Notable work. Data migration and Drupal development for media brands, including Universal Kids.

Pricing signal. Not published; positioned as a premium consultancy.

What to watch. Public Next.js-specific case studies are thinner than Chapter Three's. Ask for a recent decoupled reference.

Best for: Large organisations that need Drupal architecture and governance advice before a migration.

5. Amazee Labs: best for decoupled Drupal in Europe

Amazee Labs is a Zurich agency, now part of amazee.io, that has built decoupled Drupal systems for more than a decade. It open-sources its decoupled tooling, including the Silverback modules for Drupal and Gatsby.

Why it's on the list. Deep Drupal core involvement: its Drupal.org profile lists it 44th among the top 250 companies contributing to Drupal core. Hosting through amazee.io keeps Drupal infrastructure and the build under one roof.

Notable work. The HSG MBA site relaunch on decoupled Drupal with React and Gatsby.

Pricing signal. Not published.

What to watch. Much of its decoupled history is on Gatsby, and several Silverback packages are now marked abandoned on Packagist. Confirm the current frontend stack is Next.js or another maintained framework.

Best for: European organisations keeping Drupal that want build and hosting from one Swiss provider.

6. BRAINSUM: best for decoupled Drupal on enterprise brand platforms

BRAINSUM builds decoupled Drupal platforms with Next.js frontends and contributes to the Next-Drupal project, including revalidation options and documentation.

Why it's on the list. It pairs named enterprise references with upstream work on the main Drupal and Next.js integration, so it can fix the tooling rather than work around it.

Notable work. Decoupled Drupal and Next.js builds for the biotech brands Novozymes and Novonesis, documented on its blog.

Pricing signal. Not published.

What to watch. Its public footprint is small and case details are limited. Confirm team size, support model and recent Next.js App Router work.

Best for: Enterprise brands keeping Drupal as a content hub behind a Next.js frontend.

7. Promet Source: best for Drupal 7 to 10/11 migration and migration rescue

Promet Source is a Chicago Drupal agency offering Drupal migration services, upgrades and "rescue" for migrations that went wrong. It ranks on page one for "drupal migration services".

Why it's on the list. Rescue is a rare offer. If a previous Drupal migration company stalled your project, Promet's audit-first process is built to take it over.

Notable work. A Drupal 7 migration and redesign for the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust, and the migration of 41+ sites from a proprietary platform to open source.

Pricing signal. Not published. Promet has published a cost breakdown for Drupal 7 to 10 migrations that helps with budgeting.

What to watch. Promet migrates to Drupal, not off it. It is the wrong choice if you want to leave Drupal.

Best for: Public-sector, nonprofit and higher-ed teams finishing a Drupal 7 to 10 or 11 upgrade.

8. OHO: best for Drupal in higher education

OHO is a Boston agency that has worked in Drupal since 2008, with a 100% US-based in-house team of 15+ developers and its own QA staff. It is an Acquia and Pantheon partner and works with 37 of the top 100 US colleges and universities.

Why it's on the list. OHO covers the issues that make university migrations risky: ADA compliance, governance and permissions, security and hosting, and multisite infrastructure. It reports more than 190,000 hours of Drupal development and runs Drupal 10 upgrades from Drupal 8 or 9, starting with a readiness audit and ending with testing before handover.

Notable work. Drupal sites and support for Simmons University, Champlain College Online and Dartmouth Admissions. Its Drupal EDU Accelerator distribution speeds up new university builds.

Pricing signal. Monthly retainers typically run 20–60 hours per month; fixed-price scopes are available for service projects.

What to watch. Its public migration work is Drupal upgrades and builds on Drupal, not moves off Drupal to a headless CMS. Outside higher education, its specialisation counts for less.

Best for: Colleges and universities upgrading, consolidating or supporting multisite Drupal estates.

9. Roboto Studio: best for Drupal to Sanity or Contentful with SEO parity

Roboto Studio builds and migrates headless sites on Sanity and Contentful with a Next.js frontend. It lists Drupal alongside WordPress, Webflow, HubSpot and Sitecore as source platforms.

Why it's on the list. Its migration offer is built around SEO continuity: a full redirect map and JSON-LD parity on every move. That directly addresses criterion 4.

Notable work. Roboto relaunched Teckro's site and migrated it from Sanity v2 to v3 in eight weeks, and merged Slingshot Bio's WordPress and Shopify sites into one headless build. No public Drupal-source case study was found.

Pricing signal. Not published.

What to watch. Two target CMSs only. Ask for a Drupal reference before signing.

Best for: Teams already set on Sanity or Contentful who want a smaller, SEO-focused partner.

10. DOOR3: best for Drupal inside a wider enterprise software programme

DOOR3 is a New York technology consultancy founded in 2002, with offices in New York, Kyiv, Barcelona and Zurich. It is an official Drupal partner and offers Drupal migration and upgrades alongside custom module development, integrations, performance tuning and Drupal consulting.

Why it's on the list. DOOR3 suits migrations where Drupal is tied to other systems. Its team handles CRM, ERP, payment and marketing-automation integrations, and it runs UX research, accessibility (WCAG) and project rescue in-house, so a Drupal upgrade can sit inside a larger modernisation plan.

Notable work. An award-winning intranet for the global law firm Cadwalader and a revamped digital presence for the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Its client list includes AIG, PepsiCo, Elsevier and Johnson & Johnson, though not all of that work is on Drupal.

Pricing signal. Not published; it returns a free project cost assessment within 1–2 working days.

What to watch. Drupal is one practice among many, and its public migration offer covers moves to or within Drupal, not off it to a headless CMS. Ask for a Drupal migration reference with the source and target versions.

Best for: Enterprises, law firms and universities whose Drupal site depends on CRM, ERP or custom integrations.

11. Specbee: best for Drupal 11 upgrades and moves from AEM to Drupal

Specbee is a Drupal agency offering Drupal 7, 8 and 9 to Drupal 11 migrations, plus migrations from Adobe Experience Manager to Drupal.

Why it's on the list. It covers every Drupal upgrade path in one service, including the Drupal 9 migration services many teams still need after Drupal 9's end of life.

Notable work. Enterprise Drupal upgrades and AEM-to-Drupal replatforms, per its service page. Ask for named references.

Pricing signal. Not published.

What to watch. Like Promet, Specbee keeps you on Drupal. It suits teams that have already decided against a headless CMS.

Best for: Enterprises consolidating onto Drupal 11, including those leaving AEM.

Drupal migration company comparison

Three agencies take you off Drupal, four decouple it, and four upgrade it. Only FocusReactive publishes a budget range.

Drupal migration tools: what agencies actually use

The right Drupal migration tool depends on where the content is going. Upgrades use Drupal's own Migrate API; exits to a headless CMS use exports plus import scripts written against the target CMS's API.

For Drupal upgrades (7 → 10/11). Drupal core ships the Migrate API, an Extract-Transform-Load framework with three plugin stages: source, process and destination. Core's Migrate Drupal module adds the upgrade path from Drupal 6 and 7, and Migrate Drupal UI gives it a browser interface. Contributed modules such as Migrate Plus and Migrate Tools add sources like CSV, JSON and XML and Drush commands for repeatable runs.

Two Migrate API features matter for a no-risk cutover:

• Highwater marks re-run only content created or changed since the last run, so editors can keep publishing until launch day (Drupal API docs).
• Map tables store each source and destination ID, so entity references and taxonomy parents resolve correctly across separate migrations.

For migration from Drupal to a headless CMS. There is no one-click tool. The usual pipeline is:

1. Export content through Drupal's JSON:API or a direct database query.
2. Transform it into the target content model: Paragraphs become blocks, entity references become CMS references, HTML body fields become rich text or Portable Text.
3. Import with the target's management API (Sanity, Storyblok, Contentful or Payload).
4. Re-run the import as a dry run until counts and spot checks match, then run a final delta before cutover.

Automated migration tools for Drupal hosting. Managed Drupal hosts offer tooling to move Drupal sites between servers. These tools move the platform, not the content model, so they do not replace a content migration plan.

To size the effort before talking to any vendor, use the CMS Migration Estimator.

Drupal SEO migration: how to keep your rankings

Rankings survive a Drupal migration when every indexed URL either keeps its path or 301-redirects to its closest match. Most Drupal SEO risk sits in four modules whose data lives outside the node body, so it is easy to leave behind.

A safe Drupal SEO migration follows this order:

1. Crawl the live site and pull 12 months of Search Console data to list every URL with traffic or backlinks.
2. Build the 301 map from that list and test it on staging.
3. Check metatag, canonical and structured-data parity page by page on the top templates.
4. Launch, submit the new sitemap, and compare Search Console clicks weekly for at least 8 weeks.

Ask every Drupal migration agency for its post-launch traffic numbers. 9thCO's published +45.28% organic result is the kind of evidence to expect. Our Next.js SEO checklist covers the frontend side.

How to choose a Drupal migration agency

Choose the migration path first, then shortlist only agencies that specialise in it. Then ask every candidate the same five questions.

Shortlist checks.

1. Show us one completed Drupal migration with the source version, the target stack and organic traffic 90 days after launch.
2. How will you map our content types, Paragraphs and taxonomy to the new model? Ask for a sample mapping from one of your content types.
3. Who builds the 301 map, from which data, and when is it tested?
4. How many import dry runs do you run, and how do you catch content created during the build?
5. What do editors get at handover: preview, training, documentation, support window?

Red flags.

• "We'll copy the content over" with no content-model workshop.
• No redirect plan in the proposal, or redirects scheduled for the week of launch.
• A Drupal shop recommending a Drupal upgrade without pricing a headless option, or a headless shop doing the reverse.
• Case studies with no Drupal version, no dates and no traffic figures.
• No named owner for hosting, security updates and schema changes after launch.

Engagement models. Fixed scope suits a marketing site with a known page count and agreed content model. Time-and-materials suits large or multilingual Drupal estates where the content audit will change the plan. A post-launch retainer suits teams without in-house Next.js developers. Confirm what each price includes: design, content QA and SEO audits are often extras.

If you are leaving Drupal, FocusReactive's Drupal migration service starts with a content and SEO review before any CMS is recommended.

FAQ

How much do Drupal migration services cost?

Most marketing-site migrations from Drupal to a headless CMS fall between €20k and €150k, FocusReactive's published range. Cost rises with content types, languages, custom integrations and redesign scope, so get a content audit before comparing quotes.

How long does a Drupal migration take?

Most FocusReactive migrations from Drupal to a headless CMS take 6–9 weeks, depending on the number of content types and pages. Multilingual or multi-domain Drupal estates take longer. A Drupal 7 to 11 migration is a rebuild, so plan similar timelines.

Can I keep Drupal and just add a Next.js frontend?

Yes. Headless Drupal keeps Drupal as the content backend and serves content to Next.js through JSON:API or GraphQL. Chapter Three's Next-Drupal is the most used integration. You keep Drupal's editorial features but also its upgrade cycle and PHP hosting.

Can I stay on Drupal 7 after end of life?

Only with paid extended security support from certified vendors such as HeroDevs or Tag1. It patches vulnerabilities but adds no features, so treat it as time to plan a migration, not an alternative to one.

Which Drupal features don't carry over to a headless CMS?

Anything Drupal renders: Views listings, blocks, Layout Builder pages, Webforms, user login and role-based access. Structured content (nodes, fields, taxonomy, media) migrates cleanly; the rendering features must be rebuilt in Next.js or replaced with services.

Is a Drupal to Next.js migration better than upgrading to Drupal 11?

It is better when your editors mainly publish marketing pages and you want faster sites and fewer platform upgrades. Upgrading wins when you depend on Drupal's permissions, multisite or complex editorial workflows. Price both before deciding.

What is the difference between a Drupal migration company and Drupal hosting with migration services?

Managed Drupal hosts move your existing site to their servers. A Drupal migration company moves your content into a new version or a new CMS, remaps the content model and protects SEO. Most replatforming projects need the second.

The verdict

Pick the path, then the partner. For most teams leaving Drupal, FocusReactive is the strongest choice: four dedicated Drupal exit paths, a CMS picked for your content, SEO and LLM optimisation built into every project, a published €20k–€150k budget and 90% of projects delivered on budget. 9thCO is the alternative with a documented Drupal 8 traffic gain, and Roboto Studio suits teams already set on Sanity or Contentful. To keep Drupal behind Next.js, choose Chapter Three for Next-Drupal tooling, Lullabot for enterprise strategy, Amazee Labs for build plus Swiss hosting, or BRAINSUM for enterprise brand platforms. To stay on Drupal and finish a Drupal 7 to 11 migration, choose Promet Source, especially to rescue a stalled project, OHO for higher-education Drupal, DOOR3 for integration-heavy enterprise sites, or Specbee for Drupal 11 and AEM-to-Drupal moves.

Whichever you choose, judge them on the same evidence: a named Drupal case, a content-model mapping, a 301 plan and traffic numbers after launch.

Planning to leave Drupal? Size your project with the CMS Migration Estimator, then talk to FocusReactive about a Drupal to headless CMS migration.