Lessons from Supporting 300+ Drupal Sites Across Regions
Attico’s team has a proven track record in Drupal website support, and this article shares the key lessons gained from years of experience.
The hidden cost of an outdated CMS is higher security risks, slower performance, limited functionality, and increased maintenance expenses
Every software release comes with bug fixes and security patches. But if a company keeps postponing updates, none of those fixes get applied — and the old, known vulnerabilities stay wide open. Hackers actively scan the internet for unpatched systems they can hit with ransomware, steal data from, or simply take offline.
And the trouble doesn’t even end with cyberattacks. Outdated software becomes unstable on its own: it clashes with newer tools, breaks in unexpected ways, and can’t keep up with modern infrastructure. All of this leads to downtime — sometimes short glitches, sometimes full-on outages — but always losses for the business.
IT downtime cost is basically the price a company pays every time its systems go offline or become unavailable. In plain terms, it’s what you lose when servers, your CRM, online store, ERP, or any other critical systems just sit idle. By the way, even small changes on outdated CMS — like adding a new module, updating the server, or integrating with an external API — can trigger a chain reaction of errors.
For a business, this means the site can crash at the most unexpected times, users will see errors instead of content, online sales and leads stop coming in, and the team is forced to work in “firefighting mode”, trying to fix everything manually. High-impact outages, for example, can get really expensive — we’re talking an average of around 2 million dollars per hour, or about 33,000 dollars for every single minute the systems stay down.
Beyond the financial hit, there are plenty of other business risks for any company still running software that’s reached its end of life (EOL).
Developers stop making security updates and bug fixes when a technology reaches its end of life, and outdated versions of CMS, whether Drupal or another platform, become juicy targets for automated attacks. It’s also crucial to remember the vital role of the community in maintaining the website and patching issues, as Drupal is an open-source platform. Once the community moves on to newer versions, the older ones get less and less attention. It means no more hunting for vulnerabilities, releasing fixes, or sharing solutions, and we can say that the company’s software ends up being dead in the water.
For a business, that means the number of vulnerabilities keeps growing, and there’s no one to close the gaps. With Drupal updates, new versions release dozens of security patches every year that close critical holes, but if you don’t update, these vulnerabilities remain open for months or even years. One such incident can cost tens of thousands of dollars to recover, a week of lost sales, and years to repair the company’s reputation.
The Drupal Security Team publishes dozens of security advisories every year, patching critical and moderate vulnerabilities in the core and modules.
Number of Security Advisories for Drupal core and contributed projects per year:
Back in November 2024, HKCERT reported new RCE and XSS vulnerabilities affecting versions up to Drupal 7.102 and 10.2.11, leaving most sites that hadn’t updated on time exposed. This shows that if you’re running an old version of Drupal, new vulnerabilities and threats can pop up. And not every admin updates their site on time, so these older versions stay risky.
At DrupalCon 2024, an entire session was focused on real-world exploitation of Drupal vulnerabilities, such as RCE, XSS, and unsafe deserialization. It’s a clear reminder that attacks on Drupal aren’t just theoretical, they’re very real.
Your site can be sluggish and struggle under heavy traffic if it’s running an outdated CMS. Newer versions come with optimizations that speed up page loads and handle high traffic much better — but old versions don’t. That means pages take longer to load, the site responds slowly, and it can even freeze when too many people are online simultaneously.
This hurts on two fronts. First, users get frustrated and leave — according to stats, bounce rates spike when a page takes more than three seconds to load. Second, search engines rank slower sites lower, so you lose visibility and potential customers.
Keeping an old site running smoothly requires continuous performance and load testing to make sure it doesn’t crash under pressure. All of this adds extra time, effort, and cost, which you could mostly avoid by upgrading to the latest version of Drupal.
Running an outdated CMS version can seriously hurt your site’s SEO. A slow site struggles with Core Web Vitals, old data schemas, and outdated SEO modules like Metatag and Redirect can cause indexing issues, and technical errors — broken pages, wrong headings, caching problems — make things worse.
The result? Your rankings drop. Google favors fast, secure sites, so falling behind means less organic traffic and a higher cost per lead. And here’s the hidden cost: every single drop in position = fewer visitors = higher cost per lead. Every lost spot in search translates directly into missed visitors and opportunities.
Running an outdated CMS version doesn’t just slow your site down — it breaks the user experience. Buttons, forms, and other interface elements may not work properly in modern browsers, the frontend feels clunky, and integrations fail, causing lost submissions.
All of this hits your business: bounce rates go up, users trust your site less, conversions drop, and sales take a hit. Your team ends up spending more time fixing content instead of creating value, and marketing starts bringing in less impact — all while traffic slowly slips away.
If you’re running an old version of CMS, you’re missing out on all the new features that come with the latest releases. We’re talking analytics, personalization, A/B testing, and integrations with CRM and marketing tools — all the stuff that helps you run campaigns effectively and make your product better.
On top of that, outdated platforms struggle with external integrations. Every integration regularly updates its API, and if your site isn’t up to date, things break: CRM stops receiving leads, reporting goes haywire, payment forms throw errors, marketing campaigns fail to launch, and content feeds to social media stop updating.
Also, your site or service can start to feel outdated to users — it might run slower, feel clunky, and just won’t be as smooth or modern as your competitors’ sites. Users notice that, and they’ll often go to someone who offers a faster, easier experience. That means you can lose customers and potential sales, while your competitors scoop them up.
When you’re running an old version of CMS, your site basically falls behind on digital progress. But the market moves fast — AI-powered personalization, advanced analytics, smart chatbots, and new marketing tricks keep evolving. Via utilizing these tools, companies give their users a smoother, personalized experience and end up leaving the competition behind. That directly boosts conversions and strengthens the brand’s position in the market.
Modern AI tools only work when the system has up-to-date APIs, new libraries, a current PHP architecture, and a recent Drupal core. If your platform version is outdated, it simply can’t plug into AI — no matter how much you want it to.
That’s where companies get stuck. The marketing team wants automation, but the CMS just can’t handle it. AI-powered search sounds great, yet it’s not compatible with the old setup. Personalization? The necessary modules simply aren’t supported. And when it comes to speeding up content operations, the outdated editor interface only slows everyone down.
In the end, the company is basically “locked in the past” while competitors are already using AI to grow faster.
If your website is running on an old version of CMS that no longer gets security updates, it can fall out of compliance with mandatory standards — like GDPR or PCI DSS, which govern payment data security.
And if your platform version no longer meets PCI requirements, that’s considered a violation. Your company could face fines, restrictions on payment processing, and, in the event of a data breach, massive bills for compensation.
If your platform version is outdated and no longer produces modern, optimized code, your site starts to slow down and work less efficiently. Your development team will struggle more and more just to make updates. Standard approaches often don’t work, so they have to come up with workarounds or even rewrite chunks of code entirely. All of this adds up to more hours for your team. Sure, there are companies that still support older Drupal versions, but their services can cost you a pretty penny. Technical debt grows, and your project only gets more expensive to maintain over time.
Modern Drupal versions come with a whole new foundation designed for long-term scaling:
When you stay on an outdated version, you miss out on all of that — and your platform eventually hits a ceiling.
Developers end up spending much more time and energy on routine tasks when the site or system runs on an old Drupal version. Slow-loading pages, a glitchy admin interface, tricky integrations, and constant bugs demand ongoing attention from developers and staff.
Team productivity can drop for several reasons. Obviously, when there’s a lot of manual work, every small task requires workarounds. Furthermore, integrations can break, modules can conflict, and in other words, frequent “fires” occur. Developers are forced to maintain legacy libraries and workarounds instead of implementing new features.
Testers have to double-check everything because there’s no stability. So, every month, the team wastes hours, and sometimes days, on tasks that could have been avoided altogether.
As a result, people work more slowly, and more time is spent fixing problems instead of improving the product or service. Overall team efficiency drops, stress goes up, and support costs climb along with it.
This directly affects the business: release schedules are delayed, marketing campaigns fall through, support becomes more expensive, and the speed at which new ideas reach the market slows down.
The statistics are telling: cyberattacks occur approximately every 39 seconds and cause significant financial damage to companies. Any regression, downtime, or non-compliance can be costly compared to the planned maintenance and support processes provided by a reputable company.
Attico not only renders full-cycle Drupal migration services but also provides compliance-ready, scalable, and secure support for enterprise Drupal ecosystems that is tailored for complex platforms. Our specialists analyze the client’s current business scenario and provide both hypercare in demanding or urgent cases and long-term regular support.
Attico’s team has a proven track record in Drupal website support, and this article shares the key lessons gained from years of experience.
Essential Drupal Security Models with Best Practices to Keep Your Site Secure from Potential Threats