Migration and portability
Moving between content management systems is among the most important technical decisions an enterprise media organization can make.
Tooling
For Drupal-to-WordPress, the primary tool is FG Drupal to WordPress (~800 active installations). Beyond FG, options thin quickly.
Enterprise organizations, however, can benefit from WordPress VIP, which handles Drupal to WordPress migrations through agency partners.
Drupal’s core Migrate API is powerful but complex, requiring developer intervention at every stage.
The trend in migrations
The New York Post migrated ~1 million articles to WordPress VIP. Rolling Stone moved 250,000+. Vox Media transitioned from Chorus to WordPress VIP. News Corp standardized across The Times, The Sun, and Dow Jones.
Documented enterprise migrations from WordPress to Drupal are difficult to find in public records.
WordPress invests in portability
The Data Liberation project (launched January 2024) aims for one-click CMS migration. WordPress-to-WordPress tooling has matured over the years. For example, All-in-One WP Migration has 5M+ installations. Dozens of hosting providers ensure you are never stuck with a single vendor.
Drupal’s open-source license provides theoretical portability, but custom module dependencies and a three-provider hosting ecosystem make switching difficult. The D7 EOL experience demonstrated this: 37–40% of sites were still running D7 at end-of-life.
Key takeaway
🏆 WordPress wins on migration breadth and exit optionality. Documented migrations flow overwhelmingly Drupal-to-WordPress. Dozens of hosts and the Data Liberation project ensure vendor independence.
Where Drupal holds ground: The core Migrate API is unmatched as an ETL framework with incremental processing and rollback.
