Migration guide

Can you migrate Drupal to Contentful?

Last updated: · By the Replatform Radar team — specialists in pre-migration CMS content audits

Yes — Drupal to Contentful is a common decoupling move, but it is a re-platform from a full-stack CMS to a headless content platform, not a like-for-like transfer. Drupal models content as entities and fields with Views, Twig templates, and a bundled theme layer; Contentful provides headless content types and entries with Rich Text stored as JSON and no rendering layer, so the entire front end is rebuilt in a framework of your choice. Content itself migrates cleanly via the Contentful Management API once entities are mapped to content types. The trade-off is losing Drupal's built-in rendering, Views, and module ecosystem in exchange for API-first delivery.

Drupal is a PHP CMS that structures content as entities (nodes, taxonomy terms, media, users) composed of configurable fields, with Views for query-driven listings and Twig templates plus a theme system producing rendered HTML. Contentful is a headless, API-first content platform: you define content types with typed fields, author entries, and retrieve them as structured data (including Rich Text as a JSON document) over the Content Delivery API — it deliberately ships no front-end rendering.

The migration splits into a content-modeling exercise and a front-end rebuild. Drupal content types and their fields map to Contentful content types and fields, and entities are transferred programmatically through the Management API; entity references become Contentful links between entries. Everything Drupal rendered for you — Views listings, blocks, Twig theming, menus, and module-driven behavior — must be re-implemented in a separate front-end application (React/Next.js, Vue/Nuxt, etc.) that queries Contentful, which is where most of the effort and risk concentrate.

In your report — not a generic checklist

The Drupal → Contentful detail, catered to your site

A pre-migration scan produces a report tailored to this exact transfer, covering the parts that decide whether the project goes smoothly:

  • How Drupal and Contentful compare across the dimensions that matter for a migration
  • The field-mapping table — what each Drupal construct becomes in Contentful
  • The Drupal to Contentful-specific gotchas that silently cause data loss, broken links, and ranking drops
  • Realistic timeline & cost drivers for this migration
  • Your own site’s findings scored against all of it
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FAQ

Drupal to Contentful: frequently asked questions

Can you migrate Drupal to Contentful?

Yes. Drupal entities and fields map to Contentful content types and fields, and content is imported programmatically through the Contentful Management API — but Drupal's theme and Views layer is replaced by a separate front-end app.

What happens to Drupal Views in Contentful?

Views have no equivalent in Contentful; every listing and query-driven block must be rebuilt as API queries in the front-end framework you choose.

Does Drupal rich text convert cleanly to Contentful?

Not always — Drupal stores formatted text as HTML, and converting it to Contentful's Rich Text JSON can lose custom markup, embeds, and tables, so complex bodies need transformation and review.

Will my Drupal URLs and SEO survive the move to Contentful?

Only if you plan for it — Contentful doesn't carry over Pathauto aliases, so you need a 301 redirect map from old Drupal paths to the new front-end routes to preserve rankings.

Further reading

Before you migrate Drupal to Contentful, know exactly what breaks.

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