This is a distinction that matters more than most business owners realise, and it comes up in almost every conversation we have with someone whose Craft CMS site hasn’t had active support for a while.
The site is working. Pages load, content can be updated, forms submit. From the outside, everything looks fine. But working and maintained are two very different things, and the gap between them has a cost that compounds over time.
The closest equivalent is a car that hasn’t been serviced in three years. It might still get you from A to B. The engine runs, the brakes work, you can drive it. But the oil hasn’t been changed, the brake pads haven’t been checked, and the timing belt is overdue. It works, but it isn’t maintained. The risk isn’t that it breaks down today. The risk is that when something does fail, it’s more serious and more expensive than it would have been.
A Craft CMS site follows the same logic.
PHP versions move forward. Your hosting provider will eventually upgrade the server to a newer PHP version. Craft 4 requires PHP 8.0.2 or later. Craft 5 requires PHP 8.2 or later. If the server moves and your Craft version isn’t compatible, the site stops working. Not gradually: it either works or it doesn’t.
Security vulnerabilities accumulate. Craft CMS releases security patches, but those patches only help you if you apply them. An unpatched installation becomes progressively more exposed over time.
Plugins drift out of compatibility. Craft’s plugin ecosystem is maintained by independent developers. Plugins receive updates, drop support for older Craft versions, and occasionally stop being maintained entirely. If you’re not tracking this, you won’t know until something breaks.
Third-party integrations change. If your site connects to Stripe, Mailchimp, HubSpot, or any other external platform, those platforms update their APIs. Integrations built against an older API version can stop working without warning.
Queue jobs fail silently. Craft uses a background queue for tasks like sending emails and processing images. If the queue processor stops running, these tasks fail silently. Your site appears to work, but emails aren’t sending and assets aren’t being transformed.
Each of these problems is manageable in isolation and at an early stage. Together, and after years of accumulation, they become a significant remediation project. The cost of getting an unmaintained site back into a healthy state is almost always higher than the cost of maintaining it would have been.
Working and maintained are not the same thing. For a business-critical website, only one of them is acceptable.
Related Services
Most businesses with a Craft CMS site didn’t choose Craft themselves. A web agency built it, recommended the platform, and handled everything from launch onward. That arrangement works well until it doesn’t, and there are several ways it can stop working.
Most business owners have no idea what state their Craft CMS site is actually in. They know it’s working, they can add content, and the forms are submitting. Beyond that, it’s a black box. Problems can accumulate quietly over a long period before they become visible.
There’s no single answer to when you should upgrade your Craft CMS installation, but there are several clear signals that tell you it’s overdue. Most business owners don’t think about this until something goes wrong. By then, the upgrade is often more involved than it would have been if it had been handled earlier.
Most clients come to us when their site has started to feel like a risk rather than an asset. Whether the agency relationship has ended, an upgrade has been delayed, or the site has simply grown beyond what it can handle, a conversation costs nothing.
Get in touch with KarlTrusted by established businesses and growing brands across the UK
Expression 37 works with a small number of clients at any one time. These are some of them.
Karl is the founder of Expression 37 Ltd and has been working exclusively with ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS since 2007. In eighteen years he has supported more than 80 clients across the UK, from long-term retainer arrangements to emergency rescues when something has gone wrong at the worst possible moment. Every piece of work is handled personally by Karl, with no account managers or junior developers between you and the person doing it.
Find out how we workOur ExpressionEngine website had been running on an outdated version for some time and we knew it needed attention, but finding someone with the right expertise to handle it properly was a concern. Expression 37 assessed the site thoroughly, explained exactly what was involved, and carried out the upgrade with no disruption to our business. The site has been noticeably more reliable since, and having ongoing support in place means we know any issues will be dealt with quickly. Straightforward to work with and clearly know what they are doing.
James Dawber - Managing Director
Dawber Williamson