How to Upgrade From Craft CMS 4 to Craft 5 Without Breaking Your Site?

Many businesses or website owners think Why should I even consider upgrading from Craft 4 to Craft 5?

It's a great question, though. But think of it this way. Upgrading from Craft CMS 4 to Craft CMS 5 isn’t just about staying current. It’s about setting up a website for better performance, stronger security, and long-term sustainability.

Craft CMS 5 upgrade benefits include:

• Security you can trust: Craft 5 brings built-in 2‑factor authentication and passkey support (like fingerprint or Face ID). These are the features that Craft 4 didn’t have. Thus, offering security to business-critical sites.
• Freeze out vulnerabilities: Craft 4’s security support ends in April 2026, meaning future security patches will only target Craft 5 and later. Waiting too long could leave your site exposed
• Speed: Craft 5 is built for speed. New database handling and lazy eager-loading mean your pages load faster, your editors spend less time waiting, and your visitors stay longer
• Growing with demand: Adoption of Craft CMS is climbing since 2023, with a 50 % surge in live sites using it, with Craft 5 growing fast among enterprise and high-traffic users.

Upgrading your Craft CMS website will provide you with long-term support, security, and easy accessibility to new features like nested elements, multi-site enhancements, and improved control panel usability. 

Prerequisites & Preparation for Craft CMS 4 to Craft 5 Migration

It’s important to ensure your site is clean and stable before starting the Craft 4 CMS to Craft 5 migration.

This helps ensure the overall migration procedure is error-free and has minimal downtime. Let’s discuss the preparation steps that lead to a hassle-free and easy Craft 4 to Craft 5 upgrade. 

Make sure the site is on the latest version of Craft CMS 4. It makes all the deprecations visible, and there is no critical change missing from previous minor releases.

Check if all the plugins used on your site are compatible with Craft 5. 

Some plugins may not yet have a Craft 5 version, or they might require a beta version for compatibility.

Tips:

• Visit the plugin’s page on the Craft Plugin Store
• Review release notes or GitHub repositories for Craft 5 readiness

Remove the plugins that are no more in use or not maintained and integrate other useful alternatives.