You’re running a business that has dominated your niche for over two decades. Your systems are deeply entrenched. They’ve worked for years. Why fix what isn’t broken? 

However, suddenly, your competitors begin rolling out new features weekly. Their customer experience is seamless across mobile, web, and even AI-powered chat. 

Conversely, your systems are slow to adapt, clunky, and frustrating for your users and IT team. This is the reality for thousands of businesses worldwide in 2025. Modernizing legacy systems is now a strategic imperative, not a technical choice. 

In its latest report, Gartner has highlighted the urgency for legacy modernization, emphasizing that legacy systems impede business initiatives and digital transformation, and organizations must modernize to keep pace with business demands. 

Transformation is a necessity in today’s digital-first world. To stay relevant and competitive, workflows, technology, and products must constantly evolve. Legacy application modernization is a cornerstone of this transformation. 

The benefits of modernizing and improving legacy systems are not limited to improving efficiency but also foster growth and long-term competitive advantage. Before we get into the details of modernization strategies and examples, let’s start with the basics.

Legacy applications are software systems built on outdated technologies that are critical to business operations. You’ll find legacy system examples across sectors, from banks to retail companies.

Some defining traits of legacy software examples include;

• Minimal documentation and hardcoded logic
• Poor scalability and integration limitations
• High maintenance costs
• Reliance on old stacks 

Legacy software isn’t inherently flawed. In fact, they were once reliable, secure, and high-performing. However, today’s digital world demands mobility, agility, AI integration, and cloud infrastructure.

A striking example of the scale and impact of legacy modernization comes from Lincoln Financial Group. In less than two years, the company migrated 120 complex legacy systems, many built on decades-old technologies like assembler code and COBOL, to a modern, cloud-based architecture. 

This ambitious transformation required tackling a codebase exceeding 100 million lines and reimagining core insurance operations for greater flexibility and efficiency. The move not only addressed high operating costs and the challenges of maintaining fixed-cost legacy platforms but also laid the groundwork for improved performance, scalability, and business agility. 

Legacy application modernization is the process of updating or replacing outdated applications to satisfy new business requirements and customer expectations. 

Common legacy modernization techniques include

• UI/UX upgrades: Refreshing the app’s design to be mobile-friendly and user-friendly
• Cloud migration: Moving from old on-premise servers to modern cloud platforms
• Adopting microservices: Breaking down large, monolithic apps into smaller, flexible services

As systems age, they become harder to maintain, more expensive to operate, and increasingly incompatible with modern technologies. This not only hampers performance but also limits scalability and innovation. 

Without modernization, organizations struggle to keep pace with evolving market demands. By modernizing legacy applications, businesses can improve operations, enhance agility, and enable faster, more informed decision-making across the organization.

Do you know? The scale of modernization is accelerating:

The global application modernization services market was valued at $17.49 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $67.87 billion by 2032, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 16%.

What’s driving this transformation?

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• 58% of businesses prioritize modernization to address security vulnerabilities in legacy systems. 
• 54% cite improved operational efficiency, while 49% are motivated by cost reduction.
• 64% report improved agility and flexibility after modernization, making adapting to changing market conditions easier. 

Modernizing legacy applications is a step forward in achieving competence. It’s crucial to modernize existing systems for efficiency, security, and long-term sustainability.

A great example comes from Pizza Pizza, a popular Canadian pizza chain with over 750 locations. As the company grew, its engineering team faced a surge in internal development requests from various departments. 

With only 10 developers, handling this increasing workload became overwhelming, causing delays and missed opportunities. Traditional development methods were slow and resource-intensive, hindering the company’s ability to improve internal processes and operational efficiency.

To tackle these challenges, Pizza Pizza adopted ToolJet, an open-source low-code platform. ToolJet’s pre-built components and user-friendly interface empowered back-end developers to build and manage internal applications independently, while enabling non-developers to take on specific tasks. 

This reduced the reliance on front-end developers, allowing them to focus on higher-priority projects. The platform’s ready-to-use templates and seamless integration with existing systems made development faster, more cost-effective, and less error-prone.

Through comprehensive training, customization, and pilot projects, Pizza Pizza ensured a smooth transition to the new platform. 

The result? 

A significant boost in development speed and operational efficiency enables the company to meet internal demands better and focus on improving customer experience.

This example highlights how modernizing legacy applications with the right tools can break operational barriers, accelerate innovation, and drive business growth.

That’s the power of legacy modernization.

Modernizing legacy systems isn’t a one-size-fits-all process. Organizations have a variety of strategies to choose from, each offering different benefits depending on the system’s complexity, business goals, and available resources. Some of the most common approaches include:

Also known as “lift and shift,” this strategy involves moving applications to a new infrastructure (such as a public cloud) without significant changes to the codebase or architecture. It’s a quick way to gain infrastructure benefits, but it may not address deeper issues.

This approach updates certain components, like databases or runtime environments, to improve scalability or security, while keeping the core application logic intact. It strikes a balance between cost and modernization impact.

Here, parts of the codebase are retooled, often to implement microservices or improve maintainability, without a complete rewrite. This option is ideal for teams aiming to enhance performance and flexibility, but can require significant time and resources.

For business-critical or highly complex systems, re-architecting involves making substantial changes to the application’s structure to align with modern best practices, such as adopting cloud-native architectures or microservices.

This technique wraps legacy components in modern interfaces, such as APIs or containers, allowing organizations to reuse existing functionality while integrating with new systems.

In some cases, the best path forward is to rebuild the application from scratch or replace it entirely, especially if the legacy system is too outdated or costly to maintain.

Each of these strategies can be tailored to fit the unique needs and constraints of your organization. The key is to evaluate each option based on potential value, required effort, and alignment with your long-term objectives.

Businesses increasingly turn to low-code platforms like ToolJet to accelerate their modernization journey. Low-code solutions empower both developers and non-developers to build, customize, and deploy internal tools and applications with minimal coding, dramatically reducing development time and resource requirements. 

With features like drag-and-drop interfaces, robust data integration, workflow automation, and support for custom logic, platforms such as ToolJet make it possible to modernize legacy systems with agility and precision, without the disruption of a full rebuild.

By combining the right modernization strategy with the flexibility of low-code platforms, organizations can unlock new efficiencies, adapt quickly to changing demands, and future-proof their operations.

Modernizing legacy systems is often seen as a daunting, resource-intensive task. However, low-code technology is transforming how organizations approach this challenge, making modernization faster, more affordable, and less disruptive than ever before.

Multiple approaches, one powerful toolset of low-code

Low-code platforms offer several strategies for legacy modernization, allowing organizations to choose the approach that best fits their needs:

• Extension and integration: Build new applications that interface with legacy systems using APIs or connectors. This allows you to add new features or streamline workflows without altering the core legacy code.
• Encapsulation: Wrap legacy systems with modern, user-friendly interfaces. Low-code tools can quickly deliver web or mobile apps that improve usability and operational efficiency while preserving the underlying business logic.
• Rebuilding and replacement: When a system is too outdated or costly to maintain, low-code platforms can help you rebuild or replace it from the ground up. Once lengthy and expensive, this process can now be completed in a fraction of the time and cost.
• Hybrid modernization: Combine strategies by gradually migrating critical components to modern platforms while extending or encapsulating others. Low-code platforms support seamless integration with existing databases and services, making this approach highly flexible. 

ToolJet makes modernizing legacy applications efficient and accessible, even for non-technical teams.

Key features:

• AI-powered, open-source, enterprise-ready, and designed for speed.
• Integrates effortlessly with SQL, MongoDB, REST, and GraphQL.
• Features visual workflow automation, Git synchronization, and self-hosting options.
• Ideal for building CRUD apps over legacy databases without requiring large development teams.

Pricing:

• Free Community Edition available with core features for small teams
• Paid cloud plans start at ~$19 per builder/month
• Self-hosted plans start at $99 per app/month

Try ToolJet’s legacy visually app builder for free and kickstart your legacy application modernization journey today!

Mendix shines in complex enterprise environments with its scalability and support for legacy modernization.

Key features:

• Scalable, enterprise-grade low-code platform.
• Seamless integration with legacy systems.
• Strong support for cloud-native solutions and modernization.
• Unlocks greater agility for legacy application modernization through faster, scalable development.

Pricing:

• Free community edition
• Cloud plans start at ~$79/month per builder
• Self-hosted plans start at $99/month per app

Wondering which low-code platform is the right fit? Dive into our blog Mendix vs ToolJet: A comparison!

OutSystems helps organizations modernize legacy systems while ensuring security and performance.

Key features:

• Low-code platform built for speed, agility, and scalability.
• Supports integration with existing legacy systems and smooth cloud migration.
• AI-driven development assistance for faster and smarter delivery cycles.
• Ideal for efficient modernization while maintaining application scalability and performance.

Pricing:

• Free community edition 
• Paid plans start at $36,300/year
• Enterprise pricing available

Appian focuses on connecting legacy infrastructure with next-gen workflows.

Key features:

• Focuses on business process automation and legacy modernization.
• Effortless connection of old IT systems to modern workflows.
• Reduces manual tasks and boosts operational efficiency.
• Ensures smooth legacy application modernization while enhancing business competitiveness.

Pricing:

• Free community edition
• Standard, advanced, and premium plans are custom-priced per user. 

Want to know a detailed comparison of these two platforms? Read our blog, “Which low-code platform to choose? Appian vs ToolJet,”here!

DronaHQ provides rapid development via drag-and-drop tools, ideal for quickly modernizing legacy applications.

Key features:

• Drag-and-drop low-code platform for rapid app development.
• Easy integration with existing databases, APIs, and cloud services.
• Designed for both professional developers and citizen developers.
• Helps businesses build modern, scalable apps that seamlessly integrate with legacy systems.

Pricing:

• Starter plan starts at $10/user/month
• Business plan starts at $25/user/month
• Custom pricing for the enterprise plan 
• Usage-based plans start at $100/month

With the rise of low-code legacy modernization platforms, businesses are no longer burdened by slow, monolithic systems. Instead, they’re rebuilding, extending, and integrating legacy applications faster, more affordably, and with broader participation across teams.

So, what makes legacy modernization with low-code game-changing?

Legacy application modernization no longer has to be a multi-year project. Low-code platforms like ToolJet offer visual development tools that help companies reduce their development time upto 60%.

With drag-and-drop interfaces, pre-built templates, and rapid deployment, businesses can modernize applications and launch new features in record time. Whether you’re rebuilding legacy user interfaces or migrating databases, low-code removes the complexity, ensuring a shorter time-to-market without sacrificing quality.

Gone are the days when only specialized IT professionals could touch legacy code. Today’s low-code platforms let product managers, analysts, and operations staff take charge of app development.

This shift frees up IT teams to focus on critical infrastructure, while business teams use low-code tools to extend or replace legacy systems without waiting in long dev queues. The result? Improved productivity, more agile teams, and a collaborative development culture across your organization.

One of the most overlooked yet critical challenges of legacy application modernization is integration. Legacy apps often run on outdated protocols or siloed data structures.

Low-code platforms shine here. With native support for SQL, REST, GraphQL, SOAP, and more, low-code tools make it easy to wrap legacy systems in modern APIs, sync with cloud services, or plug into AI-powered analytics. 

Modern businesses can’t afford rigid systems that buckle under growth or innovation. Legacy modernization using low-code gives your architecture the flexibility to adapt.

From deploying cross-platform apps (web, mobile, desktop) to supporting multi-cloud environments,low-code platforms scale with your needs. And because you’re building on modular, extensible frameworks, your applications remain future-proof. 

This agility also supports hybrid strategies: replatforming some apps, encapsulating others, and rebuilding critical ones from scratch, all within the same low-code environment.

Security is one of the biggest risks with aging legacy applications. Unpatched vulnerabilities, lack of audit logs, and non-compliance with today’s regulations can lead to costly breaches.

Low-code legacy modernization platforms come with built-in safeguards:

• Role-based access control (RBAC)
• Audit logs and activity tracking
• Data encryption at rest and in transit
• Support for GDPR, HIPAA, and other compliance standards

Are you ready to find the perfect platform to accelerate your digital transformation? Discover the top low-code internal tool builders of 2025 that are transforming how businesses innovate

ToolJet is your trusted partner in modernizing legacy systems with speed, simplicity, and minimal disruption. If you’re an enterprise juggling decades of technical debt or an SMB trying to scale, ToolJet’s AI-powered low-code platform is designed to simplify every step of your legacy modernization journey.

From visual builders to deep integrations, ToolJet equips your teams, technical or not, with the tools to move faster, smarter, and with confidence. ToolJet bridges the gap between yesterday’s infrastructure and tomorrow’s innovation and allows teams to;

• Modernize outdated user interfaces with sleek, responsive designs

Say goodbye to complex UIs. ToolJet’s low-code visual builder lets you design and deploy fully functional front-ends using drag-and-drop components. This cuts development time, allowing you to rapidly modernize user interfaces for internal tools, dashboards, and workflows.

Here’s a real-life use case of how ToolJet helps upgrade this company’s system. Read more!

• Simplify operations through automation and low-code workflows

Legacy systems often rely on outdated, manual processes. ToolJet’s workflow automation engine helps you replace those bottlenecks with intelligent, trigger-based flows. ToolJet simplifies operations by saving hours of work and reducing human error.

• Integrate legacy systems with modern APIs, databases, and SaaS tools

ToolJet supports over 50 native integrations, including SQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, REST APIs, GraphQL, Airtable, Firebase, and more. This makes it effortless to connect legacy databases and applications to modern cloud services, microservices, and data sources, and no custom middleware is required.

• Scale digital transformation initiatives across departments 

ToolJet allows you to build and reuse custom components that maintain design consistency and reduce duplication. Define once, reuse everywhere. This is ideal for large teams managing complex modernization projects across multiple apps and teams.

• AI app builder

ToolJet’s AI-powered app builder enables you to create fully functional applications simply by describing what you need in natural language-no coding required. The AI instantly generates app layouts, dashboards, forms, and even optimized database schemas and queries based on your prompts. It also assists with validations, error handling, and troubleshooting, allowing teams to build, modify, and deploy applications faster and with fewer errors. This dramatically reduces the time from idea to production and empowers both developers and non-developers to participate in app creation. 

• ToolJet database: A built-in, scalable database solution based on PostgreSQL for no-code data management.
• Custom logic: Write business logic in JavaScript or Python, or use no-code query editors for all supported data sources.
• Enterprise security: Advanced permissions, audit logs, SSO support, and secure credential management.
• Multiple environments: Manage development, testing, and production stages seamlessly within ToolJet.
• Extensibility: Plugin development kit for custom connectors and components, adapting ToolJet to your unique requirements. 

Legacy systems are no longer just a technical debt; they’re a competitive liability. The longer legacy systems are left untouched, the more difficult they become to implement and the more expensive. Modernizing legacy systems with low-code is your fastest path to innovation in a world where digital agility defines success. 

But with ToolJet, legacy application modernization becomes not just achievable but strategic and not a disruptive overhaul. Instead of starting from scratch, you can extend what works, replace what doesn’t, and rebuild only where necessary. ToolJet helps you modernize legacy applications efficiently, accelerating innovation, reducing complexity, and setting your business up for sustainable growth.

Ready to modernize? There’s no better time than now to upgrade your systems. Start with ToolJet today.