Note that database migrations weren&#x27;t part of Django until 1.7, before that they were provided by an external app (South).<p>Which meant that Django&#x27;s database models couldn&#x27;t migrate.<p>Even now, there is no real way to start with Django&#x27;s own User model and switch your project over to a custom one later (because you&#x27;d have many database tables with foreign keys to the Django one). The current recommendation is to start new projects with a custom User model always.