If you're reading this, chances are you're already using Sanity and wondering if it's time to take the next step with Enterprise. We've been there - weighing the pros and cons of enterprise features against the investment. Let's break down what Sanity Enterprise actually offers, our opinions of what we think is worthwhile, and help you make that decision.
The Basics: What Sets Enterprise Apart
First things first - Sanity Enterprise is not a bigger version of the Growth plan (opens in new tab). If you want a full breakdown of what each tier includes, check our Sanity CMS pricing guide. Enterprise is a completely different beast, designed for organizations that need enterprise-grade features. We're talking about things like dedicated support, specific SLAs, and enhanced security measures that go beyond the standard offerings.
The support
This is the most important thing. Sanity Enterprise enables you to have a dedicated point of contact for your account. This can range from a single point of contact to a team of people who are responsible for your success.
Now, if you've paid close attention to the Sanity Exchange (opens in new tab), you would have probably seen some of the success stories from folks like Global Cycling Network and Puma (opens in new tab). A lot of that is thanks to the combination of efforts between the respective agency and the Sanity team.
The other part of this is the ability to have a dedicated Slack channel for your account. This is huge for us as it allows us to have a direct line of communication with the Sanity team and more importantly allows you to draw on any instance where there is historical context to your queries. For example, we had a good few conversations about the best way to implement a slug generation system for Global Cycling Network.
Security that actually matters
Let's start with those TLA (three-letter acronyms), Sanity has all of the ones that are important. Sanity Enterprise comes with SOC 2 compliance, GDPR & CCPA compliance, and 24/7/365 monitoring. But what does this actually mean for your organization?
Well, if you're handling sensitive content or operating in regulated industries, these certifications aren't just nice-to-haves - they're essential. We've covered this in more detail in our post on how Sanity handles your data. The platform maintains >99.9% uptime and offers custom access control with SSO integration. This means your content is not just secure, but also reliably accessible when you need it.
Custom User Roles
Sanity Enterprise allows you to create custom user roles. This is something we've been requested, again and again. In short, if you're looking for something where you can assign a certain user the role of "Content Editor" and another user the role of "Content Approver", this is more than likely what you need.
If you are thinking of doing this, there's also an incredible plugin I would look into called Sanity Workflow Plugin (opens in new tab). There's also a respective example of how it might work here (opens in new tab).
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Self-Serve vs Enterprise
I'll start by saying, we inherit a lot of projects, with clients that have had their websites built by other agencies. This means that we have to manage a lot of legacy code. One of the things that keeps us up at night is blowing your plan's quota. We've all seen the dreaded email - "You've used 90% of your quota". This is where the two plans wildly differ.
If you're on the Growth plan, you're going to need to find a developer to debug this, and that's not always easy. These kind of issues can range from, whoops somebody made everything client side, and we just had a million visitors, to, whoops we have a memory leak, and we've just blown 9 million API requests (true story).
This is where the Enterprise plan really shines. Because of the aforementioned dedicated support, you can quickly resolve this with one of the internal Sanity team members, that's able to shed more light on the issue and where it might be coming from. Not just that, but it plays to both teams advantage to not blow quotas, as the website won't be performing its best if it's firing off a million requests.
The Shiny New Toys
Here's something that might tip the scales. There's already Sanity AI Assist, which is a great tool. But if you're on the Enterprise plan, you have access to some of the new releases before they're generally available. This gives you a real leg up, especially if you're looking to implement AI into your workflow.
We've been especially impressed recently with how they're creating their own authoring tool with Sanity Create, and having greater integration and functionality like "Live by default", we've noticed a massive up-tick with actually wanting to write content. Guess what this was written in...
Should you make the jump?
The decision to upgrade to Enterprise really comes down to a few key questions:
- Are you operating at a scale where dedicated infrastructure would make a significant difference?
- Do you need the enhanced security features for compliance or peace of mind?
- Would your content team benefit from advanced collaboration tools and the latest and greatest features?
- Is global content delivery a core part of your strategy?
- Finally, do you want consistent, reliable growth from the Sanity Team, and your respective agency partner?
If you're answering yes to most of these questions, Enterprise might be worth considering.
I'll leave some of the marketing materials below, if you want to have somebody like g2 to validate what I've been saying above. However, it is worth knowing, I'm not actually getting paid by Sanity to say this, I have better things to do on a Thursday evening.
According to recent surveys, Sanity was rated #1 in CMS satisfaction by over 7,000 developers, and they're ranked #1 out of 85 CMSes on G2 - particularly in the Enterprise space.
The Bottom Line
Enterprise isn't for everyone, and that's okay. If you're a smaller team or your content needs are relatively straightforward, the Growth plan might be all you need. But if you're handling complex content operations across multiple markets, or if you need enterprise-grade security and performance, it's worth having a conversation with their sales team. They're one of the few sales teams, that aren't all that salesy - which is a huge plus.
If you're still weighing things up and want a second opinion, we're Sanity agency partners and happy to talk through the trade-offs. If what you actually need is someone on call for the studio rather than a bigger plan, that's our support retainer. And if you're just getting started with Sanity and want to move fast, our workshops are a good place to begin.
