Case Study
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Migrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform
From Adobe Experience Manager to Magnolia
We are the Adobe Experience Manager to Magnolia migration experts
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Challenges with Adobe Experience Manager
Key pain points
AEM’s biggest flaw is simple: everything about it is expensive. The license, the hosting, the maintenance, the consultants, the upgrades, and the people required to even use it. The learning curve is a cliff, implementation cycles move at glacial speed, and the UI feels like punishment for asking to edit content. Performance tanks the moment you customise anything, and collaboration is basically “email the PDF and pray.” If you ever see the word specialised in an AEM context, just assume the invoice comes with an extra zero.
It’s the definition of a heavyweight DXP built for organisations with more bureaucracy than sense. For everyone else, it becomes a slow-moving, over-engineered system that requires Adobe-certified babysitters just to stay alive. If you’re considering scrapping it for something faster, saner, and built this decade, we can help you migrate without dragging the AEM baggage along for the ride.
High complexity and cost
AEM is one of the most expensive CMS/DEXP platforms on the market, with licensing, hosting, and maintenance costs that only make sense for very large enterprises.
Steep learning curve
The platform is dense and requires specialised training just to perform routine tasks. Most teams can’t operate it without dedicated experts.
Prolonged implementation periods
Even simple projects take months. Rollouts, upgrades, and workflow changes move slowly and require careful planning to avoid breaking things.
Challenging navigation of capabilities
AEM packs in a huge feature set, but finding and configuring what you actually need can feel like wading through molasses.
Necessary reliance on Adobe partners
You’re essentially forced into using Adobe-certified agencies or consultants for setup, maintenance, and troubleshooting and they don’t come cheap.
Not ideal for smaller companies
The cost, complexity, and operational overhead make AEM a poor fit for startups or mid-sized teams. Most will drown in it long before they benefit from it.
Benefits of Magnolia
Key advantages
Magnolia shines if you’re the kind of organisation that genuinely needs the full DXP kitchen sink. It packs personalisation, workflows, multi-site orchestration, multilingual publishing, DAM, marketing automation hooks, and every enterprise acronym you can think of. If your teams run complex global content operations with strict governance, Magnolia’s mature permission system, stability, and long-standing enterprise reputation make it a safe, compliant option.
To be transparent, we don’t actually prefer or build with Magnolia (or any of the DXP-flavoured headless CMSs). They try to do everything, and like most jack-of-all-trades platforms, they don’t excel at the things modern teams actually need that is speed, flexibility, clean workflows, and sane pricing. We’d happily point you toward modern alternatives like Sanity that give you 10× the agility without the enterprise bloat.
Java-based enterprise integration
Built on Java, Magnolia plugs neatly into large enterprise stacks that already rely on Java systems and legacy infrastructure. If your organisation lives and breathes JVM, Magnolia won’t fight your architecture.
Secure, scalable architecture
Magnolia’s core is engineered for high-security, high-traffic environments, with strong access control, clustering, and enterprise-grade stability. It’s built to survive heavy editorial activity and large content delivery demands.
Real-time page templating
Editors can adjust components and layouts and immediately preview results, making large enterprise content operations faster and less error-prone.
Editable component previews
Magnolia’s component-level previewing gives editors clarity on how complex pages come together, reducing back-and-forth with developers and keeping multi-team workflows sane.
Multi-site management tools
Designed for global brands, Magnolia supports multiple sites, languages, and regional variations under one roof.
Advanced workflow automation
From multi-step approvals to compliance-driven publishing flows, Magnolia handles heavyweight governance. This is the stuff big enterprises actually need when 20 departments want access but only 2 should publish.
Common questions
Adobe Experience Manager to Magnolia migration FAQs
Answers to the most common questions about Adobe Experience Manager to Magnolia migration
How much does Adobe Experience Manager cost?
AEM is one of the most expensive CMS platforms on the market. Adobe doesn't publish list prices, but AEM Sites licensing typically starts around $60,000 per year on its own, and full AEM as a Cloud Service deployments usually land in the $200,000 to $300,000+ range annually. Implementation adds $500,000 to $1M, and Adobe support contracts add another 15-25% of licensing on top. We've seen companies paying more for their AEM contract than their entire engineering team's salaries. If that ratio sounds familiar, it's time to rethink the stack.
How long does it take to migrate off Adobe Experience Manager?
Plan for 4-8 months minimum for a full migration, depending on how customised your AEM instance is. The biggest bottleneck is usually content extraction. AEM's JCR (Java Content Repository) stores everything in a proprietary node structure that requires custom tooling to export cleanly. If you've built custom OSGi bundles, Sling models, or heavy DAM workflows, those all need to be rebuilt or replaced. Our approach is to run a parallel build, standing up the new stack while the old one stays live, then cutting over once everything is validated. That way editorial teams never lose a day of productivity.
Is AEM worth it for companies not using the full Adobe suite?
Honestly, no. AEM's biggest advantage is its tight integration with Creative Cloud, Analytics, Target, and the rest of the Adobe ecosystem. If you're not using at least three or four of those tools, you're paying a premium for a CMS that's slower to develop on, harder to maintain, and more expensive to staff than modern alternatives. We've worked with companies who adopted AEM because a consultant recommended it, only to discover they were using 15% of its capabilities. A well-architected headless CMS with a Next.js frontend would have cost them a fraction of the price and shipped faster.
What do you need to watch out for when leaving AEM?
Three things catch teams off guard. First, asset migration. AEM's DAM often holds thousands of assets with custom metadata, renditions, and smart crops that don't transfer automatically. Second, URL structures. AEM's dispatcher and Sling resource resolution create URL patterns that need careful redirect mapping to preserve SEO value. Third, Adobe contracts. Many AEM agreements include multi-year lock-ins with steep early termination fees. Check your contract terms before you start planning the migration timeline. We always audit all three of these before scoping any AEM migration project.
How long does it take to migrate away from Magnolia CMS?
Magnolia migrations are among the most involved we handle. The Java-based architecture, proprietary modules, and tightly coupled workflows mean there's no quick extract-and-import path. Content needs to be exported from Magnolia's JCR (Java Content Repository), transformed, and loaded into your target platform. For a mid-sized enterprise site with 1,000 to 5,000 pages, expect 8 to 16 weeks. The timeline depends heavily on how many proprietary modules your team has adopted and how complex your multi-site setup is.
Why do companies leave Magnolia?
Cost and agility are the two main drivers. Magnolia's enterprise licensing is opaque and expensive, with annual fees that balloon as you add modules and environments. Teams also get frustrated by the Java dependency. Finding and retaining Java CMS developers is harder and more expensive every year, especially when modern headless platforms let teams build with JavaScript and TypeScript instead. The vendor lock-in from proprietary modules makes the decision feel overdue by the time teams finally commit to migrating.
Can we migrate from Magnolia to a headless CMS without losing our multi-site setup?
Yes, but the approach changes. Magnolia handles multi-site through its own orchestration layer, while headless platforms like Sanity use workspace configurations or project-level separation. We rebuild multi-site architectures using the target CMS's native multi-tenancy features. The content migration itself is the simpler part. The harder work is re-implementing your personalisation rules, approval workflows, and permission structures outside of Magnolia's proprietary ecosystem.
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