Case Study
View Case StudyTray.ai
Migrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform

From Agility CMS to Adobe Experience Manager
Key pain points
The pricing is the elephant in the room. Starting at $1,249/month for the lowest tier, Agility is significantly more expensive than most headless CMS competitors. For smaller agencies or startups, that's a hard sell when platforms like Sanity or Contentful offer free tiers and more gradual scaling. If a client needs template customizations beyond what's available, those changes often require going through Agility's team at additional cost, which can slow things down.
The editor experience, while better than most headless CMS tools, still has rough edges. The content preview has a noticeable delay which frustrates editors used to real-time feedback. Component nesting can feel limited when building complex layouts, and creating unique page designs sometimes requires creating an excessive number of components as workarounds. The initial setup and configuration is also more involved than the marketing suggests, particularly for teams coming from traditional CMS platforms.
The ecosystem and community are noticeably smaller than competitors like Contentful or Sanity. There's less community-generated content, fewer third-party plugins, and Stack Overflow coverage is thin. When you hit an edge case, you're more reliant on the support team than community knowledge. The platform also lacks JSON field support in content models, which limits some advanced use cases that other headless CMS tools handle natively.

Expensive entry point
Starting at $1,249/month with no free tier, it's one of the priciest headless CMS options. Hard to justify for smaller projects or clients with lean budgets.

Slow content preview
The preview function has a noticeable delay before changes appear, making it less immediate compared to tools like Sanity or Storyblok that offer real-time feedback.

Steep initial setup
Despite marketing claims of simplicity, the initial configuration requires significant effort. Advanced features and custom setups demand real technical expertise.

Limited component nesting
Building complex, deeply nested layouts can feel restrictive. You often end up creating numerous individual components as workarounds for unique page designs.

Small community and ecosystem
Far fewer plugins, community resources, and Stack Overflow answers compared to Contentful or Sanity. When you hit edge cases, you're mostly on your own.

Missing JSON field support
No native JSON datatype in content models, which limits flexibility for advanced structured data use cases that other headless CMS platforms handle easily.
Key advantages
AEM is the kind of platform you only choose if you’re a Fortune 500 company or enjoy voluntarily suffering. I hate anything Adobe builds. It’s bloated, overpriced, and aggressively designed to lock you into their ecosystem. But fine, here are the positives: the Adobe integration is unmatched. If your entire organisation already lives inside Creative Cloud, Analytics, and Target, AEM becomes this giant DXP monolith that handles assets, personalization, segmentation, and multi-channel delivery without breaking a sweat. The DAM is legitimately powerful, and it scales like a tank.
If you’re not operating at scale, you’ll spend absurd money for problems a clean Sanity + modern composable stack solves better and cheaper. If you are considering AEM or escaping it, get in touch. We’ll help you choose something that won’t haunt your ops team for the next decade.

Integration with Adobe tools
AEM connects with Creative Cloud, Analytics, and Target, letting teams move assets, data, and personalisation logic across tools without friction
Robust digital asset management
The DAM is genuinely powerful. It has AI tagging, smart cropping, versioning, and bulk optimisation for massive media libraries.

Consistent multi-channel delivery
AEM can push content to web, mobile apps, email, and more from one central source. Ideal for enterprises that need consistent messaging across every customer touchpoint.

Flexible architecture
Supports both classic and headless approaches, letting teams mix legacy setups with modern frontends. It’s adaptable enough for companies with complicated stacks.

Scalable enterprise-level operations
AEM is designed to handle huge traffic, global teams, and heavy workflows. It scales reliably when backed by proper infrastructure and Adobe’s cloud.

Intuitive user interface
For an enterprise platform, the UI is relatively approachable, helping large content teams manage complex workflows without needing to touch code.
Book a meeting with us to discuss how we can help or fill out a form to get in touch
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