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 Kontent.ai
We are the Agility CMS to Kontent.ai migration experts
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Challenges with Agility CMS
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.
Benefits of Kontent.ai
Key advantages
Calling your CMS “Kontent dot ai” is a brilliant way to convince people you’ve built an AI-powered future. And to be fair, the platform does have a clean editor, strong workflow tools, and a respectable multi-channel setup.
It's perfect for the kind of company that has more infosec members than it does have devs. But calling yourself an AI platform doesn’t mean you’re built like one.
Real AI-driven CMS platforms start at the foundation with structured content, flexible modeling, real-time indexing, and an architecture that doesn’t panic the moment you try something complex. Sanity doesn’t even market itself as “AI-first,” but it’s been ahead of the curve for years. They shipped an embedding index before “AI CMS” was a pitch deck buzzword. We even built one of the first AI search tools on top of it.
So yes, Kontent.ai is great. If you want a polished interface and enterprise workflows, go for it. And if you’re dead-set on building your website there, talk to us first. We’ll walk you through it and maybe even find a better way before you spend six months discovering the limits yourself.
Intuitive content management
You shouldn’t need a week of onboarding to publish a paragraph. Kontent.ai nails this with a clean interface that doesn’t punish you for being a marketer instead of a developer.
Flexible content modeling
Build content the way your brain works. Modular, structured, reusable. No dev intervention every time marketing decides “we need one more field.”
Strong API-first architecture
The APIs are predictable, well-documented, and don’t require wild workarounds. Everything connects the way it should and developers stay happy too.
Tech stack integration
React, Vue, Angular, or whatever framework you’re obsessed with this week, Kontent.ai plays nice with all of them and keeps deployments smooth.
Advanced image transformations
You can resize, crop, and optimize visuals without leaving the CMS. Think of it as an in-house designer that doesn’t complain about aspect ratios.
Real-time collaboration
Writers, editors, and developers can work together without stepping on each other’s commits. Instant updates, fewer Slack messages, and zero “who overwrote my draft?” moments.
Common questions
Agility CMS to Kontent.ai migration FAQs
Answers to the most common questions about Agility CMS to Kontent.ai migration
How do we migrate away from Agility CMS?
Agility CMS content is accessible through their REST API, so extracting pages, content lists, and media is doable with scripted API calls. The trickier part is the page management layer. Agility's built-in sitemap and page routing don't have direct equivalents in most headless CMS platforms, so that logic needs to be rebuilt in your frontend. We typically budget 4 to 8 weeks for Agility migrations depending on how deeply the page management features are used.
Is Agility CMS worth the price?
At $1,249/month minimum with no free tier, Agility is one of the priciest headless CMS options available. For teams that genuinely need built-in page management, SEO tools, and generous API limits, the cost can be justified. But most mid-sized teams we work with find they can get the same results with a platform like Sanity at a fraction of the cost, especially when you factor in Agility's additional charges for template customisations that go beyond their standard offerings.
What are the biggest risks of staying on Agility CMS?
The small ecosystem is the long-term concern. With fewer community resources, plugins, and Stack Overflow coverage than competitors, you're heavily reliant on Agility's support team for edge cases. The preview delay frustrates editors who are used to real-time feedback, and component nesting limitations force workarounds as your design system grows. If Agility ever changes pricing or direction, the limited community means fewer migration guides and less shared knowledge to help you move.
How much does Kontent.ai cost?
Kontent.ai hides pricing behind a "book a demo" wall, which is never a good sign for budget planning. Based on what we've seen across client engagements, the Developer plan is free but extremely limited (1 user, 2 languages). The Scale plan starts around $1,249/month (billed annually), and Enterprise pricing goes higher depending on API usage, content items, and seats. The real cost is in implementation. Kontent.ai requires upfront developer time to set up content models, build a custom preview pipeline (there's no native live preview), and configure workflows. Budget 4-8 weeks of developer time for initial setup on top of the subscription cost.
Is Kontent.ai worth it compared to other enterprise headless CMS platforms?
Kontent.ai does enterprise content workflows well. The role-based permissions, multi-step approvals, and content scheduling are polished. The API is predictable and well-documented. Where it falls short is flexibility. The content modelling tools are competent but not as powerful as Sanity's, and the lack of a native preview system means your team needs to build and maintain custom preview infrastructure. At similar price points, Contentful offers a larger ecosystem and Sanity offers deeper customisation. We'd recommend Kontent.ai primarily for teams already invested in the Kentico ecosystem or organisations where workflow governance is the top priority over developer experience.
What happens to image URLs when you replace assets in Kontent.ai?
This is a genuine pain point. Every time you replace an image or file in Kontent.ai, the platform generates a completely new URL. That means any hardcoded references, cached versions, or external links to the old asset break instantly. For content teams publishing at scale, this creates a maintenance burden. You need to update every place the old URL was referenced, or accept broken images. Most CMS platforms handle asset replacement by keeping the same URL and invalidating the cache. Kontent.ai's approach feels like an oversight that hasn't been fixed. If you're managing hundreds of assets, this adds real friction to daily editorial work.
What's involved in migrating away from Kontent.ai?
The content extraction itself is clean. Kontent.ai's Delivery API and Management API let you pull content items and assets programmatically. The challenges are schema translation and workflow replication. Kontent.ai's content types map to their own structure, and converting those to another CMS's schema requires careful field-by-field mapping, especially for linked items and modular content. If you've built custom workflow states and approval chains, those need to be recreated in the target platform. Plan for 6-10 weeks depending on the number of content types, locales, and workflow complexity. The API rate limit of 100 requests per second can also slow down bulk exports for large content libraries.
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