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Migrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform
From BaseHub to Adobe Experience Manager
We are the BaseHub to Adobe Experience Manager migration experts
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Challenges with BaseHub
Key pain points
BaseHub is one of those platforms that feels like it was built by a developer, for a developer, and at no point did anyone ask, “Won't marketers need to be able to edit on the go?” Once you’re inside, it’s tables inside tables inside tables, like a Russian doll but somehow less fun. And as we’ve said before, we genuinely appreciate good engineering… but BaseHub often feels like someone shipped the database schema and called it a CMS.
BaseHub is painful to use, in our opinion. Because the platform is still young, features sometimes glitch, real-time collaboration hiccups, and localization or migration workflows can get messy fast. Documentation gaps and unpredictable branching only add to the frustration. If you're determined to build on BaseHub, we can walk you through the safest path… or at least help you avoid the inevitable “why is this breaking again?” moments.
Occasional feature glitches
New features sometimes ship a bit wobbly, so expect the occasional “why is this suddenly broken?” moment.
Not yet enterprise-ready
It’s great for small teams, but big orgs will hit walls fast. Workflow maturity and stability just aren’t there yet.
Limited third-party integrations
If you rely on a rich ecosystem, BaseHub won’t meet you halfway. You’ll be wiring a lot of things yourself.
Localization support gaps
Multi-region content teams will feel the pain quickly as language handling still needs serious tightening.
API rate limiting constraints
Push it too hard and you’ll hit rate limits faster than you expect, which can block larger deployments.
Sporadic stability issues
Real-time collaboration and branching can hiccup under pressure, making scaling workflows frustrating.
Benefits of Adobe Experience Manager
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.
Common questions
BaseHub to Adobe Experience Manager migration FAQs
Answers to the most common questions about BaseHub to Adobe Experience Manager migration
How do we migrate content out of BaseHub?
BaseHub exposes content through its GraphQL API, so extraction means writing queries to pull your content tree and transforming the responses into your target CMS format. The nested repeater structure can make this tricky since deeply nested content needs to be flattened or re-mapped depending on where you're going. Media assets need to be downloaded and re-uploaded separately. For a typical project with moderate content volume, we budget 2 to 4 weeks for the full migration.
Why do teams leave BaseHub?
BaseHub is still a young platform, and teams hit its limits as projects grow. The most common complaints we hear are feature glitches in production, limited third-party integrations, and an interface that feels more like a database browser than a CMS. Localization support is weak, API rate limits bite harder than expected on high-traffic sites, and real-time collaboration can hiccup under pressure. Teams that need enterprise-grade reliability often outgrow BaseHub within 6 to 12 months.
Is BaseHub stable enough for production sites?
For small marketing sites and developer portfolios, BaseHub works fine. For anything with real traffic, multiple editors, or complex content workflows, we'd urge caution. The platform ships features quickly but stability doesn't always keep pace. We've seen branching break under pressure and collaboration features hiccup at inconvenient moments. If your business depends on publishing uptime, you want a CMS with a longer track record of production reliability.
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.
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