Case Study
View Case StudyTray.ai
Migrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform
From Builder.io to Craft CMS
We are the Builder.io to Craft CMS migration experts
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Challenges with Builder.io
Key pain points
Builder.io looks impressive in demos but the reality of day-to-day usage tells a different story. The editor can be laggy, especially with more than 30 components on a page, and we have seen reports of outright crashes that lose unsaved work. The documentation is a persistent sore point. Developers on forums describe spending days trying to get basic integrations working because the docs are outdated or incomplete. For an agency setting up projects for clients, unreliable documentation means unpredictable timelines.
Pricing is another area where Builder.io catches teams off guard. The free tier exists but is quite limited, and costs ramp up quickly once you need features like roles, scheduling, or higher usage limits. We have seen complaints from freelancers and small teams about unexpected charges and slow support response times when trying to resolve billing issues. The lack of self-hosting is also a hard blocker for some clients with strict data residency requirements.
The biggest concern from our perspective is vendor lock-in. Builder.io's SDKs are deeply embedded in your frontend code, and if you ever need to migrate away, you are essentially rebuilding your page composition layer from scratch. There is also no real-time collaboration, so two editors working on the same page can overwrite each other's changes without warning.
Editor performance and stability
The visual editor becomes laggy with complex pages and has been reported to crash, losing unsaved work. Teams with content-heavy pages will feel this friction daily.
Outdated and incomplete documentation
Developers consistently report that the docs are confusing, outdated, or missing critical steps. Getting started takes far longer than it should for a tool that sells itself on speed.
Vendor lock-in risk
Builder.io's SDKs are tightly coupled to your frontend. Migrating away means rebuilding your entire page building and composition layer from scratch.
Limited collaboration tools
Builder.io now offers branching and peer review workflows in its Fusion product, but true real-time co-editing is still missing. Editors working outside of the Projects workflow can still overwrite each other's changes.
Pricing escalation
Costs ramp up quickly beyond the free tier, and teams report unexpected charges. Basic features like roles and scheduling sit behind higher-priced plans.
Slow and unresponsive support
Multiple users report delayed support responses, unresolved tickets, and difficulty getting refunds or cancellations processed in a reasonable timeframe.
Benefits of Craft CMS
Key advantages
Craft CMS is one of those platforms we genuinely respect from a developer standpoint. The content modelling is best-in-class for a traditional CMS. You define sections, entry types, and fields with real precision, and the authoring experience maps cleanly to the underlying data structure. If your content team needs a CMS that actually reflects how the site is built, Craft delivers that better than most. The Twig templating layer is clean and predictable, and the admin UI is fast and intuitive once editors get past the initial learning curve.
Where Craft really shines is in the middle ground between simple marketing sites and full-blown enterprise builds. It's flexible enough to handle complex content architectures without the bloat of something like WordPress, and the built-in GraphQL API means you can use it headless if you want to pair it with a modern frontend. The plugin ecosystem is smaller but noticeably higher quality than what you'd find in WordPress, and the Composer-based workflow means your whole project can live in version control properly.
We've seen agencies build genuinely impressive work on Craft, especially for content-heavy sites where editorial workflows matter. If your team includes developers and you want a CMS that rewards careful architecture, Craft is a solid choice. It's not trying to be everything to everyone, and that focus shows.
That said, we'd typically recommend a headless CMS like Sanity for most of the projects we take on. Craft is at its best when you're comfortable with PHP and want a tightly integrated traditional or hybrid setup. If you're building on Next.js or a modern JavaScript stack, you'll find more natural fits elsewhere.
Exceptional content modelling
Craft's field and section system gives you precise control over your content structure. You can model complex relationships between content types without fighting the CMS.
Clean authoring experience
The admin panel is fast, well-organized, and maps directly to how content is structured. Editors can work efficiently once they understand the layout.
Built-in GraphQL API
Craft ships with a native GraphQL API, so you can use it headless without plugins or workarounds. It's deeply integrated and well-documented.
Composer-based modern workflow
Everything is managed through Composer, so your project, plugins, and dependencies all live in version control. Deployments through CI/CD pipelines work smoothly.
Higher quality plugin ecosystem
The plugin store is smaller than WordPress but the quality bar is noticeably higher. Plugins are better maintained and less likely to break your site on update.
Granular user permissions
Built-in role and permission management is detailed and flexible. You can lock down exactly what each editor can see and do without needing third-party plugins.
Common questions
Builder.io to Craft CMS migration FAQs
Answers to the most common questions about Builder.io to Craft CMS migration
Can you migrate from Builder.io without losing your page designs?
Yes, but it takes work. Builder.io's visual editor stores page compositions as JSON that references your registered components. Those component registrations are tightly coupled to Builder's SDK, so you can't just export and import elsewhere. What you can preserve is the design itself. We extract the page structures, map them to equivalent components in the new system, and rebuild the composition layer. The visual output stays the same. Typical timeline is 6-10 weeks depending on how many page types and custom components are involved. The biggest time sink is usually recreating A/B test variants and personalisation rules that lived inside Builder's platform.
What does Builder.io actually cost?
Builder.io's free tier gives you 1 user and basic features, which is enough to evaluate but not to run a real project. The Growth plan starts at $49/month and includes more seats and content types. Beyond that, pricing gets opaque. Teams needing roles, scheduling, and higher API limits are pushed toward custom Enterprise plans that typically start in the $500-$1,000/month range. We've heard from freelancers and small agencies who were caught off guard by charges after exceeding limits on the Growth plan. Builder.io also charges per "impression" on higher tiers, which means your costs scale with traffic in ways that aren't always predictable.
How does Builder.io compare to a traditional headless CMS?
Builder.io is a visual page builder first and a CMS second. That distinction matters. If your primary goal is letting marketing teams build landing pages without developer involvement, Builder.io does that well. If you need structured content modelling, editorial workflows, multi-language support, or content that powers more than just web pages, a traditional headless CMS is a better fit. Builder.io's SDK embeds deeply into your frontend code, which creates vendor lock-in that most headless CMS platforms avoid. We typically recommend Builder.io only when the use case is narrow: high-volume landing page creation for marketing teams. For everything else, a headless CMS with a proper content model gives you more flexibility long-term.
What's the main risk of building on Builder.io?
Vendor lock-in. Builder.io's SDKs are woven into your component rendering layer, which means migrating away requires rebuilding how your pages are composed and rendered. That's not a content migration, it's an architecture migration. With a typical headless CMS, your content is accessible through standard APIs and your frontend is independent. With Builder.io, the two are intertwined. We've worked with teams who spent months extracting themselves from Builder.io because every page template needed to be recreated outside the platform. If you're evaluating Builder.io, go in with eyes open about the exit cost.
How much does Craft CMS cost for an agency managing multiple sites?
The costs add up quicker than most agencies expect. The Solo tier is free for single-user projects, Team is $279 per project, and Pro is $399 per project. Both paid tiers carry a $99 annual renewal fee. If you're running 10 client sites on Pro, that's $3,990 upfront plus $990 per year in renewals before you've paid for a single plugin. Popular plugins like SEOmatic, Blitz (caching), and Navigation run $99-$199 each. Factor in PHP hosting ($20-$100/month per site depending on traffic) and the total per-project cost lands between $500 and $1,500 in year one. It's reasonable for individual projects but the aggregate cost across a portfolio is where agencies feel the squeeze.
What are the hidden costs of running Craft CMS?
Beyond licensing, three costs catch teams off guard. First, PHP hosting. Craft needs PHP 8.2+, MySQL or Postgres, and proper server configuration. You can't deploy to Vercel or Netlify like you would with a headless CMS. Budget $20-$100/month per site for decent managed hosting. Second, major version upgrades. Craft doesn't let you skip versions, so going from Craft 3 to 5 means stepping through 3 to 4, then 4 to 5, each with breaking changes to Twig templates and plugin compatibility. We've seen agencies spend 20-40 hours per upgrade. Third, developer dependency. Craft assumes your team has PHP developers on hand. If your agency is moving toward JavaScript stacks, maintaining Craft expertise becomes an overhead.
Should I migrate from Craft CMS to a headless CMS?
It depends on your stack direction. If your team is comfortable with PHP and Twig, and your sites are traditional server-rendered builds, Craft still works well. But if you're building with Next.js, React, or any modern JavaScript framework, Craft becomes friction. Its GraphQL API exists but it's a bolt-on, not a native experience. The content modelling in Craft is genuinely good, and that translates well to headless platforms. We've migrated Craft sites to Sanity where the content structures mapped over almost one-to-one. The frontend rebuild in Next.js typically takes 6-10 weeks, and the result is faster, cheaper to host, and easier to iterate on.
What's the biggest challenge when migrating off Craft CMS?
Twig templates. Every piece of frontend logic in a Craft project lives in Twig, and none of it carries over to a modern JavaScript framework. You're essentially rebuilding every template from scratch. Content migration itself is manageable since Craft's data structures are well-organised, and you can export through the Element API or direct database queries. The other challenge is plugin replacement. If you rely on Craft plugins for forms, SEO, or search, you need to find equivalents in your new stack. We build a dependency audit before any Craft migration so there are no surprises mid-project.
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