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 Payload
We are the Builder.io to Payload 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 Developers on forums describe spending days trying to get basic integrations working because the docs are outdated or incomplete.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Outdated and incomplete documentation
Developers consistently report that the docs are confusing, outdated, or missing critical steps.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 Payload
Key advantages
Payload is genuinely strong tech. It’s fast, open-source, developer-first, and perfect if you want full control over your content model. The Next.js integration is smooth, the admin UI is clean, and it’s one of the more flexible modern CMS options if your team prefers to build things exactly the way you want them.
Just know that if you want actual features like visual editing, Vercel Blob storage, image handling, etc, you’ll be paying extra for the privilege. If you’re considering Payload or thinking about migrating into (or out of) it, reach out to us. We can help you figure out whether it’s the right stack or guide you toward a cleaner, saner (Sanity) setup.
Integration with Next.js applications
Payload works natively with Next.js, giving you clean data fetching and a smooth development flow. It removes the usual CMS friction so you can build fast, modern frontends without hacks.
Fully customizable
Everything is configured in code, which means you can tailor the CMS to your exact use case. You define the logic, workflows, and behaviour.
Supports custom data models
You can design any content structure your project needs, from simple documents to complex relational models. This gives you full control over how content is organised and delivered.
Intuitive admin UI
Payload’s admin panel is simple, clean, and fast. Editors can create, update, and manage content without training or digging through confusing menus.
Custom plugins and APIs
You can extend Payload however you like. Build custom fields, integrate external services, or add your own API routes. Perfect for teams that need deeper project-specific functionality.
Built-in authentication
Payload comes with user auth, roles, and access control baked in. No external auth service needed, and you can customise permissions to match your editorial workflow.
Common questions
Builder.io to Payload migration FAQs
Answers to the most common questions about Builder.io to Payload 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 hard is it to migrate away from Payload CMS?
Payload stores content in MongoDB or Postgres, so extracting your data is straightforward compared to proprietary platforms. The real work is restructuring your content model for the target CMS and rebuilding any custom access control logic you've written. We typically complete Payload migrations in 3 to 6 weeks depending on how much custom backend logic is involved. The code-first nature of Payload means most of the content model is well-documented in your own codebase, which actually makes migration planning easier.
What are the main reasons teams leave Payload?
The most common reasons we hear are infrastructure fatigue and ecosystem gaps. Payload requires you to manage your own database, hosting, auth, and scaling. Teams that chose Payload for its developer flexibility eventually realise they're spending more time on DevOps than on content features. The Figma acquisition in 2024 also shifted priorities, and some teams feel the platform's direction became less predictable. Visual editing and live preview still require significant custom engineering compared to platforms that ship them natively.
What does a Payload to Sanity migration cost?
For a typical content site with 200 to 1,000 documents, we estimate 4 to 6 weeks of work. The bulk of effort goes into rebuilding the admin experience and frontend integration, not the data transfer itself. Payload's MongoDB exports are clean, so content migration scripts run reliably. The cost depends heavily on how much custom auth logic and access control you've built, since that needs to be rebuilt in the target platform's permission system. We scope every migration individually after reviewing your Payload config.
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