From Builder.io to Sanity

We are the Builder.io to Sanity migration experts

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 Developers on forums describe spending days trying to get basic integrations working because the docs are outdated or incomplete.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Outdated and incomplete documentation

Developers consistently report that the docs are confusing, outdated, or missing critical steps.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 Sanity

Key advantages

You know where our bias' lies. We think Sanity is literally the best headless content management out there. The schema is code-based, so it can be easily versioned, scaled, and extended without a heap of third-party hoops to jump. Providing you build it with a solid foundation, which we always recommend Turbo Start Sanity, it's going to be the most valuable hub for content you can imagine.

It's got a very unique tooling called the Live Content API, which in simple terms means

when you press publish, its live.

No issues with caching, and a single API usage that scales perfectly with multichannel content delivery.

It also offers one of the best editorial experiences in the industry with Presentation and customizable content structures. We're obviously huge fans of it, and we've pivoted our business with it when we realised how ahead it is.

Multiplayer - multiple users editing the same blocks at the same time

Real time collaboration

You write, your teammate tags in, adds citations, and updates the same doc without stepping on each other. It’s the fastest way to ship content without the “who has edit access?” chaos.

Live content API and presentation editor - a way to be able to edit things side by side, directly within Sanity

Live preview block building

With Sanity, you don’t have to guess what your page might look like. Real-time previews update the moment you type. It’s a 1:1 mirror of your site before it ever goes live, so your campaigns look right the first time.

Meta tags and structured content help to build websites, UI showing the ability to edit granularly

Meta tags, structured content

Sanity’s structured content gives Google clean data and rich schema, so your pages surface higher without manual hacking. Automated schema, smarter metadata, and better rankings.

Better media management

A blazing-fast media library with first-class support for Cloudinary, Mux, Wistia and more. Upload, drag-and-drop, preview without wrestling with assets, and waiting for spins of doom.

Automated social sharing

Ever wanted to share one update, and automatically populate every social platform? Welcome to the future we've built that. Why should social media be a chore.

Image generation and optimisation, directly within Sanity CMS, showing a space alien getting optimised

Automated image generation

Sanity keeps your subject centred and sharp like a tiny author thumbnail or a full-page hero banner. There are no awkward crops, or chopped heads. Your visuals just look right everywhere.