# Contentful to BaseHub migration

> How to migrate from Contentful to BaseHub, with a side-by-side comparison and FAQs.

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## Source: Contentful

- **Type:** headless
- **Official site:** https://www.contentful.com
- **Pricing:** https://www.contentful.com/pricing
- **Last reviewed:** 2026-08-13

## Key advantages

Contentful is one of the most established headless CMS choices, and we still see plenty of customers land on it after a shortlist.

It's built around structured content, so you model fields once and pull them into any front end you like. That means no copy-pasted components scattered across pages. It also has first-party support for A/B testing and personalization through its Studio add-on, which most competitors don't match natively. The app ecosystem covers SEO, translation, validation, and asset management, and editors get live side-by-side preview for content they're working on.

If your team has the budget and the developer resources to model content properly, it's a solid pick.

### API-first design

Contentful was built for APIs from day one, which means your content plugs cleanly into apps, websites, and mobile.

### Developer-friendly flexibility

Schemas, content models, and references can be tuned however you like. If your stack is anything beyond "cookie-cutter," Contentful won’t get in your way.

### User-friendly interface

Editors enjoy using it. Clean UI, quick search, structured fields, and no "where does this go again?" confusion.

### Extensive integration capabilities

Plug in analytics, eCommerce, automation, and translation. Contentful plays nicely with almost anything. And if something isn’t supported yet, you can wire it up yourself without hacking the platform apart.

### Scales under traffic

Contentful's global CDN holds up under heavy load. We've run it on sites pushing millions of monthly requests without needing bespoke infrastructure to handle spikes.

### Cloud-based architecture

You don't have to install, patch, or maintain anything. It’s fast, globally distributed, and always up to date. Your content team can ship from anywhere without a DevOps babysitter.

## Key pain points

Contentful is one of those platforms where the bill can catch you off guard. The free tier caps you at 25 content types and 100K API calls, and a single marketing site can blow past both without warning. The next step up is $300 a month, and enterprise pricing often lands in the $50K to $100K+ a year range.

The pattern teams keep hitting is the same: the jump is forced by one limit, not by needing the bigger feature set. The content type cap alone can push you onto a higher plan you don't otherwise need.

The other issue is that Contentful has strong opinions about how content should be modelled, and those opinions aren't always documented. Projects built without that knowledge tend to accumulate performance problems and awkward workarounds. Before writing Contentful off, speak to us, a lot of the pain we see is implementation, not platform.

### Pricing climbs fast

Contentful isn't a cheap CMS. Once you pass the free tier's content type or API call limit, you're on the $300/month Lite plan, and enterprise pricing often starts at $50K+ a year.

### Complex for non-technical users

Marketers and editors may need a small learning curve before they feel at home. It’s powerful but not always plug-and-play.

### Integration dependency

A lot of magic happens through third-party tools. Great for flexibility, but it does mean extra setup instead of getting everything out-of-the-box.

### Limited native features

Contentful keeps the core CMS clean and minimal, but that also means more building and configuring to get advanced functionality.

### Learning curve for new teams

If your team is moving from a traditional CMS, expect some onboarding time. Structured content is amazing but new for many.

### Requires careful management

Because it’s so flexible, projects need good governance. Without it, content models can get messy and harder to maintain over time.

## Target: BaseHub

- **Type:** headless
- **Official site:** https://basehub.com
- **Pricing:** https://basehub.com/pricing
- **Last reviewed:** 2026-07-28

## Key advantages

BaseHub CMS is generating buzz among developers for its fast, collaborative, and AI-powered environment. We really like the Notion style editor. Feels great to drop a / and you type in what you want. E.g heading, or bullet points etc.

It's pretty good for creating and organizing content. Even for teams that are new to CMS platforms. Features like easy nested repeater fields, real-time branching for team workflows, and a built-in GraphQL API impress both solo makers and growing agencies. The platform’s Typesafe approach and AI-assisted writing tools help speed up the publishing process, while modern UI design keeps the learning curve gentle for newcomers.

If you can handle the initial information overload when you first spin up an environment it's an incredible tool for collaboration and rapid site scaffolding.

They also have a pretty good freemium pricing model (nodody has as good as Sanity) and strong documentation help projects get off the ground quickly, especially for Next.js and React use cases. Frequent updates and community engagement is high, and the core team that built it, are from a really nice design focused agency. So can't knock it that much.

### Intuitive Notion-style editor

Drop a / to insert blocks. The Notion-style editor is intuitive: fast, light, and easy to navigate

### Effortless nested repeater fields

You can nest and stack content structures. It’s one of the few tools where complex schemas don’t instantly become a crime scene.

### Real-time content branching

Branching lets teams experiment, test ideas, and push updates without breaking production. Preview changes instantly, merge when ready, panic never.

### Ready-to-use GraphQL integration

BaseHub ships with clean, auto-generated GraphQL APIs, so developers don’t waste hours wiring resolvers or schema stitching. Query, fetch, and ship.

### Typesafe SDK support

You get fully typed responses out of the box, which means fewer runtime surprises and a smoother dev experience. Your IDE becomes your safety net.

### Collaborative team workflows

Teams can work together without stepping on each other’s toes, with clean approval flows and role-based editing. It’s built for fast-moving content teams.

## 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.

### No self-hosting option

BaseHub is SaaS-only. There is no self-hosting path or on-premise deployment. Your content lives on their infrastructure.

## Frequently asked questions

### How much does Contentful cost?

Contentful has a Free tier with 10 users, 100K API calls per month, 25 content types, and 10,000 records. The Lite plan is $300/month for 20 users, 1M API calls, and 100GB CDN bandwidth. Enterprise is custom pricing with unlimited API calls and an uptime SLA of up to 99.99%. We've seen teams hit the free tier's API ceiling or content type cap fast, and the jump to Lite is often forced by a single limit rather than a feature need.

### Is Contentful being acquired by Salesforce?

Yes, though it hasn't closed yet. Salesforce signed a definitive agreement on June 1, 2026, and the deal is expected to close in the third quarter of Salesforce's 2027 fiscal year, which runs from August 1–October 31, 2026, subject to regulatory approval. The price wasn't disclosed, but it's been reported at roughly $1 billion to $1.5 billion, well down on the $3 billion valuation Contentful raised at in 2021. Contentful says the platform, APIs, and support model stay the same for now, with deeper Agentforce integration on the roadmap. If you're making a long-term CMS bet, factor it in. Contentful's direction will increasingly follow Salesforce's enterprise priorities, which tends to mean enterprise pricing and enterprise roadmaps. It's one more reason teams ask us about a usage-based alternative like Sanity before they commit.

### What are some alternatives to Contentful?

Sanity is the alternative we recommend most. It gives you real-time collaboration, a customizable studio, and pay-as-you-go pricing that doesn't punish you for scaling. Storyblok is worth considering if your editors want a visual builder. We've migrated teams off Contentful to both, and Sanity consistently gets the best feedback from developers and content editors alike.

### How does Contentful compare to Sanity on pricing?

Contentful charges $300/month for its Lite plan with hard caps on API calls, seats, and content types. Sanity's pricing is usage-based, starting free and scaling with actual consumption. For most mid-size projects, Sanity ends up significantly cheaper. The real difference is that Sanity doesn't gate core features behind premium tiers the way Contentful does with roles, SSO, and content modelling limits.

### Can I migrate from Contentful to Sanity?

Yes. We've migrated dozens of Contentful projects to Sanity. The structured content model in Contentful maps well to Sanity's schema, so most migrations are straightforward. Content, assets, references, and localized fields all transfer. Our typical migration takes 2-4 weeks depending on the number of content types and the complexity of your references. We handle frontend rewiring too if you're on Next.js or a similar framework.

### Is Contentful good for large enterprise websites?

It can be, but the costs get steep. Enterprise plans are custom-priced. From the contracts we've seen, smaller organisations start around $40,000 a year and full enterprise deals run past $180,000, with renewals climbing year on year. If you have deep pockets and your team already knows the platform, it works. If you're evaluating from scratch, we'd push you toward Sanity for enterprise use. You get equivalent API performance, better real-time editing, and a pricing model that doesn't penalize growth.