Case Study
View Case StudyTray.ai
Migrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform
From Contentful to Kontent.ai
We are the Contentful to Kontent.ai migration experts
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Challenges with Contentful
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.
Users on Reddit regularly flag the same thing: tier jumps are forced by hitting one limit, not by needing the bigger feature set. Content model caps alone can push you into 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.
Benefits of Kontent.ai
Key advantages
Calling your CMS “Kontent dot ai” is a brilliant way to convince people you’ve built an AI-powered future. And to be fair, the platform does have a clean editor, strong workflow tools, and a respectable multi-channel setup.
It's perfect for the kind of company that has more infosec members than it does have devs. But calling yourself an AI platform doesn’t mean you’re built like one.
Real AI-driven CMS platforms start at the foundation with structured content, flexible modeling, real-time indexing, and an architecture that doesn’t panic the moment you try something complex. Sanity doesn’t even market itself as “AI-first,” but it’s been ahead of the curve for years. They shipped an embedding index before “AI CMS” was a pitch deck buzzword. We even built one of the first AI search tools on top of it.
So yes, Kontent.ai is great. If you want a polished interface and enterprise workflows, go for it. And if you’re dead-set on building your website there, talk to us first. We’ll walk you through it and maybe even find a better way before you spend six months discovering the limits yourself.
Intuitive content management
You shouldn’t need a week of onboarding to publish a paragraph. Kontent.ai nails this with a clean interface that doesn’t punish you for being a marketer instead of a developer.
Flexible content modeling
Build content the way your brain works. Modular, structured, reusable. No dev intervention every time marketing decides “we need one more field.”
Strong API-first architecture
The APIs are predictable, well-documented, and don’t require wild workarounds. Everything connects the way it should and developers stay happy too.
Tech stack integration
React, Vue, Angular, or whatever framework you’re obsessed with this week, Kontent.ai plays nice with all of them and keeps deployments smooth.
Advanced image transformations
You can resize, crop, and optimize visuals without leaving the CMS. Think of it as an in-house designer that doesn’t complain about aspect ratios.
Real-time collaboration
Writers, editors, and developers can work together without stepping on each other’s commits. Instant updates, fewer Slack messages, and zero “who overwrote my draft?” moments.
Common questions
Contentful to Kontent.ai migration FAQs
Answers to the most common questions about Contentful to Kontent.ai migration
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. Premium is custom pricing with unlimited API calls and a 99.99% uptime SLA. 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.
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 and often land in the $50,000-$100,000+ per year range. 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.
How much does Kontent.ai cost?
Kontent.ai hides pricing behind a "book a demo" wall, which is never a good sign for budget planning. Based on what we've seen across client engagements, the Developer plan is free but extremely limited (1 user, 2 languages). The Scale plan starts around $1,249/month (billed annually), and Enterprise pricing goes higher depending on API usage, content items, and seats. The real cost is in implementation. Kontent.ai requires upfront developer time to set up content models, build a custom preview pipeline (there's no native live preview), and configure workflows. Budget 4-8 weeks of developer time for initial setup on top of the subscription cost.
Is Kontent.ai worth it compared to other enterprise headless CMS platforms?
Kontent.ai does enterprise content workflows well. The role-based permissions, multi-step approvals, and content scheduling are polished. The API is predictable and well-documented. Where it falls short is flexibility. The content modelling tools are competent but not as powerful as Sanity's, and the lack of a native preview system means your team needs to build and maintain custom preview infrastructure. At similar price points, Contentful offers a larger ecosystem and Sanity offers deeper customisation. We'd recommend Kontent.ai primarily for teams already invested in the Kentico ecosystem or organisations where workflow governance is the top priority over developer experience.
What happens to image URLs when you replace assets in Kontent.ai?
This is a genuine pain point. Every time you replace an image or file in Kontent.ai, the platform generates a completely new URL. That means any hardcoded references, cached versions, or external links to the old asset break instantly. For content teams publishing at scale, this creates a maintenance burden. You need to update every place the old URL was referenced, or accept broken images. Most CMS platforms handle asset replacement by keeping the same URL and invalidating the cache. Kontent.ai's approach feels like an oversight that hasn't been fixed. If you're managing hundreds of assets, this adds real friction to daily editorial work.
What's involved in migrating away from Kontent.ai?
The content extraction itself is clean. Kontent.ai's Delivery API and Management API let you pull content items and assets programmatically. The challenges are schema translation and workflow replication. Kontent.ai's content types map to their own structure, and converting those to another CMS's schema requires careful field-by-field mapping, especially for linked items and modular content. If you've built custom workflow states and approval chains, those need to be recreated in the target platform. Plan for 6-10 weeks depending on the number of content types, locales, and workflow complexity. The API rate limit of 100 requests per second can also slow down bulk exports for large content libraries.
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