From Contentful to Sanity

We are the Contentful to Sanity migration experts

Challenges with Contentful

Key pain points

With all good things, there’s a “depends on how you use it and who is using it” clause. Contentful usage-based pricing can quietly snowball, especially for smaller teams or projects running on lean budgets. Its API-first approach might make developers grin, but the non-technical users might find themselves staring at setup screens, wondering, “Wait… where’s the editor?”

More often than not, the main reason Contentful sucks is that the developer has built it incorrectly, as it has a whole host of opinionation that isn't widely known. E.g.

You need to be extremely careful with the number of documents you build, as you could very easily push yourself into enterprise from an early stage.

We'd always recommend speaking to us first, before completely writing it off.

Potentially high costs

Contentful isn’t a cheap CMS. As your traffic, models, or team grows, pricing can climb faster than expected.

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 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.