# Contentful to Storyblok migration

> How to migrate from Contentful to Storyblok, 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: Storyblok

- **Type:** headless
- **Official site:** https://www.storyblok.com
- **Pricing:** https://www.storyblok.com/pricing
- **Last reviewed:** 2026-08-03

## Key advantages

If you've ever tried explaining "headless" to a content team and watched their eyes glaze over, Storyblok is your peace offering. The visual editor is genuinely good: editors see changes on the real page preview instead of filling out abstract field forms.

That's the upside. The downside is that the API lacks a few basics, like fetching child or sibling pages directly, and the tier jumps get steep once you need more locales or seats. If Storyblok is your choice, we can make it work, we know where the rough edges are and how to set it up cleanly.

### Visual editing capabilities

Yes, you read that right, you can do real-time, on-page editing. Make a change, see it instantly, no staging limbo, which means you can stop "guess and publish."

### Component-based approach

You can build a component once and use it everywhere. You can also update a button or banner in one place, and the entire site fixes itself.

### Efficient content structuring

Your content stays clean, organised, reusable, and not scattered across 40 pages. Developers work with structured data, editors drag-and-drop pieces like Lego. Everyone gets to stay sane.

### Strong multi-language support

One CMS, many languages, no chaos. Localise content without duplicate pages or messy spreadsheet exports.

### Collaborative environment

Writers, designers, and editors can all jump in at the same time without breaking each other’s work. Add comments and approvals. View version histories for teamwork without the headache.

### Highly customisable

If your design system can imagine it, you can use Storyblok to model it. There are custom fields, workflows, and logics that can bend to your stack rather than the other way around.

## Key pain points

Storyblok is not our first recommendation for a headless CMS. The product looks polished, but documentation sprawl makes initial setup harder than it should be, and non-technical editors routinely get lost navigating spaces, stories, and nested components.

Pricing is the bigger issue. Extra locales are $20/month each, extra seats are $15/month each, and custom roles, SSO, and the GraphQL API are all gated behind the custom-priced Premium and Elite plans. Teams on Growth ($99/month) often end up on Growth Plus ($349/month) not because they want the extra features, but because they hit an API request or locale limit.

You'll also lean on third-party integrations for a lot of ordinary tasks, which means more code paths to maintain. Webhook behaviour has changed between releases without clear deprecation notices. The platform works fine once it's set up. Getting there just takes more engineering than the marketing suggests.

### Customisation can take effort

Storyblok can do almost anything, but sometimes the "how" involves developer time, CLI commands, or manual tweaking. Great control, just not always plug-and-play.

### Some integrations need extra work

For things like CRMs or complex platforms, you’ll likely build the integration instead of installing it. Expect a bit more engineering.

### Slower editing

Real-time previews are great, but large pages or heavy components can load slowly. Occasionally, the editor UI feels less intuitive than the rest of the platform.

### Asset management isn’t perfect

Renaming assets, bulk editing, or cleaning libraries can take longer than expected. It doesn't feel as polished as the rest of the system.

### Permissions are fixed

Roles are predefined. For smaller teams, that’s perfectly fine. Bigger teams may want more granular access controls than Storyblok currently offers.

### Pricing jumps with scale

You get a free tier, but some advanced features sit behind higher plans. It’s worth it for projects if you want to pay more; just something teams should budget for early.

## 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.

### How much does Storyblok cost?

Storyblok's Starter plan is $0 with 1 seat, 2 locales, 100K API requests, and 100GB of traffic. Growth is $99/month for 5 seats, 2 locales, 1M API requests, and 400GB. Growth Plus is $349/month for 15 seats, 10 locales, 4M API requests, and 1TB. Add-ons run $15/month per extra seat, $20/month per extra locale, $10 per extra 1M requests, and $75 per extra 250GB. Premium and Elite are custom-priced and gate SSO, custom roles, and the GraphQL API. The catch most teams hit is the gap between tiers, because there's no gradual scaling. A Growth account that runs over on traffic or locales jumps straight to $349/month, a 3.5x increase for what's often a small overage.

### Does Storyblok have a visual editor?

Yes, and it's one of the best in the headless CMS space. You see real-time changes as you edit, directly on your site preview. It's the main reason many teams pick Storyblok. That said, Sanity now offers a comparable experience through its Presentation tool, which gives you live visual editing with more flexibility in content modelling. If the visual editor is your primary reason for choosing Storyblok, it's worth comparing both before committing.