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Roboto converged Slingshot Bio's WordPress and Shopify sites into one headless Shopify build on Next.js and Sanity, instrumented end to end and AI-ready.
From Craft CMS to Adobe Experience Manager
We are the Craft CMS to Adobe Experience Manager migration experts
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Challenges with Craft CMS
Key pain points
The elephant in the room is PHP. Craft requires a traditional LAMP-style hosting setup with PHP 8.2+ and MySQL or Postgres, which immediately rules out the serverless and edge-first hosting that modern JavaScript frameworks thrive on. You're managing servers, configuring OPcache, tuning database connections, and dealing with all the operational overhead that comes with self-hosted PHP applications. For teams already working in the JavaScript ecosystem, this is a hard sell.
Major version upgrades are genuinely painful. Craft doesn't support skipping major versions, so migrating from Craft 2 to 5 means stepping through every version in between. Each jump brings breaking changes to Twig templates, PHP requirements, and plugin compatibility. We've seen agencies spend weeks on upgrades that should have been straightforward. The Team tier starts at $279 per project and the Pro tier costs $399, plus $99 annual renewals for both. A free Solo tier exists for single-user projects, but costs still add up for agencies, especially when you factor in plugins and the recent trend toward stricter licence enforcement in the control panel.
The community, while passionate, is relatively small compared to WordPress or even newer headless CMS platforms. When you hit an edge case or need help with a niche plugin, you may find yourself digging through GitHub issues rather than finding a ready answer. And while Craft Cloud exists as a managed hosting option, it's still maturing and doesn't yet match the deployment experience you'd get with platforms like Vercel or Netlify.
PHP hosting requirements
You need a traditional server with PHP 8.2+, MySQL or Postgres, and proper configuration. No serverless, no edge deployment, no modern hosting shortcuts.
Painful major version upgrades
You can't skip major versions, so upgrades mean stepping through each release with breaking Twig, PHP, and plugin changes along the way.
Smaller community and ecosystem
The community is dedicated but small. Finding answers to niche problems often means digging through GitHub issues or waiting on forum responses.
Licence costs add up
The Team tier is $279 per project and Pro is $399, both with $99 annual renewals, plus paid plugins on top. A free Solo tier exists for single-user projects, but costs add up quickly for agencies managing multiple client sites.
Learning curve for non-developers
Craft assumes your team includes developers. Content editors coming from WordPress or simpler tools will need time to adjust to the more structured interface.
Twig templating limitations
Twig is clean but limited compared to modern component frameworks. Complex UI logic gets awkward, and you're locked into whatever Twig version Craft supports.
Benefits of Adobe Experience Manager
Key advantages
AEM is the kind of platform you only choose if you’re a Fortune 500 company or you enjoy voluntary suffering. I’m not an Adobe fan. It’s bloated, overpriced, and built to lock you into their ecosystem. But fine, here are the positives. The Adobe integration is the real draw. If your organisation already lives inside Creative Cloud, Analytics, and Target, AEM becomes a giant DXP monolith that handles assets, personalisation, segmentation, and multi-channel delivery from one place. The DAM is genuinely strong, now split into Assets Prime and Assets Ultimate tiers, and it scales to enormous traffic when you throw infrastructure at it.
If you’re not operating at scale, you’ll spend absurd money for problems a clean Sanity + modern composable stack solves better and cheaper. If you are considering AEM or escaping it, get in touch. We’ll help you choose something that won’t haunt your ops team for the next decade.
Integration with Adobe tools
AEM connects with Creative Cloud, Analytics, and Target, letting teams move assets, data, and personalisation logic across tools without friction
Robust digital asset management
The DAM is genuinely powerful. It has AI tagging, smart cropping, versioning, and bulk optimisation for massive media libraries.
Consistent multi-channel delivery
AEM can push content to web, mobile apps, email, and more from one central source. Ideal for enterprises that need consistent messaging across every customer touchpoint.
Flexible architecture
Runs headful, headless, or hybrid. Teams can serve Content Fragments over GraphQL, author on a live frontend with the Universal Editor, or ship through Edge Delivery Services, then mix that with legacy setups. Adaptable for companies with complicated stacks.
Scalable enterprise-level operations
AEM is designed to handle huge traffic, global teams, and heavy workflows. It scales reliably when backed by proper infrastructure and Adobe’s cloud.
Intuitive user interface
For an enterprise platform, the UI is relatively approachable, helping large content teams manage complex workflows without needing to touch code.
Common questions
Craft CMS to Adobe Experience Manager migration FAQs
Answers to the most common questions about Craft CMS to Adobe Experience Manager migration
How much does Craft CMS cost for an agency managing multiple sites?
The costs add up quicker than most agencies expect. The Solo tier is free for single-user projects, Team is $279 per project, and Pro is $399 per project. Both paid tiers carry a $99 annual renewal fee. If you're running 10 client sites on Pro, that's $3,990 upfront plus $990 per year in renewals before you've paid for a single plugin. Popular plugins like SEOmatic, Blitz (caching), and Navigation run $99-$199 each. Factor in PHP hosting ($20-$100/month per site depending on traffic) and the total per-project cost lands between $500 and $1,500 in year one. It's reasonable for individual projects but the aggregate cost across a portfolio is where agencies feel the squeeze.
What are the hidden costs of running Craft CMS?
Beyond licensing, three costs catch teams off guard. First, PHP hosting. Craft needs PHP 8.2+, MySQL or Postgres, and proper server configuration. You can't deploy to Vercel or Netlify like you would with a headless CMS. Budget $20-$100/month per site for decent managed hosting. Second, major version upgrades. Craft doesn't let you skip versions, so going from Craft 3 to 5 means stepping through 3 to 4, then 4 to 5, each with breaking changes to Twig templates and plugin compatibility. We've seen agencies spend 20-40 hours per upgrade. Third, developer dependency. Craft assumes your team has PHP developers on hand. If your agency is moving toward JavaScript stacks, maintaining Craft expertise becomes an overhead.
Should I migrate from Craft CMS to a headless CMS?
It depends on your stack direction. If your team is comfortable with PHP and Twig, and your sites are traditional server-rendered builds, Craft still works well. But if you're building with Next.js, React, or any modern JavaScript framework, Craft becomes friction. Its GraphQL API exists but it's a bolt-on, not a native experience. The content modelling in Craft is genuinely good, and that translates well to headless platforms. We've migrated Craft sites to Sanity where the content structures mapped over almost one-to-one. The frontend rebuild in Next.js typically takes 6-10 weeks, and the result is faster, cheaper to host, and easier to iterate on.
What's the biggest challenge when migrating off Craft CMS?
Twig templates. Every piece of frontend logic in a Craft project lives in Twig, and none of it carries over to a modern JavaScript framework. You're essentially rebuilding every template from scratch. Content migration itself is manageable since Craft's data structures are well-organised, and you can export through the Element API or direct database queries. The other challenge is plugin replacement. If you rely on Craft plugins for forms, SEO, or search, you need to find equivalents in your new stack. We build a dependency audit before any Craft migration so there are no surprises mid-project.
How much does Adobe Experience Manager cost?
AEM is one of the most expensive CMS platforms going. Adobe publishes no list prices, so everything is a custom enterprise quote. From contracts we've seen, AEM Sites licensing tends to start around $60,000 per year on its own, and a full AEM as a Cloud Service deployment usually lands in the six figures, often $200,000 or more annually once you factor in usage. Implementation runs another $100,000 to $500,000+, and Adobe support contracts add 15-25% of licensing on top. We've watched companies pay more for their AEM contract than for their entire engineering team's salaries. If that ratio sounds familiar, it's time to rethink the stack.
Can I migrate from AEM to Sanity?
Yes, and it's one of the more common moves we handle. The work is real but tractable. For an enterprise instance, plan for a few weeks to a few months depending on how customised AEM is. The biggest bottleneck is content extraction. AEM's JCR (Java Content Repository) stores everything in a proprietary node structure that needs custom tooling to export cleanly. Custom OSGi bundles, Sling models, and heavy DAM workflows all get rebuilt or replaced, usually with something far simpler. We run a parallel build, standing up Sanity and a modern frontend while AEM stays live, then cut over once content and redirects are validated. Editorial teams keep working throughout.
What are AEM's main limitations?
Cost is the headline, but it isn't the only one. Development is slow because nearly everything routes through Java, OSGi, and Sling, so even small changes need a dedicated dev. Performance degrades the moment you customise the platform. The author UI is dense, and routine content work often still depends on engineers. You're also tied to Adobe-certified partners for setup and upkeep, and contracts tend to carry multi-year lock-ins. The headless side (Content Fragments served over GraphQL, plus the Universal Editor) works, but it's bolted onto a DXP monolith rather than built lean from the start.
Is AEM overkill for most sites?
For most sites, yes. AEM earns its keep when an organisation already lives inside Creative Cloud, Analytics, and Target and needs governance across hundreds of properties. If you're not using several of those Adobe tools, you're paying enterprise rates for a CMS that's slower to build on and more expensive to staff than the alternatives. We've met teams who adopted AEM on a consultant's recommendation, then found they used maybe 15% of it. A Sanity backend with a Next.js frontend would have cost a fraction and shipped faster. Three things to watch if you do leave. DAM assets with custom metadata and renditions don't transfer automatically. Dispatcher and Sling URL patterns need careful redirect mapping to hold SEO value. Contract lock-ins can carry steep early-termination fees.
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