From Dato CMS to Contentful

We are the Dato CMS to Contentful migration experts

Challenges with Dato CMS

Key pain points

DatoCMS gives all the vibes of Prismic, but is somehow less flexible. It can feel like a glorified drag-and-drop schema builder. The moment you want to do anything mildly custom, the walls start closing in. And yes, the pricing stings. It scales fast, which is great for Dato, not so great for anyone trying to run a startup without selling a kidney.

The ecosystem is small, the extensions are thin, and deeper customisation often turns into “well, I guess we’re building that ourselves.” There’s no real visual editor, no guardrails for inactive billing, and once your project grows, you quickly realise drag-and-drop doesn’t magically give you validation or extensibility. If you need something genuinely custom or long-term scalable, there are better choices. Just contact us before you start one of the most expensive journeys.

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Limited customisation options

DatoCMS hits a ceiling fast if you need deeply custom logic. The drag-and-drop model is convenient, but it doesn’t give you the freedom a code-first setup would.

Pricing based on traffic

Costs scale with usage, which can get painful quickly for growing sites. Traffic spikes = surprise bills.

Steeper learning curve

While the UI is simple, the API-driven side demands more technical understanding. Non-developers may struggle once things get complex.

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Need for additional plugins

Out-of-the-box features only go so far. More advanced workflows often require plugins or custom development to bridge gaps.

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Limited feature set scalability

Great for small–mid projects, but larger, more demanding setups can outgrow what DatoCMS offers out of the box.

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Potential integration issues

Certain frameworks and tools need careful configuration, and edge cases appear more often than you’d expect in more mature CMS ecosystems.

Benefits of Contentful

Key advantages

With over 42.9% market share and more than 14,000 companies using it, Contentful is one of the most popular headless CMS choices among our customers. And why not?

It's built for structured freedom, which lets you create once and reuse forever from its huge repository. Meaning, no more copy-paste déjà vu or hunting through a maze of components. It's also one of the only CMS with first-party support for A/B testing and personalization. The plugin ecosystem is vast, and it keeps developers happy and content teams nimble with SEO, internationalisation, validation, and more.

And for the editors who like to see it as they build it, the live side-by-side preview makes every change visible in real time.

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.

High scalability

From a tiny blog to a fire-hose of global traffic, Contentful easily scales. You can completely avoid surprise outages, or “please hold while the CMS catches up.”

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.