# Framer to Strapi migration > How to migrate from Framer to Strapi, with a side-by-side comparison and FAQs. --- ## Source: Framer - **Type:** headless - **Official site:** https://www.framer.com - **Pricing:** https://www.framer.com/pricing - **Last reviewed:** 2026-07-28 ## Key advantages If you live in Figma all day, Framer is the right choice for you. You can import your layouts, tweak a few interactions, hit publish, and suddenly you’ve "built a website" without ever opening VS Code. The no-code editor is fast, the animations look like you actually care about UI, and the built-in hosting + global CDN means you never have to touch a server or pretend you know what an SSL certificate is. Multiple people can jump in, rewrite copy, adjust layouts, and preview the site instantly in real time with zero handoff pain, and "can you push this to staging?" nonsense. The SEO defaults are strong, images automatically behave, and performance is fast without you having to obsess over Lighthouse scores. Can't knock the service, but we're here when you're looking to build something more scalable. ### Ability to control layout with drag and drop You can drag, drop, and publish without the need for any developer or having experience in website development. With Framer, you can easily turn your mockup into a working page. ### Quick and cheap to build something If you need a site yesterday (and on a budget), go ahead with Framer. You can go from a Figma-level idea to a live marketing page in a few hours without writing any code or having developers wait on stand-ups. ### Some optimization comes by default Framer quietly handles things like image compression, semantic markup, and basic SEO hygiene. You ship quickly, and the site doesn't fall apart in Lighthouse analyses. ### Huge library of themes You can pick a template, tweak a few components, and you’re basically done. Its theme library is stacked, and most of it looks "portfolio ready" right out of the box. ### Real-time team collaboration Multiple people can jump in, edit, comment, and tweak designs live like Figma. It speeds up feedback loops and kills the endless back-and-forth. ### Intuitive, designer-friendly UI If you know your way around Figma, you’ll be able to use Framer without any difficulty. Framer’s interface is simple, and keeps designers moving without begging a developer for help. ## Key pain points Framer looks incredible until you ask it to behave like a real CMS. The moment you go beyond a tiny blog or a five-page marketing site, the cracks show fast. The CMS is bare-bones, the editor eats half your screen. Let's not forget the slow previews, sticky panels, and random bugs that make you question your life choices. And then there’s the pricing. Basic caps you at 2 collections, and the costs that bite aren't the headline plan price. They're the $20/month per editor, the $10/month content editors, and the $20 per language for localisation. The May 2026 changes cut editor seats but kept that per-language charge, which the community has not let go. Framer isn’t built for deep structures, complex logic, or anything resembling enterprise workflows. If you’re already knee-deep in a Framer setup and not sure whether to scale, switch, or salvage, reach out to us. We’ll help you figure out the smartest path forward (and save you from the pain). ### Basic CMS Framer’s CMS works for blogs and small sites, but anything bigger starts to feel cramped. If you are looking for complex structures, relationships, or enterprise-level content operations, you’ll hit the walls quickly. ### Not built for serious eCommerce It can handle a simple store, but anything custom, multi-variant, or large-scale becomes a hackathon. If you’re planning real eCommerce, you’ll want something sturdier. ### Only friendly for designers If you’ve never touched design tools, the UI has a learning curve, and there’s no deep tutorial to hold your hand. You’re on your own after the basics. ### Limited advanced features Things like user roles, workflows, or deep automation are difficult on Framer. Great for designers; less great for anyone who needs serious operational features. ### Small plugin ecosystem The community is growing, but nowhere near Webflow or mature CMS platforms. If you need niche integrations or extensions, expect roadblocks or custom work. ### Not suited for complex or multi-language sites As soon as you need structured data, heavy localisation, or custom code, Framer starts to feel restrictive. Headless CMS platforms handle this far better. ## Target: Strapi - **Type:** headless - **Official site:** https://strapi.io - **Pricing:** https://strapi.io/pricing - **Last reviewed:** 2026-07-28 ## Key advantages If you’re the kind of team that likes to get your hands dirty with real code instead of fighting a bloated enterprise UI, Strapi will feel like home. It’s open-source, customisable, and developer-centric. You get full access to the codebase, no licensing paywalls, and the freedom to shape your CMS exactly the way you want it. It is flexible. You can use React, Vue, Angular, mobile apps, and smart displays to push content. And despite being dev-leaning, it still gives you GUI-based drag-and-drop schema generation, which means you can spin up content models fast without digging into JSON files every five minutes. ### Node.js driven architecture Built on Node.js, Strapi plugs straight into the modern JavaScript ecosystem. If your team already lives in JS-land, Strapi fits right in. ### Easy frontend framework integration Pick your poison React, Vue, or Angular. Strapi plays nicely with all of them, making it easy to ship content. ### Highly modular approach Every part of Strapi is built like Lego. Add what you need, remove what you don’t, and customise endlessly. It’s great if you love building your CMS exactly your way instead of wrestling with rigid templates. ### RESTful API flexibility Out of the box, Strapi generates clean REST APIs that are easy to consume, easy to extend, and easy to customise. Ideal for multi-channel content delivery without rewriting half your backend. ### Supports GraphQL APIs With its GraphQL plugin, you get structured queries, reduced over-fetching, and a nicer developer experience with zero hacking required. ### Flexible content management Strapi lets you model content however you want, from simple pages to complex, relational structures. Combined with a drag-and-drop schema builder, it gives teams full control without feeling boxed in. ## Key pain points Strapi has a fan club because it’s self-hosted, which sounds great until you realise that means you are now responsible for every update, every backup, every scaling issue, and every "why is the server down again?" moment. Wouldn’t it be easier to use a cloud infrastructure that just… scales, instead of babysitting infra at midnight? And having to maintain a Node.js environment for your content editors is completely unnecessary pain, in our opinion. It also isn’t exactly friendly for non-technical teams. If you don’t have solid developer talent, the learning curve hits hard, and even simple customisations can turn into "let’s build this from scratch" moments. Plugins help, but not always, and you’ll quickly run into gaps that require custom development. Add the lack of traditional CMS features out of the box, and setup time (and costs) spiral fast. If you're set on Strapi, fine! Just let us look at it first so we can tell you whether it's actually doable or whether you're about to become a full-time system admin by accident. ### Steep learning curve Strapi looks simple at first, then politely reminds you it’s a developer-first tool. Non-technical teams usually hit a wall long before they hit publish. ### Node.js knowledge required If your team, especially your content team, doesn’t speak Node.js, prepare for a few "so… what does this error mean?" moments. Strapi assumes you’re comfortable under the hood. ### Limited traditional CMS features Things that come out-of-the-box in classic CMSs often need custom setup here. If you’re expecting plug-and-play page building, Strapi is not for you. ### Custom development needs If you need anything slightly beyond the basics, it quickly drifts into "can we ask a developer to build this?" territory. Great for flexibility, not so great for speed. ### Plugin limitations The plugin ecosystem is growing, but not everything works flawlessly, and some gaps still require hand-rolled solutions, which means more dev time than you planned. ### Cost-efficiency concerns Sure, Strapi is free… until you factor in hosting, DevOps, scaling, and ongoing maintenance. "Open-source" doesn’t always mean "cheap." ## Frequently asked questions ### Does Framer support headless or API content delivery? Not really. Framer renders and hosts your site on its own infrastructure, and the CMS is built to feed that frontend, not to serve content over an API to another app. There is a read API for pulling collection data out, which is enough for an export or a migration, but you can't point a separate Next.js or mobile app at Framer as a content backend the way you would with Sanity or Contentful. If you need one content source feeding a website, an app, and a few other surfaces, Framer is the wrong shape. A headless CMS is built for exactly that. ### How much does Framer cost for a real website? As of 2026, Framer's site plans are Free, Basic at $10/month, Pro at $30/month, and Enterprise (custom pricing). The free plan won't carry a real site. You get a framer.site subdomain and Framer branding. A custom domain starts on Basic, which gives you 2 CMS collections and 30 pages. Pro lifts that to 10 collections, 150 pages, and 2,500 CMS items, and beyond 10 you pay roughly $40 per extra 10 collections. The other catch is the per-seat and add-on pricing. Editors are $20/month each, content editors $10/month, and localisation runs $20 per language. So a small marketing site with a blog and two editors lands around $50-$70/month, and a multi-language content site climbs faster than the sticker price suggests. Compare that to a headless CMS on a free tier plus roughly $20/month hosting on Vercel, and Framer stops looking cheap once your team or your content grows. ### Can you move a Framer site to a headless CMS without losing the design? Yes, and we've done this for several clients. The design itself translates well to a modern frontend because Framer sites are essentially CSS layouts with animations. We rebuild the visual design in Next.js (or whatever framework fits), which usually produces a faster, more performant version of the same site. CMS content exports from Framer's collections through their API, though the data structures are simple so the migration is straightforward. Animations need manual recreation using a library like Motion for React, but the results are typically better than Framer's output. The whole process takes 4-8 weeks for a typical marketing site. ### What are the best alternatives to Framer for a growing company? It depends on what you're outgrowing. If you want to keep the visual editing experience, Webflow offers more CMS depth and ecommerce capabilities, though it has its own scaling limitations. If you want full control, a headless CMS (Sanity is our pick) paired with Next.js gives you unlimited flexibility in content modelling, design, and performance. Builder.io is worth considering if your marketing team needs to build pages independently, though the vendor lock-in is a concern. For most growing companies, we recommend the headless CMS plus custom frontend route because it scales without platform ceilings and your design is never limited by what a visual builder supports. ### When should you stop using Framer and switch to something else? Three signals tell you it's time. First, your CMS needs exceed what collections can handle. If you need relational content, structured data beyond flat lists, or more than a handful of collection types, Framer's CMS will hold you back. Second, content editing. Framer has no separate admin for editors, so anyone updating the blog works inside the full design file, which is a real problem once non-designers are involved. Third, development workflows. If your team includes developers who want version control, CI/CD pipelines, and the ability to write custom logic, Framer's no-code environment becomes a constraint. We've migrated Framer sites for companies that hit these walls together, usually around the 20-30 page mark with three or more content types. ### What is Strapi used for? Strapi is an open-source headless CMS built on Node.js. Teams use it to manage content and serve it to websites, mobile apps, and other frontends through REST or GraphQL APIs. It's popular with JavaScript developers who want full control over their CMS without paying SaaS fees. Common use cases include marketing sites, blogs, e-commerce product catalogues, and multi-channel content delivery. It works well when you have dedicated developers on the team. Without them, it gets painful quickly. ### How much does Strapi cost? Strapi's Community Edition is free and self-hosted. That sounds great until you factor in hosting ($20-100+/month depending on traffic), database costs, backups, and the developer time to maintain it all. Strapi Cloud now has a free Developer plan for prototyping, then Essential at $18/month per project ($15 on yearly billing), Pro at $90/month, and Scale at $450/month, each with higher entry, seat, and API limits. Enterprise Edition is custom pricing and adds SSO, audit logs, and review workflows. The hidden cost is always developer time. We've seen "free" Strapi setups cost $500-1,000/month in maintenance hours alone.