Case Study
View Case StudyTray.ai
Migrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform
From Kentico to Framer
We are the Kentico to Framer migration experts
Last verified:
Challenges with Kentico
Key pain points
Here’s the reality check about Kentico. It isn’t cheap. Licensing, implementation, and support can feel like a CFO jump-scare. And while the interface is friendly at first glance, once you get into migrations, upgrades, or deeper customisation, things get… heavy.
Major version updates can introduce breaking changes, permissions get messy at scale, and multi-tenant setups mean one bug can take down every project sharing the stack. The docs and community aren’t as deep as the open-source world either, so when something goes wrong, you’ll likely need a developer rather than a forum thread to save you. If you can absorb the overhead and like Corporate Memphis art, go ahead. But before you go ahead, give us a call, and we will try to set up a better solution for you.
Steep learning curve
Kentico’s power comes with complexity. Newcomers and smaller teams often need time (and developers) to actually start working.
High cost for licenses and maintenance
Licensing and maintenance can add up quickly, which makes Kentico a harder sell for startups or smaller organizations.
Upgrades can get messy
Major version jumps, migrations, or deep API changes sometimes introduce breaking changes, which, trust us, is not fun if your site has years of custom logic.
UI feels dated at scale
As projects grow, the dashboard can get cluttered and less intuitive. It works, but it’s not winning design awards, unless you are still competing in 2015.
Limited community support.
Support exists, but the ecosystem isn’t as loud or as active as WordPress (not our first choice), Webflow, or headless-first platforms like Sanity.
Customizations risk impacting all sites
In multitenant setups, a poorly built custom feature can impact every site in the cluster, which means you can't move or change a single line of code, unless you love 404 messages.
Benefits of Framer
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.
Common questions
Kentico to Framer migration FAQs
Answers to the most common questions about Kentico to Framer migration
How much does a Kentico migration typically cost?
Kentico migrations are enterprise-scale projects. For a site with 1,000 to 10,000 pages, expect the migration itself to run 8 to 16 weeks of development time. The cost depends on how deeply you've customised Kentico's marketing automation, e-commerce, and workflow features. Simple content-only migrations are faster, but most Kentico installations have years of custom .NET logic that needs to be rebuilt or replaced. We've seen total migration budgets range from $30,000 to $150,000 depending on scope, which still often pays for itself within 18 months through reduced licensing and maintenance costs.
Why are companies migrating away from Kentico?
Licensing costs are the initial trigger for most conversations we have. Kentico's annual fees add up fast, especially when you include maintenance, hosting, and the cost of .NET developers to keep it running. But the deeper issue is agility. Major version upgrades introduce breaking changes that can destabilise sites with years of custom logic. The admin UI feels dated as projects scale. Multi-tenant setups carry real risk since one bad customisation can take down every site in the cluster. Teams eventually decide the operational overhead isn't worth it.
What's the biggest challenge when migrating from Kentico?
Untangling the all-in-one features. Kentico bundles marketing automation, e-commerce, analytics, workflows, and content management into one platform. When you migrate away, each of those capabilities needs a new home. Content goes to your new CMS, email automation might move to a tool like Resend or Customer.io, and e-commerce might need a dedicated platform. We map out every feature your team actually uses before writing a single migration script, because the biggest risk is discovering a dependency mid-project that nobody documented.
How much does Framer cost for a real website?
Framer's free plan is heavily restricted (2 pages, framer.site subdomain, Framer branding). The Mini plan is $5/month (billed yearly), Basic is $15/month, and Pro is $30/month. Where costs escalate is the CMS. The basic CMS plan limits you to 1 collection, and adding more collections pushes you into $20-$40+ per collection per month. For a site with a blog, case studies, and a team directory (three collections), you're looking at $90-$150/month before any custom domain or analytics add-ons. That's not cheap for what is essentially a visual website builder. Compare that to a headless CMS on a free tier plus $20/month Vercel hosting, and the math starts working against Framer quickly.
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, performance. Framer sites can get sluggish with heavy animations and large pages, and you have limited control over optimisation. 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 all three of these walls simultaneously, usually around the 20-30 page mark with 3+ content types.
Get in touch
Fill out the form below and we'll get back to you
