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Migrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform
From KeystoneJS to BaseHub
We are the KeystoneJS to BaseHub migration experts
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Challenges with KeystoneJS
Key pain points
The biggest challenge with KeystoneJS is that it hands you all the responsibility that a managed CMS would normally handle. Deployment is entirely on you, and the documentation around production hosting, Docker configuration, and scaling is thin. We've seen teams struggle to go from a smooth local development experience to a reliable production setup, especially if they don't have dedicated DevOps support. The admin UI Docker image alone can balloon to over a gigabyte, which is a headache for containerised deployments.
The community around Keystone is significantly smaller than competitors like Strapi or Payload. That means fewer tutorials, fewer plugins, and slower answers when you hit an edge case. The ecosystem of ready-made integrations is almost non-existent, so you'll be building most things from scratch. For an agency working on client projects with deadlines, that time cost adds up quickly.
Content editors also tend to have a harder time with Keystone compared to more polished alternatives. The admin UI is functional but feels utilitarian, and non-technical users often need more onboarding than you'd expect. There's no visual editing, no preview infrastructure, and no real content workflow features like drafts, publishing schedules, or approval chains without building them yourself. If your client's content team needs a CMS they can pick up and run with, Keystone usually isn't the answer.
Deployment complexity
Self-hosting is the only option, and the docs don't hold your hand. Getting Keystone into production requires real infrastructure knowledge, and the large Docker image sizes make it worse.
Small community and ecosystem
Compared to Strapi or even Payload, the community is much smaller. Fewer plugins, fewer tutorials, and slower support when things go wrong.
No built-in content workflows
There are no turnkey drafts, scheduled publishing, or approval chains. Keystone provides field primitives that can be assembled into publishing workflows, but you need to wire them up yourself.
Admin UI feels dated
The admin panel is functional but lacks the polish and UX of modern CMS interfaces. Non-technical editors often find it confusing and need more training.
No visual editing or live preview
There's no way for editors to see content in context before publishing. You'd need to build your own preview infrastructure, which is a significant engineering effort.
Scaling requires significant effort
Running Keystone under high traffic means managing session stores, reverse proxies, and server resources yourself. It doesn't scale as smoothly as cloud-native CMS alternatives.
Benefits of BaseHub
Key advantages
BaseHub CMS is generating buzz among developers for its fast, collaborative, and AI-powered environment. We really like the Notion style editor. Feels great to drop a / and you type in what you want. E.g heading, or bullet points etc.
It's pretty good for creating and organizing content. Even for teams that are new to CMS platforms. Features like easy nested repeater fields, real-time branching for team workflows, and seamless GraphQL integration impress both solo makers and growing agencies. The platform’s Typesafe approach and AI-assisted writing tools help speed up the publishing process, while modern UI design keeps the learning curve gentle for newcomers.
If you can handle the initial information overload when you first spin up an environment it's an incredible tool for collaboration and rapid site scaffolding.
They also have a pretty good freemium pricing model (nodody has as good as Sanity) and strong documentation help projects get off the ground quickly, especially for Next.js and React use cases. Frequent updates and community engagement is high, and the core team that built it, are from a really nice design focused agency. So can't knock it that much.
Intuitive Notion-style editor
If you can use Notion, you can get content into BaseHub without begging a developer for help. It is light, fast and easy to navigate
Effortless nested repeater fields
You can nest and stack content structures. It’s one of the few tools where complex schemas don’t instantly become a crime scene.
Real-time content branching
Branching lets teams experiment, test ideas, and push updates without breaking production. Preview changes instantly, merge when ready, panic never.
Ready-to-use GraphQL integration
BaseHub ships with clean, auto-generated GraphQL APIs, so developers don’t waste hours wiring resolvers or schema stitching. Query, fetch, and ship.
Typesafe SDK support
You get fully typed responses out of the box, which means fewer runtime surprises and a smoother dev experience. Your IDE becomes your safety net.
Collaborative team workflows
Teams can work together without stepping on each other’s toes, with clean approval flows and role-based editing. It’s built for fast-moving content teams.
Common questions
KeystoneJS to BaseHub migration FAQs
Answers to the most common questions about KeystoneJS to BaseHub migration
What makes migrating from KeystoneJS difficult?
KeystoneJS stores data through Prisma, so the database layer is well-structured and easy to export. The harder part is replacing everything Keystone doesn't give you. Most Keystone projects have custom-built preview systems, publishing workflows, and access control logic that are tightly coupled to the Node.js backend. Rebuilding those features in a new CMS takes planning. We typically budget 4 to 8 weeks for a Keystone migration depending on how much custom infrastructure the team has built around it.
Why do teams move away from KeystoneJS?
Deployment complexity is the number one reason. Teams love Keystone during local development, then hit a wall getting it reliably into production. The Docker images can balloon past a gigabyte, the docs don't cover production hosting well, and there's no managed hosting option. The small community compounds this problem. When you hit an edge case, there are fewer people who've solved it before. Content editors also struggle with the admin UI, which lacks visual editing, live preview, and built-in publishing workflows that competing platforms ship by default.
How do we extract our content from KeystoneJS?
Since Keystone uses Prisma ORM, your content lives in standard PostgreSQL, MySQL, or SQLite tables with clean schemas. You can export directly from the database using SQL dumps or Prisma's query API. The content model is defined in your TypeScript codebase, so mapping fields to a new CMS is straightforward. We write automated scripts that handle the data transformation, including resolving relationships between lists and migrating file references. For a project with 20 to 50 Keystone lists, extraction and transformation usually takes 1 to 2 weeks.
How do we migrate content out of BaseHub?
BaseHub exposes content through its GraphQL API, so extraction means writing queries to pull your content tree and transforming the responses into your target CMS format. The nested repeater structure can make this tricky since deeply nested content needs to be flattened or re-mapped depending on where you're going. Media assets need to be downloaded and re-uploaded separately. For a typical project with moderate content volume, we budget 2 to 4 weeks for the full migration.
Why do teams leave BaseHub?
BaseHub is still a young platform, and teams hit its limits as projects grow. The most common complaints we hear are feature glitches in production, limited third-party integrations, and an interface that feels more like a database browser than a CMS. Localization support is weak, API rate limits bite harder than expected on high-traffic sites, and real-time collaboration can hiccup under pressure. Teams that need enterprise-grade reliability often outgrow BaseHub within 6 to 12 months.
Is BaseHub stable enough for production sites?
For small marketing sites and developer portfolios, BaseHub works fine. For anything with real traffic, multiple editors, or complex content workflows, we'd urge caution. The platform ships features quickly but stability doesn't always keep pace. We've seen branching break under pressure and collaboration features hiccup at inconvenient moments. If your business depends on publishing uptime, you want a CMS with a longer track record of production reliability.
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