From KeystoneJS to Storyblok

We are the KeystoneJS to Storyblok migration experts

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 Storyblok

Key advantages

If you’ve ever tried explaining “headless” to a content team and watched their eyes glaze over, Storyblok is your peace offering. On the surface, it appears to be great. For instance, its visual editor makes you feel like you are finally living in 2025. But start digging, and you’ll find some gremlins in the codebase and the pricing page. Their APIs are still missing some basic functionalities like fetching child or sibling pages.

Still, if Storyblok is your choice, we can make it work. Our team knows how to set it up cleanly, dodge the common blockers, and keep your build from turning into another “looked nice, aged badly” project.

Visual editing capabilities

Yes, you read that right, you can do real-time, on-page editing. Make a change, see it instantly, no staging limbo, which means you can stop “guess and publish.”

Component-based approach

You can build a component once and use it everywhere. You can also update a button or banner in one place, and the entire site fixes itself.

Efficient content structuring

Your content stays clean, organised, reusable, and not scattered across 40 pages. Developers work with structured data, editors drag-and-drop pieces like Lego. Everyone gets to stay sane.

Robust multi-language support

One CMS, many languages, zero chaos. Localise content without duplicate pages, messy exports, or spreadsheet archaeology.

Collaborative environment

Writers, designers, and editors can all jump in at the same time without breaking each other’s work. Add comments and approvals. View version histories for teamwork without the headache.

Highly customisable

If your design system can imagine it, you can use Storyblok to model it. There are custom fields, workflows, and logics that can bend to your stack rather than the other way around.