Case Study
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Migrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform
From Prismic to Directus
We are the Prismic to Directus migration experts
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Challenges with Prismic
Key pain points
We have a long history with Prismic, and at one point, we were agency partners, so count us as biased. However, if you're anything like us, we've had an absolutely terrible experience with Prismic.
They've historically changed their API ad hoc, resulting in many broken websites, which is especially bad for an agency. They've dumped infrastructure on the community, resulting in expensive migration bills and client dissatisfaction and they've updated their system with no way to migrate other than to rebuild your entire website for literally years.
If you're having a hell of a time, we can help you move away and do it without breakages. We've had to migrate quite a few folks and we have a standardised process that lets us migrate images, videos, text and content structure to the platform of your choice.
Dependency on third-party hosting
You don’t control the infrastructure, Prismic does. So you’re tied to their uptime, limits, and CDN behaviour.
Limited native integrations
Most serious integrations require extra tooling or custom code because Prismic’s built-in ecosystem is pretty thin.
Steep learning curve
Slices, custom types, and the editor workflow take time to understand, especially for teams new to component-driven CMS structures.
Lack of built-in versioning
There’s no full document history or global rollback, meaning mistakes are harder to recover from without workarounds.
Escalating pricing model
Costs jump fast as you add seats, locales, or repositories, making it expensive to scale a growing content team.
Limited out-of-box features
Beyond basic content creation, most advanced needs require custom development, external tools, or plugins.
Benefits of Directus
Key advantages
Directus instantly wins points with us because, well… it has a rabbit for a logo. But beyond that, it's genuinely a solid database-first CMS. If you like the idea of a CMS that sits directly on top of your SQL database without any abstractions, Directus feels incredibly natural.
You can self-host it, tweak it endlessly, and treat your schema exactly the way you want. Editors get a no-code admin UI that feels polished, developers get REST and GraphQL out of the box, and teams get workflows, versioning, automations, and proper permission controls. It's flexible, fast, and a great fit if your content is really just structured data waiting for a smarter interface. If your project revolves around relational data and you want total control from database to API, Directus is one of the cleanest ways to build it.
Intuitive non-technical interface
Editors get a clean, no-code admin panel that feels more like a productivity tool than a CMS. Non-technical teams can handle content updates without pinging developers every five minutes.
Database-agnostic SQL integration
Directus plugs straight into your SQL database and turns it into an API instantly. If your data lives in Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, or SQLite, it just works.
Field-level permission controls
You can lock down every field, table, and action with granular role-based permissions. Perfect for teams that care about security and don't want interns accidentally deleting production data.
Built-in REST/GraphQL support
Your entire database is instantly exposed as both REST and GraphQL endpoints. Just plug into your frontend and start shipping.
Extensive UI customization
Directus lets you tweak the interface, add custom views, tailor layouts, and build the exact editing experience your team needs. It feels like a CMS you can actually shape instead of fight.
Real-time collaborative editing
Multiple contributors can work in the Studio at the same time without stepping on each other's toes. Collaborative editing shipped in February 2026, so drafts stay clean and the whole workflow feels built for modern teams, not 2010 intranets.
AI Assistant with image and PDF support
The built-in AI Assistant can process images and PDFs as well as text, and it works across OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Gemini. It's a genuinely useful addition rather than a feature-list checkbox.
Common questions
Prismic to Directus migration FAQs
Answers to the most common questions about Prismic to Directus migration
How much does Prismic cost?
Prismic has a free plan for 1 user with limited API calls. The Starter plan is $7/month per user for small teams. The Small plan is $150/month for up to 25 users with more locales and API bandwidth. Medium is $500/month. Large and Enterprise plans go higher. The pricing jumps are significant once you need multiple locales or repositories. We've had clients hit the ceiling on the Small plan faster than expected because of how Prismic counts API calls and custom types.
What are the best Prismic alternatives?
Sanity is the alternative we recommend most. It gives you better content modelling, real-time collaboration, and a query language (GROQ) that's far more flexible than Prismic's API. Contentful is another option with a bigger ecosystem, though pricing is steeper. If you liked Prismic's Slices concept, Sanity's block-based content approach works similarly but with more depth. We've migrated multiple former Prismic agency partners to Sanity, and the developer experience improvement is always the first thing they mention.
Can I migrate from Prismic to another CMS?
Yes. We've migrated quite a few Prismic projects, mostly to Sanity. We export your custom types, documents, and media through Prismic's API, then restructure everything for the target platform. Prismic's Slice-based content maps well to Sanity's portable text and block system. Typical migrations take 3-5 weeks. We keep your existing Prismic site live throughout, so there's no downtime. The biggest challenge is usually handling Prismic's media library, since images need to be moved to a new CDN.
Is Prismic a good CMS for developers?
It's decent for simple projects. The Slice Machine tooling is clever and the TypeScript support has improved. But Prismic's API has limitations that frustrate developers on bigger projects. You can't do complex queries, filtering is basic, and the content modelling is shallow compared to Sanity or Contentful. The bigger issue is Prismic's track record of breaking API changes and infrastructure shifts that have caused production outages. Developers who need reliability and deep customization are better served elsewhere.
Why are teams leaving Prismic?
The main reasons we hear are API instability, limited content modelling depth, and pricing that doesn't match the feature set. Prismic has a history of making breaking changes to their API and infrastructure without adequate migration paths. One major version change left agencies (including us, when we were partners) with broken client sites and expensive rebuild bills. Teams also outgrow the content modelling quickly. Once you need complex relationships between content types, Prismic's flat structure becomes a bottleneck.
How do we migrate content out of Directus?
Directus sits directly on your SQL database, which is both a blessing and a curse during migration. The blessing is that your content is in standard PostgreSQL, MySQL, or SQLite tables, so extraction is as simple as SQL queries. The curse is that Directus stores relational data and file references in its own conventions, so you need to untangle junction tables and re-map asset URLs. We write custom migration scripts for each project. A typical Directus migration with 50 to 100 content types takes 3 to 5 weeks.
Why do teams move away from Directus?
The two biggest triggers we see right now are licensing uncertainty and pricing sticker shock. Directus moved to the Monospace Sustainable Core License (MSCL) with v12 in May 2026, replacing the old BSL. Organisations under $5M revenue and 50 employees get a free Innovation Grant, but even above those thresholds the MSCL still permits free use of the Core tier — so larger orgs aren't categorically forced onto paid plans, though many opt into the cloud or a commercial self-hosted license for the production features sitting outside Core, and the community is noticeably split, with some teams forking old versions or migrating off entirely. On the cloud side, the old unlimited tier is gone; the Professional plan is $99/month and caps you at 5 users, 75K database entries, and 250K API requests. Growth past those limits means a jump straight to custom Enterprise pricing. On the development side, any custom interface work still requires Vue.js, which creates friction for React-focused teams. Breaking changes between updates also erode trust over time. Teams that started with Directus for its open-source appeal often outgrow it when they need predictable pricing and cleaner editorial workflows.
Can we keep our existing database when migrating from Directus?
You can keep your database infrastructure, but you'll likely restructure the schema. Directus creates its own system tables (directus_users, directus_permissions, directus_files, etc.) alongside your content tables. During migration, we extract the content tables, transform the data to fit your new CMS's content model, and leave the Directus system tables behind. If you're moving to a headless CMS like Sanity, the data moves from SQL rows to structured JSON documents, which typically results in a cleaner content model.
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